"It seems the most natural thing in the world is to have faith, be it the herbivore who longs for a loving protector, or the carnivore who one day looks down at her bloody hands and says 'I am more than this.'" – The Holy Kyhadib, Wisdom 9:1

The most common faith among the hyenas of Tarquesh is known in Etrusean as al-Tafid (roughly "the devotion") or simply Tafid*, with priestesses sometimes taking the surname Abd al-Tafid. Adherents of the main sect are referred to as Shamonic or Shamonist.

Tarquesh

Tarquesh divides roughly into Northern, Central and Southern areas: the North has great arid plains and mighty mountains, the southmost shielding verdant valleys, which form a natural border, protecting the rest of Tarquesh from the worst of the effects of the Namir desert to the North while being low enough in places to allow boulders of volcanic Levistone to drift further south.

The North and parts of the Centre depend heavily on underground water supplies liberated by the ground shock of the Nemesis comet impact, drawing their supplies from cenotes, wells and caverns which often have great religious significance to the communities that depend on them.

The Centre and South are also arid, with grasslands in the East and savannah in large areas of the Centre and South, providing excellent hunting grounds for early Tarqueshi packs. The mighty twin rivers, Kijah and Khoha, wind South across the state, leaving a trail of fertile land along their floodplains as they go, providing food for non-carnivores and grazing land for cattle. In modern times, gigantic irrigation projects have allowed a huge expansion of farmland in the Centre and South, and two massive dams control the flow of the Kijah and Khoha to prevent drought-related famine, which the people of Tarquesh count themselves as lucky to have never experienced to any serious degree. The ancient capital Naqareya straddles the Kijah river, while the modern capital Sarib is at the mouth of the Khoha on the coast.

Far to the west is the range of mountains the Tarqueshi refer to as the Western Wall, which divides the Jalath Desert of Tarquesh from temperate Doras and Lis. The Jalath Desert, in the rain shadow of the Western Wall, is easily the most inhospitable part of the country, only crossed by bold hunters seeking feral elk, prized as a delicacy in Tarquesh, on the Lisian side of the mountains. Such hunting parties would typically kidnap any Lisians who discovered them to avoid direct conflict with local authorities, and incorporate the rabbits into their families as best they could: this led to Tarquesh's population of Lisians, and to explicit Lisian fiction about Tarqueshi wanting them for their "harems," which the Tarqueshi consider equal parts charming and ridiculous.

Modern Tarquesh incorporates all states south of the Namir Desert, east of the Western Wall, and west of where Namir meets the sea. Formerly there were a number of independent states east of Tarquesh including Jasua and Ruel, all of which were gradually annexed by their larger neighbour.

Tarquesh is home to a great variety of wildlife, with a phenomenal diversity of mammals, birds, reptiles, arthropods (including a frankly unnecessary diversity of scorpions), Hawkinsae (including the 12-foot Eastern Black Scorpion, one of two non-bipedal Hawkinsae regarded as sentient) and synapsids, the latter cousins of the bipedal sentients of Doras. These form a diverse group from massive lumbering herbivores, some weighing almost a hundred tons, to swift, agile predators. 18-foot tall elephants are the largest mammals of Tarquesh, and are the among the prey of perhaps the most spectacular species native to the country, a creature whose name roughly translates as "Lady of the Wastes."

These enormous creatures resemble featherless therapod dinosaurs and can weigh up to 45 tons. They have a tigerstripe body pattern, and distinctive curved quills extending from the backs of their heads. They are heavily adapted for hunting even in fierce sandstorms,: they are pack hunters, generally not aggressive towards bipeds unless either starving or a young up-and-coming Alpha trying to replace an existing one by impressing her pack, which generally leads to them attacking structures over people and often to the existing Alpha interceding.** If taken young they can actually be trained, though they will always regard themselves as dominant to their trainer and take any commands as suggestions.

"Tarqueshi" is often used by foreigners to refer to the entire population, but in their own language only refers to the four species of all-female hyenas who form the largest species group, at 49% of the total modern population. The second largest population is zebras at 21% (mostly descended from Garamese slaves bought from the Continent by Tarqueshi traders who thought they were paying bride price for them, since Tarquesh has never had any concept of slavery), followed by jackals, Alun, big cat species, Lisians and Dorans, with many coastal cities having small populations of other Continental species such as raccoons and foxes.

The majority of Northern Tarqueshi are striped hyenas, as opposed to a mix of the four in the Centre and a majority of spotted hyenas in the South. While the four sentient hyena species are incapable of interbreeding, they have historically never been at odds with one another on a species basis, with all Tarqueshi conflicts being political in nature. Indeed, due to modified predatory reflexes related to zebras, spotted hyenas find striped hyenas exceptionally desirable and beautiful.

The Old Way

Like most modern faiths, Tafid has distant roots in ancient attempts to explain the impact of Nemesis eighteen thousand years ago. Tarquesh is the closest nation to the impact point that survived, and is believed to have had close ties with Mir, the empire that was annihilated when the comet fell. Like Eastern Garam, Northern Tarquesh also experiences the dreaded "Hollow Wind," deadly seasonal dust storms that carry toxic and radioactive particles from the depths of the Namir Desert.

The first form of the religion that would become Tafid is found in the teachings of an enigmatic figure simply referred to as the Prophet, said to be a wandering traveller in a robe that completely covered her body who would appear in remote towns and villages to offer wisdom. As is common for important Tarqueshi figures, almost no information exists about the Prophet: secular historians and even many moderate Tafidic priestesses believe that the singular figure called the Prophet is an amalgamation of the teachings of many Tarqueshi throughout their early history, while the more devout followers of Tafid take the Prophet's claim of being granted immortality by the Whisperer at face value rather than as a metaphor. The Prophet is usually shown as a tall figure in a traditional Tarqueshi robe with a hood drawn over her muzzle. Older depictions show a plain white robe, while modern depictions tend to show the Prophet in a black robe with gold embroidery, sometimes with a sword at her side representing courage or a golden staff in her hand representing wisdom.

Central to all forms of Tafid dating right back to these times is the Law, a set of codes which govern how a follower must behave and a general outline of the necessary acts of worship. Followers are called upon to be righteous, truthful, modest in both manner and dress, forgiving and calm in their dealings with others, to refrain from evil actions and excess, to be charitable and help the needy, to be earnest in their prayers and devout in their worship, and to be ready to defend the faith if need be.

Tafidic worship has always been more loosely organised than the strictly ordered services of Aludran Svezd, with much less administrative power in the central church structure and local priestesses given a lot of leeway in how they conduct prayers and other services. Songs, dance and music are common elements, with the priestess often conversing with her congregation rather than preaching to them.

The Dashid

The Prophet's teachings were handed down orally for centuries before being collected together, slowly gathering support over local pagan practices, and those that formed the book that became known as the Dashid (from "da'ishid," roughly "(the) true sayings") were compiled by the priestesses of the Royal Temple in Naqareya, which, though originally a pagan shrine, had become a nexus of Tafidic worship. The central theme is the Prophet's claims of meeting a being she called the Whisperer during her travels in the deserts of Northern Tarquesh, the teachings of this being, and her own thoughts on what the Whisperer taught her.

Understanding the Dashid is not a simple matter of opening the book and reading: there are many companion texts and commentaries that explain the historical context of specific verses and teachings, often greatly altering what might be drawn from the plain word alone. "Dashid-only" understanding of Tafid is regarded as a form of foolishness, and such interpretations have never been taken seriously by Tarqueshi scholars.

The Dashid is written in an archaic form of the Naqareyan dialect, with translating it directly thought of as disrespectful: instead, it is read to or chanted by the faithful in the original language, followed by the priestess explaining the meaning of the passage. Like the Aludran Kyhadib, a copy of the Dashid is treated with great respect, usually kept on a special wooden frame and only opened after bathing the whole body and cleaning the hands. A small cloth embroidered with a declaration of faith is used to turn the pages and used as a bookmark if need be: nothing else may be placed within the book except one's faith. The commentaries and companion documents are kept on lower rungs of the frame that holds the Dashid, symbolising their lesser status, and are usually modern translations.

For a long time after the invention of movable type, mechanical reproduction of the Dashid was forbidden as it was felt to cheapen the book, but eventually there came about a school of thought that a "disposable Dashid" for soldiers and those in other dangerous professions to draw faith from was preferable to losing priceless family copies of the text with storied histories. Copies used by temples must still be handwritten: it is generally preferred that the priestess reads from a copy she made herself.

Verses from the Dashid are often copied out and used as decorations in the homes of the faithful, from the declaration of harim which usually adorns the entryway to small blessings placed in individual rooms. Civic buildings almost always have a verse appropriate to their function carved above the entrance.

The Whisperer

The Whisperer is the figure of good in Tafidic lore and the patron Goddess of Tarqueshi. She is described by the Prophet as a beautiful hyena without markings, who glows a soft blue and has an ethereal elegance, but in line with Tarqueshi tradition she is only visually depicted as a stylised glyph or a ball of blue light.

Unusually, she is the weaker of the two main figures in Tafid, more reminiscent of a fairy than a Goddess, but though her powers are limited, her kindness and capacity for good is boundless. In the earliest forms of Tafid she was thought to have once had far greater influence over the mortal world, which ebbed away as the Voice of the Desert became proud and powerful.

The Whisperer's teachings included showing the Prophet the way to her realm, Paradise, through the following of the Law. No actual Tafidic teaching requires that the Whisperer be honoured through prayer: most scholars accept that this was simply modesty on the part of the Holy Goddess, and that doing so anyway is part of keeping the faith. Traditionally, the Whisperer is honoured three times a day: once after waking but before working in private, once at midday in public, and once in the evening with one's family or at a temple.

One key teaching of the Whisperer is that Tarqueshi are to seek knowledge and understanding of the world: the Dashid states that through the act of understanding, order is imposed upon the world. In some early texts not incorporated into the Dashid but valued by early forms of Tafid, the Whisperer states she has scattered knowledge across the greatness of the world so that the Voice of the Desert could not claim it; this is thought to have inspired early explorers such as Nasim and Yamina of Tarquesh, who charted the Continental coastline and the Strait of Huron in the Aludran year -4,471***, opening up trade with the Continent, and Simah of Tarquesh, who discovered the island of Mirrai in -4,291.

Another particularly important teaching is that the Whisperer's blessing to the faithful creates sacred places (harim) which evil spirits cannot enter unless invited by an adult of sound mind. The inside of one's home is held to be such a place, as are temples and libraries. Most modern sects accept the Southern reading, popular with traders, that states that the presence of a single believer is enough to make even an unbeliever's home a safe place.

The symbol of the Whisperer's blessing, as well as the symbol of Tafidic faith itself, is a golden circle divided into sectors: how many and what they represent depends on the precise sect, but it is always an even number and never less than eight. The symbol is often worn as a pendant, and one with sixteen segments (representing the Sixteen Steps to Paradise) is shown above crossed scimitars on the flag of Tarquesh. In modern Shamonic Tafid, the symbol is held to represent the soul.

The Voice of the Desert

The Voice is the most powerful entity in Tafidic lore, a formless, boundless and mighty being of pure evil that loathes order and all living things. Though all but omnipotent, the creature is virtually mindless, feeling only animal rage: only those spirits that serve it have any measure of true intellect.

These spirits are said to emerge from a lake of blood in the middle of the Namir Desert called The Cauldron, the source of all the world's evil: this is actually the Nemesis impact crater, 19 miles across and half a mile deep, and full of tepid, poisoned water stained red by the comet.

In all versions of Tafid, the Voice seeks Tarqueshi hyenas specifically as part of its attempts to bring suffering and misery to the world. Evil spirits that serve the Voice seek to discover information about the Tarqueshi so they can curse them, and so the Tarqueshi conceal their faces in public and do not give their full names to outsiders (traders often replacing their surname with "of Tarquesh"), or sometimes not giving any part of their name at all. Spirits and the Voice are held to have no sense of smell, while Tarqueshi can recognise each other by scent: this also means concealment does not prevent them identifying the species of another Tarqueshi.

Many of these same traditions, with different justifications, also exist in Eastern Garam, leading to some speculation that the two nations were once one, joined by an expanse now swallowed by the Namir Desert.

The Path to Paradise

This crucial part of Tafid, today called the Shamon Text but originally known as the Path to Paradise, is an account by the Prophet of her meeting with the Whisperer during a ferocious sandstorm in the trackless North, during which the Whisperer saved the Prophet's life by showing her the hidden path to her domain, Paradise, which the Prophet describes in detail so others may follow.

The importance of the text was not recognised for centuries, as it was among many ancient texts archived in the Grand Library of the capital, Naqareya, and awaiting translation. The messages regarding the Path to Paradise in Tafidic lore were instead taken from other ancient writings derived from the Shamon Text, such as the Song of Paradise and the Sixteen Steps to Paradise.

In -3,767, a great fire tore through Naqareya, and despite the best efforts of the Royal Guards reached the Grand Library, destroying many irreplaceable texts in its collection. A large part of the Shamon Text was among those lost.

As the Library's remaining collection was inventoried in the aftermath, it was realised that the Shamon Text was a lost writing of the Prophet herself, and great priority was placed on its translation. While this revealed little that was not already known, it was quickly added to the canon of the Dashid.

The last section that could be read was a statement by the Whisperer, always translated as "I no longer have the power to create anything." This was read as a mournful reiteration of her statements elsewhere in the canon that she is powerless to help the Tarqueshi directly.

Then in -2,233, everything changed.

The Lost Words

According to the most commonly told story, in -2,233, a young striped hyena scholar in the coastal trading port of Sarib, Laleh al-Shamon (her name is known due to the Tarqueshi tradition of priestesses telling their real name to their congregations, and is usually suffixed "blessed be her name," originally to protect her), was clearing out an old archive when she discovered a sealed box made of "strange metal" hidden behind a false wall panel. Alternate sources for the box have been given over the years, including exploration of a shipwreck off the Southern coast some months earlier, but Tafidic scholars point to flaws in the details of these as reason to reject them. The mysterious box itself, thought to be an ancient Mirish artifact, is said to be in the possession of the modern Royal Family and is not shown to outsiders, meaning it cannot be confirmed that it actually exists. However, it is very clear what al-Shamon discovered that day.

What she found was a second copy of the Path to Paradise, the Shamon Text, undamaged by fire. Al-Shamon excitedly translated it to compare to her copy of the Dashid, noting a few corrections to fire-damaged portions as she went. But the greatest shock awaited her when she discovered that her copy included the remainder of the text.

The Shamon Text revealed a very different story: the true section of text where the original document ended reads "I never had the power to create anything" and is followed by a confession by the Whisperer: she lied to the Prophet about her own status and that of the Tarqueshi. She then describes the truth.

The Whisperer herself is described in the text not as a rival creator, but as the first creation of the Voice. Unable to create another being truly evil like itself, the Voice instead inadvertently created a creature of good from the fractions of the world that were not encompassed by it. The Whisperer admits she had no idea why she was created or if there even was a reason, for as soon as she saw the formless chaos that was her creator she fled in horror.

The Whisperer found she could add a single thing each time the Voice created something, and used this to subvert its will. Each act of destruction was transformed into an act of creation, to the fury of the Voice, and soon the world it intended to be shrouded in cold and darkness was filled with warmth and life. This is described by the Whisperer:

"In every curse I placed a blessing, if only the ability to learn from it, and in even the bitterest fruit I placed a seed."

The Tarqueshi were created out of pure evil by the Voice as its soldiers, to scour the rest of the world clean of life. As beings formed thusly rather than accidentally, their nature as beings of darkness is revealed by the way light is reflected out of their eyes at night, showing there can be no light in them.**** Seeing this, the Whisperer reached out and gave souls to them.

With the capacity for love and kindness placed within them, the Tarqueshi rebelled against their creator and fled from its presence. A section of the text involves the Whisperer describing her first meeting with the Tarqueshi in a cave in the Northern mountains, the Goddess convincing the confused and angry creatures that she could help them to find safety and happiness if only they would listen to her words over the bellowing of their creator, a fearful sound that echoed even here.*****

When the Voice first desired to hunt down the Tarqueshi, it created the Ladies of the Wastes, which the text describes as arch-demons. But the Whisperer made them vain, knowing only the Tarqueshi could flatter them. When it created the spirits of disease to weaken their resolve, the Voice gave each one the possibility of a cure. On and on through the centuries, she would tilt the scales just enough to give them a chance at happiness.

But more than any of those things, she taught the first Tarqueshi the Law, and with it, the path and the key to the domain where she was originally born, Paradise, the only place in all creation where the servants of the Voice cannot go. Through the Law, the Tarqueshi gained the power to manifest a measure of the same protection in their own homes. Allowing them to know the path to her sacred home finally convinced the Tarqueshi that she truly loved them, and they accepted her as their patron Goddess.

The Shamonic Writings

Laleh al-Shamon found herself being questioned as to her understanding of the text she discovered by priestesses of every major temple in the Sarib territory. Though a shy woman not used to public speaking, she rose to the occasion, writing commentaries and giving sermons that led to her being hailed as one of the Prophet's greatest servants.

Al-Shamon re-framed the existing canon in light of the Shamon Text, stating that while the Whisperer wishes to lead all Tarqueshi to Paradise, she must be certain they have overcome their evil nature, and that is why Tarqueshi must follow the Law.

The Voice seeks to reclaim its army by tempting the Tarqueshi to abandon their souls and embrace their dark nature. There is an implication in the Shamon Text that while submitting completely to the Voice is an act that will annihilate a Tarqueshi's soul and leave what remains to wander the wastes of Tarquesh forever as an evil spirit, feigning acceptance to draw on the Voice's power can achieve good ends.******

Al-Shamon also wrote commentaries on faith by non-Tarqueshi, as Sarib had many foreign species and Southern Tarquesh already had a large population of Garamese zebras. She drew on accounts from a recently arrived religious scholar from Garam to draw up ideas of how species that were not given souls by the Whisperer might still give thanks to her for the souls of their friends and loved ones. She agreed with many prior priestesses that non-hyenas need not hide their identity and could wear indoor clothing anywhere, and that by following the Law, they could join their loved ones in Paradise.

The War of the Faithful

When word of this reached them, Tafidic scholars in Naqareya were horrified and declared the Shamon Text to be a forgery, proclaiming that its teachings rendered the Tarqueshi "less than beasts," and comparing the Shamonic teachings with brutal cultist movements revering the Voice that the Dashid claims existed in Tarquesh's ancient history. They demanded that the Temple of Sarib destroy the Shamon Text and execute Laleh al-Shamon for "gravest heresy."

The ruler of Sarib at the time, a Shamonic convert only ever called "The Believer" in modern records, refused. When a proclamation arrived repeating the Royal Temple's demand and bearing the seal of the Queen of Naqareya herself, The Believer responded by declaring herself Queen of Sarib and having Sarib's standing army swear loyalty only to her. In response, the Queen of Naqareya declared war on "Sarib and all unbelievers."

The civil war that followed, known to modern historians as the War of the Faithful, raged for 22 years and incorporated numerous other factions. As the war proceeded, the professional army of Sarib acquired a reputation not merely for ferocity, but also for being disciplined and merciful; even accounts from scholars in defeated cities speak of the silent, calm soldiers who refused to engage in looting or harm the innocent.

As an affluent trading port, Sarib also made use of many foreign mercenaries, and their exports of spices, textiles and gemstones kept a constant supply of wealth flowing in to support their war effort. Sarib's powerful navy enabled them to regularly blockade the mouth of the Kijah River and several fierce naval battles were fought there over the course of the war as Naqareya struggled to secure a route up the river for supplies. The city often experienced shortages of imported goods, and since the Kijah runs shallow in several places, they were occasionally forced to send forces to defend trading ships that ran aground, carrying supplies that would normally be transported overland from Sarib.

The battles rapidly increased in scale and ferocity, and it quickly became clear that many states in the South had greater sympathy for their neighbour Sarib, the nexus of local trade, politics and religion, than they had for the distant government in Naqareya. The Queen of Naqareya's demands for levies of troops from the South and drastically increased taxes only exacerbated this further, and soon many Southern cities were drawn to Sarib's banner.

The New Temples

As Sarib's territory grew and their preachers travelled far and wide to spread the new faith, many converts made pilgrimages to the city to worship at the Temple where the True Word had been revealed. Many times, the faithful found the Temple full to overflowing, and simply stood in the square around it, heads bowed in silent reverence.

The Queen found this unacceptable, and in spite of the needs of the war ordered the temple be rebuilt on a scale that surpassed even the Royal Temple of Naqareya. In -2,221 the new Temple of Sarib was completed, taking advantage of all that the Tarqueshi had learned over the hundreds of years the original Temple had stood. The new structure's enormous gold-plated dome was intended to be a "beacon of faith" clearly visible to ships entering the docks, with the cavernous, intricately decorated interior envisioned as a representation of Paradise to inspire the devout. Laleh al-Shamon gave the first sermon, her shyness now replaced with the fiery passion of a true believer.

The faithful returned to their homes with stories of the otherworldy grandeur of the Temple of Sarib, and many of the temples built in the austere style typical of earlier Tafidic worship were remodelled or even outright demolished to make way for similarly grand structures: the Queen of Sarib assisted in funding these new structures from her own treasury. Following the collapse of the partially-completed dome of Dharbah Temple in the city of Jalesh which killed sixty workers, she also allowed architectural secrets that had previously been jealously guarded to be spread to her subjects to ensure the new temples were as strong as they were grand.

The War Continues

The explosive spread of Shamonic faith in the South led to Central preachers calling their people to arms to defend their faith, and followers of traditional Tafid found themselves embattled everywhere. The heretical movement had become a threat to their sect's very survival, and they fought back ferociously. Though almost certainly an exaggeration, it is said that during the final hours of the Battle of Jasab, eight thousand Jasabi soldiers died on the steps of the Temple, obeying to the last their Governess' order not to allow the heretics to defile it.

Allied armies were often formed of less disciplined conscripts rather than volunteers, and a number of atrocities are recorded during this period, including the slaughter of the priestesses of Riyasa Temple and the sacking of Cairib. The Queen of Sarib dealt ruthlessly with the perpetrators with almost all being executed. She publicly denounced them as servants of evil, and forbade conscription throughout her territory. Her strategists drew up plans to extend Sarib's rigorous military training to all of the lands loyal to the Queen, and for six months the army of Sarib fought alone as their allies retrained their troops and rooted out potential troublemakers.

The depleted forces of Sarib weathered several defeats during this period, but the Queen of Sarib refused to alter her stance on conscription, relying on the brilliance of her generals to hold the line until their allies arrived. This period also marked the heaviest use of foreign mercenaries by the Southern forces.

Dubious actions not involving conscripted soldiers, specifically the firebombing of the fortified city of Talabad by Leviships from their old foe al-Qarim, were treated far more leniently, most likely because Sarib simply could not afford to lose the support of the powerful al-Qarim aerial fleet. This action led to a centuries-long feud between Talabad and Sarib.

Al-Qarim's aerial fleet proved vital in defeating the Air Navy of the Principality of Jasua when the latter attempted to intercede in the war, and paratroops deployed from al-Qarim's highest-flying Leviships were instrumental in breaking the Siege of Jaqbah in -2,218.

These Leviships were of a relatively simple design: since they predated the Basran alchemist Miguel di Fortuna's work on heating Levistone, they simply used steel anchor bolts to attach the hull to a rounded-off Levistone boulder. By this point in time, Leviships typically either had two lines of smaller boulders or a single central line with smaller rocks on outrigger arms to reduce their tendency to roll. Their cruising altitude depended on the purity and size of the boulders used in their construction, with this only altering depending on ambient heat: at the time, it was thought that Levistone was affected by the time of day and season rather than the temperature. They also had no real way to move without wind in their sails: while they could be pulled along by teams of soldiers, horses, cattle or elephants, this was not an effective way for a Leviship to enter combat.

Combat began to bog down for the Southern forces in -2,217 as the Central states staged a stiff counter-offensive, retaking several cities in bloody battles and leaving the war at a stalemate. The battle lines ebbed and flowed over the months that followed, with gains by the two sides quickly reversed or proving inconsequential. There is some evidence that the Queen of Naqareya's advisors attempted to persuade her to sue for peace during this period, but the ageing Queen declined, saying the war would not end until every last heretic lay dead and Sarib had been razed to the ground.

The Northern Army

In -2,216, the conflict reached the attention of the governesses of the fortress-cities far to the North. These massive and ancient fortresses had long guarded the herds and the very lives of nomads within their dominions, acting as shelters when the Hollow Wind blew, and were known for their peerless archery and fierce horse cavalry*******. They followed a version of Tafid that retained many ancient customs and local spirits, particularly those connected to water sources, and generally considered themselves above the petty disputes of the South.

It is generally believed that this changed when merchant converts to the Shamonic faith visited the vast fortress of al-Habalah, site of the greatest of the Northern shrines. An ancient myth re-interpreted in light of Tafidic lore held that al-Habalah was built on the site where the Whisperer empowered the Prophet to throw a rope around the prideful sun and pull it to the ground, creating the night to save her people a dreadful death from the heat, the distant impact drawing water from the very rocks to sustain them. While this was no longer taken particularly seriously, the Shrine of the Sacred Waters at al-Habalah was a crucial part of local tradition and the site of pilgrimages from every other Northern city.

Used to thinly-veiled allegations of heresy from the Royal Temple of Naqareya for their reverence toward their patron spirit, She of the Waters, the priestesses of al-Habalah were quite happy to listen to fellow heretics and found themselves intrigued. They prayed to the Whisperer and She of the Waters to seek their guidance, and poured over the Shamonic manuscripts presented to them.

Al-Habalah sent a messenger on a dangerous journey south to meet with the Queen of Sarib and speak with Laleh al-Shamon to find out her opinion of She of the Waters and the other Northern spirits. Though it was months before the messenger returned, her answer was affirmative: al-Shamon believed that such entities were well within the scope of creation, explaining that they had probably never been mentioned in the Southern writings because the Whisperer worried about spreading knowledge of them too far.

Pleased with this, the priestesses of al-Habalah petitioned their Governess to support the movement in the South, and with the support of the priestesses of She of the Waters, the Governess soon drew up an army of troops from most of the Northern fortresses.

The Battle of Naqareya

Forces from the remaining Central city-states did their best to prevent the Northern Army's relentless advance, and while the Northern forces spent years trying to break through, they were eventually turned east, preventing the threatened encirclement of Naqareya. The traditionalist generals were horrified when this apparent defeat spurred the Northern Army on, an advance force including war elephants and at least two Leviships forging a path through the fortified pass at Ahanz Valley and allowing them to join with the Army of Sarib. The result is usually referred to by historians as the Grand Army of Sarib.

The Grand Army's sheer size allowed for commitments of enormous forces, the cities south of Naqareya falling one by one as the Queen of Sarib dismantled her enemy's lines in detail. Soon nothing stood between them and the capital.

In early -2,211 the Grand Army of Sarib marched on Naqareya with a force of some 250,000 soldiers, at the time, the largest single military deployment in history********. They found the city extensively fortified, with all remaining loyalist forces arranged to meet them: a force still less than half the size of the Grand Army.

The calm winds during their march had prevented their supporting Leviships from keeping pace with them, and with this weather continuing, the Grand Army made camp. They waited two days for the Leviships to arrive, during which the wind died off still further to a flat calm. At midnight on the second day, the Grand Army suddenly broke camp and began to form up, attacking shortly afterwards.

The Battle of Naqareya raged for three days, with the Shamonic forces winning a bloody victory. The Grand Army's Leviships finally arrived on the third day when the wind picked up, engaging the Naqareyan aerial fleet to force them to leave their moorings along the outer wall. Prior to this, they had been raining arrows on the attackers with impunity.

The Siege of Naqareya that followed lasted for a month before the fortified city finally surrendered as food supplies ran low, Naqareya 's massive batteries of ballistae repeatedly preventing the Grand Army's Leviships from deploying paratroops to break the siege.

Civilians cowered in the Royal Temple praying for the Whisperer to save them as the blooded soldiers of the Grand Army surrounded the structure. What happened next was recorded by the High Priestess:

"...she stepped forward, a youthful Saribi soldier of moderate office, and pulled down her hood to address us - a deeply respectful gesture a commoner would offer one of far higher birth in the South, so I am told - and presently unfurled a scroll. 'Citizens of Naqareya!' she called out, in a voice that struck me as already well-practiced at command, 'Her Merciful Highness, the Queen of Sarib, proclaims this message to you. Your sins are forgiven, and you shall not be harmed. This is all.'"

Such a display of mercy from the followers of evil baffled the priestesses of Naqareya, more so when the invaders bought great shipments of food through the city gates. Live animals were slaughtered before the eyes of the people, to ensure they did not believe the Queen intended to poison them or feed them with the bodies of their dead.

This was troubling, and the priestesses and the Queen of Naqareya and her court, in hiding within the Temple, deliberated: it was obvious this was intended to send a message, but as days turned to weeks and the anticipated massacre never came, their arguments of being lulled into a false sense of security rang hollow even to their own ears.

Finally, a month after her city fell, the twenty-year-old Queen of Naqareya, recent inheritor of the war from her mother, stepped out of the Royal Temple and identified herself to the invaders, fully expecting that she, at least, would be put to death. Famously, her most beloved concubine, an aardwolf named Aliya, refused to leave her side, holding her Queen's arm as she walked out to face her fate.

The same young captain who had spoken before was called, and unfurled another scroll: what followed recorded by Aliya:

"...She was clean this time, no longer a fearful apparition fresh from battle with blood staining her muzzle and teeth. Her torn and battered uniform was replaced with one polished and new, fresh as though she was ready for presentation to her own Queen. And she stood with a sense of measured pride I found oddly comforting: no longer did she haul a weary body to attention through sheer force of will, yet she also did not radiate arrogance in her stance as the Captain of my Queen's guard so often had. She spoke without due deference, but also without mockery, 'Ruler of Naqareya, Her Highness the Queen of Sarib in her mercy offers you this pact of understanding. Her Highness' request is that you renounce the persecution of those who follow the torch held high by the Servant al-Shamon, blessed be her name, and that you accept her authority over this union which we call Tarquesh. In return, no harm or humiliation shall come to your person or those close to you, and you shall be granted a title of lesser but still grand status to rule over this city.' She closed the scroll without mention of consequence for refusal, and awaited an answer."

"'I am told' my beloved and noble Queen said, 'That you are true to your word. I request an audience with your Queen to discover what this title is.'"

And the Sarabi soldier bowed as she would to a superior, raised her hood, and declared "It shall be so."

There is some evidence that supports the idea that the Queen of Sarib had heard from spies that her opponent was not the woman who had originally declared war against Sarib, explaining the young Queen's extremely lenient treatment. She was granted the title of High Governess of Naqareya and even allowed to retain her anonymity, a very rare concession for the ruler of a conquered city.

Aftermath

In late -2,211, after months of careful negotiations, the Queen of Sarib was crowned as Queen of Tarquesh and the Royal Temple of Naqareya accepted the Shamon Text as canonical, in exchange for the Queen allowing traditional worship and ceremonies to continue there. Over the next 40 years Shamonic teachings slowly took primacy even in Naqareya, and in -2,159 the Royal Temple was reworked in the majestic style of the Southern temples.

Not all temples in the North, where foreign species are less common, agreed with al-Shamon's idea that non-hyenas did not need to cover themselves, either regarding doing so as a matter of simple decency, or requiring those kindred species with reflective eyes to cover themselves so that the Voice would not recognise them as it's other soldiers. Conservative non-Tarqueshi families will also often abide by the clothing codes, feeling that not doing so is disrespectful or marks them out as foreigners*********.

Many of the mercenaries who had fought bravely for Sarib were offered the chance to remain, and many did, in particular Alun forces who had fought ferociously with their infamous short swords, ancestor of the modern Aludran military machete. This led to Tarquesh having a substantial number of followers of the traditional Aludran faith, Svezd: they were permitted to worship in existing temples, though they soon built their own. Because these Alun missed the reforms after the Aludran War of Unification, Tarquesh's Svezd is a unique sect with significantly different rituals (including the use of Tarqueshi music and dance during services) and some major doctrinal differences (particularly the direct veneration of the Empress as a Goddess in her own right and its lack of the creator-figure Hira). It reconciled with the Central Church of Aludra after Empress Lana dio Alud's visit to Tarquesh in 875, and is regarded as a legitimate form of the faith.

One of these Alun mercenaries is believed to have been the ancestor of a gunmaker named Sabrah Hadid. Hadid was an admirer of the legendary Aliya Hakim, a famed Tarqueshi artisan who had made many ingenious clocks and mechanical toys, and invented the harpsicord. One day Hakim had accepted an old Doran hand-cannon fitted with a simplistic (and broken) matchlock mechanism in trade for making a traditional Tarqueshi puzzle box. Finding the design hopelessly primitive, Hakim spent several years working on her own design and by 193 had created a rifled, breech-loading snaplock musket with a self-operating pan cover, using detachable chambers with pointed brass bullets and with calibrated sights, at a time when the Continent was only just introducing matchlocks. These "Hakim muskets," sometimes called "magic rifles" in Doras and "thousand-yard guns" further west, would be worth their weight in silver outside Tarquesh for several centuries, with their methods of construction a closely guarded secret.

Frustrated at being barred from learning to make the lockwork of the Hakim musket, Sabrah Hadid left Tarquesh in the Aludran year 281 and vanished. "Coincidentally" this was the same year a certain Maria Sabran arrived in Aludra and started producing extremely high-quality rifled matchlocks. During her lifetime, she also invented the world's first revolving musket, the Continent's first practical wheellock action, and a primitive black powder magazine-fed lever-action wheellock rifle which was issued to special troops. She was granted a noble title by the Empress, starting the Sabran line of smallarms makers.

Obviously given over two thousand years of separation, the language spoken by Alun from Tarquesh is very different to that spoken in Aludra, with only a few words in common and an alphabet much closer to the flowing Tarqueshi script. Locally the language is still referred to as Aludran, with the actual language of Aludra referred to as "Continental Aludran."

The Queen of Naqareya's concubine, Aliya, is remembered for her bravery: to be "bold as Aliya" or "loyal as the soul of Aliya" is very high praise.

*"Zhakid" in Aludran.
**The so-called "Battle of al-Sarabi," a duel between a young 45-ton individual and a one-eyed 38-ton Alpha assisted by the staff of the isolated oil refinery attacked by the former, is one of the most famous examples of such an event.
***The Aludran date is counted with 0 as the formation of the Empire with the Acts of Unification. For scale the Battle of Omar is in the Aludran year 874 and the Szakade arrival is in 894. The Tarqueshi modern era begins in the Aludran year -2,233, with Laleh al-Shamon's discovery of the Shamon Text.
****Tarquesh's nearest neighbours are Lis, home to bipedal rabbits who unlike their quadruped cousins do not have reflective membranes in their eyes, and Doras, home to formerly nocturnal synapsids who lost their reflective eyes when they developed infrared-sensing pit organs. The Shamon Text appears to have been written at a time when the only known sentient species with reflective eyes were the Tarqueshi themselves. Since other such species had been discovered further from Tarquesh in the time between the writing and discovery of the Shamon Text, Laleh al-Shamon identified these as sister-creations of the Tarqueshi who fled far away and were forgotten by the Voice. This led to the traditional Southern belief that the Voice has no power outside Tarquesh.
*****Modern scholars believe the sound referred to in this passage is the regular volcanic eruptions deep in the Namir Desert.
******Secular commentators believe this represents Tarqueshi recognition of their powerful feral instincts: like Alun, they are born killers, with 98% able to kill without hesitation. Like big cat species, three of the four species are also prone to using their powerful jaws in melee combat: traditionally, a soldier who removed her hood to do so would be sworn to kill any enemy who had seen her face. Also like big cat species, all four Tarqueshi species have proportionally stronger muscles, though only 1.2 times stronger rather than three times.

Aardwolves have the same capacity for killing as the other three species, but historically tended to serve as scouts, charioteers, cavalry, slingers or archers rather than melee fighters due to being slightly smaller (in modern times averaging 5'6 while the other three species average around 5'10) and having much weaker jaws than their sister-species. Plenty still fought on the front lines in spite of this, and were thought of as very brave for doing so. The first Tarqueshi martial arts appear to have been developed specifically to allow aardwolf soldiers to defend themselves effectively.
*******There are several possibilities for cavalry in Tarquesh: since it is home to many cousins of the lizard-like synapsid bipeds of Doras, it is possible to train monitor lizard-like creatures and creatures resembling ceratopsids to accept a saddle.
********This force is known to have included at least 50,000 cavalry: there is disagreement on whether this is part of or in addition to the figure of 250,000 "soldiers" given by Tarqueshi historians.
*********Zahra's mother is one such person. On the right, she is following the laxer Northern clothing code for decency rather than wearing a traditional robe, requiring the covering of all areas where bare skin would show on any species: namely the mouth, nose and ears. Given the method of reproduction of the all-female species, Tarqueshi tend to view public eating as obscene, similar to the Central Province of Chira eliminating the "O" sound used in other Chiran dialects for being needlessly sexual (though they know where to put it back if they want to be needlessly sexual).

Anyone interested in asking any of my characters (reasonably SFW) questions, or me any story-related things? If so, ask away!

Twenty years after the Battle of Omar, Aludra and Chira would face the greatest challenge in their history.

The Szakade, as the creatures came to be known in Aludran, are two species with intertwined fates: the species most recognise as Szakade, and the Veda.

Both evolved in the deep ocean trenches of Hazad, a watery planet that circled a great distance from a gigantic star. Hazad was a strange world, with an atmosphere choked in poisons from a process resembling photosynthesis and beaches scoured clean by regular releases of near-pure fluorine. The jungles of Hazad were pristine but void of all life. Only a species of virtually indestructible crustacean-like creatures, the Szarak, dared to venture on the land.

The Veda were an intelligence formed from neural networks of bacteria with telepathic abilities*, and they parasitized a simplistic species of fish-creatures with dextrous forelimbs, compelling the solitary creatures to form groups so that the Veda could reproduce more easily and dwelling in colonies on their bodies.

This species, the Szakade are an all-female species with biped-like torsos and fish-like tails with long, flowing fins. Deep-sea predators, they possess sharp teeth and extremely sensitive inky-grey eyes. As a relic of their less intelligent ancestors, they retain two lures that extend from their foreheads, glowing patches under their eyes, and flashing bioluminescent bands down their sides. Previously used to draw prey close to them, the flashes were already becoming a means of communicating simple signals to each other when the Veda found them.

The Szakade were once colonials, with even their blood made from co-opted bacteria; another type could easily be added, and the Veda settled everywhere on their skin except the stripes on their flanks already home to bioluminescent cells, their transparent skin changing to a glossy black that shimmered as they moved. A dozen Szakade were a safe host for a single Veda Groupmind, with far fewer worries about predators than in their old plankton-like state.

Stem cells from Szakade eggs gave the Veda a resource they never had before, a mutable form of cell very different to their unchanging unicellular form. Normally Szakade would court each other and then one lay an egg and the other lay her egg alongside it, the two joining together and starting to grow. Veda harvested proto-eggs to form a bed of stem cells that constantly renewed itself, and used this as a basis for biomechanical constructs that were their earliest form of technology.

The Szakade in turn grew more sophisticated, the signals from each other's bioluminescent flashes becoming a full-fledged language, and parasitism became symbiosis as the enforced groupings became a thriving society centred on Veda bio-constructs and metals worked in deep-sea thermal vents. The Veda, regretting the way they had dealt with the Szakade before, now treated them as companions and allowed them free will and an equal say in the running of their homelands.

Szarak would often wander into the deep trenches and were docile and friendly to just about everything, and the early Szakade societies used them as beasts of burden. The 30-ton adults could move just about anything with their immense strength if properly guided.

It was around this time that organised religion began to appear, with the creation of the first Szakade cities. For as long as they were able to think, both species had thought about their place in the world, and various rituals related to special places crystallised into the veneration of a mother-Goddess of the oceans. It was said this figure saved her daughters from the evils of the land by creating the sea for them to live in and had left a Promise that someday she would lead them to an ocean paradise if they kept the word in their hearts and followed the law.

Like most sentient societies, there were conflicts among groups of Veda and Szakade over values and resources. The nature of the species, with their fine hearing, and ability to sense tiny currents, meant their methods of conflict were unique, focused on fighting in perfect silence with small units, slow, careful movements, and increasingly cunning weaponry, moving from spearguns to propelling rifles.

As their technology advanced, the Veda learned to create "biometals" which, like their biomechanical organisms, responded to their thoughts, giving them the ability to shape them as they saw fit. Their technology surged forward as they discovered the principles of science and learned to manipulate pure energy and even the barriers between dimensions, allowing wireless power transmission and dimensional "tunnels" though which thermal power could be extracted safely without drilling. A darker side of this technology was the development of energy weapons, firing coherent energy bolts that could travel even in the deepest depths. As a counter to this, they created a device called the Siphon, a personal shield that absorbed energy into a pocket dimension. Civilian Siphon-based power systems quickly replaced the use of chemical batteries in just about every conceivable application.

Since biometals could hover in the water around the user, their militaries focused on adaptable multi-part variable energy guns that could split apart or join together to form weapons with almost any function the user could imagine. As these weapons became commonplace, the Szakade horror at swimming in the blood of their enemies became a cultural taboo about physically touching weapons, which they considered barbaric. Warfare became a matter of technology versus technology, with drone sensors gathering information and battlefields littered with seeker mines that responded to sound. The Szakade never saw any need for armed vehicles since they would give away the location of infantry.

Their wireless power transmission was used to keep soldiers agile since they did not have to carry anything but the weapons themselves; relays were mounted on Szarak, which would wander around and graze and show little sign of being aware a battle was taking place. It was considered a crime to actually harm one, no different to killing a civilian.

As their computers grew more reliable than their bacterial bodies, most Veda transferred their minds into electronic form, leaving behind their old selves as symbiotes that remained part of the Szakade. These AI-like creatures retained the ability to reproduce by creating a "seed" of a child-mind, which gathers data around itself to form a new, distinct personality. With the understanding of biology the two species had, a Szakade and a Veda could create DNA allowing a biological child to be "theirs," and there was no question that such relationships were right.

A few Veda spurned this development: these "old ones" saw it as abandoning their physical bond with the Szakade, something they considered sacred. All were ancient, the custodians of the memories of thousands of Szakade they had loved though centuries and millennia. While Veda and Szakade both valued these Groupminds for their wisdom and immense experience, their claims that this development would lead to the Veda discarding the Szakade entirely were not taken seriously. The new generation of Veda felt that physically inhabiting the Szakade was an unpleasant reminder of their parasitic past.

The cells that were once Veda remained in the bodies of the Szakade, tiny childlike shadow-personalities that reassured and supported them subconsciously. The Veda's telepathy remained a part of the Szakade even after their departure, allowing them to control Veda biometals themselves. Their society flourished, and they discovered means to send craft outside the poisonous atmosphere and explore the universe around them. But it was in this moment of triumph that they uncovered a horrible truth, one that at first they refused to believe.

The best scientists checked and double-checked their findings, but every survey, probe and reading led to the same unthinkable conclusion: Hazad's immense sun was dying. They had assumed the receding oceans were part of some natural cycle, but it was the swelling of the star. Hazad would die either slowly as the star grew and grew, or consumed in an instant if the unstable core collapsed. There was no stopping it.

There were great arguments, even wars, over what should be done; whether this was a test by the Goddess and they should have faith, or do something about it, or simply give up and accept their fate. Even with all their technology there was nothing they could do to the star, but a group of Szakade engineers made a breakthrough, a "jump drive" that would allow a vessel to travel the immense distances between the stars if it could only be made to work in time. The precise method of jumping took decades in Aludran terms** while over a hundred years passed outside the ship, this was seen as hardly important.

The largest Szakade trench-cities came together, and the result was the ship Aludra refers to as Leviathan. It is actually called Home 2 in their own language. The ship would have to carry as many as possible; the eventual design, a beautiful, almost swan-like lifting body eighty-five miles long and twenty-five across the wings, had enough space for eighty million Szakade and Veda. An eight-mile saucer-shaped detachable "battle" segment, Guardian, would protect it, controlled by one of the oldest Veda Groupminds; Guardian would have no jump drive, as creating even one such device in time would be difficult enough. Guardian's shape was due to the Szakade ancestral fear of their world's immense jellyfish, one of their ancient predators.

Guardian would not be alone: hurried brainstorming and simulations by Veda Groupminds led to the development of their first atmospheric aircraft, a sleek biometal fighter which could change shape in-flight at will, equipped with two powerful energy cannons. The Szakade had no idea how many they might need, but five hundred and fifty were all they felt safe providing materials for with all the other resources that would be taken up constructing Home 2 and Guardian.

Home 2 would use an immense form of Siphon to gather energy created by her own re-entry, and drain it slowly to provide near-limitless clean power for her people; as she was designed to land on water, she would use several novel applications of the same technology to reduce the vast waves she would otherwise create. While that was perfect, the reaction drive that got her out of the atmosphere would not be so gentle; firing the main engine would be enough to boil the oceans and kill every living thing still on Hazad. But they were already dead, and dying like animals struggling for the last drops of water was no way to go, so it was agreed that all those who would not be passengers would say their goodbyes and commit themselves into the arms of the Goddess, in the hope that, somehow, the Promise would still be fulfilled.

The jump drive's creator chose to remain on Hazad with her family, wishing all the best to those who left; she felt it would be cowardly to use the device she intended to save her people just to save herself.

Even as Home 2 powered up, readings from the giant star were spiking, and when she rose to the surface cameras showed immense flares arcing out from its surface. Solemnly, the crew of Home 2 made their last prayers, flooded the rear ballast tanks, and fired the engine, every trace that they had ever lived on Hazad vanishing in an instant.

The star tore itself apart as Home 2 prepared to make her first jump, and the giant ship and her eighty million occupants barely escaped. As she reappeared in the depths of space, everyone on board tried to deal with the loss of an entire world.

For those in command, though, there was no time to grieve: their task was to find a new world for their people. The jump drive's creator had discovered a means of deploying probes from Home 2 during jumps and retaining communication with them, and they had hundreds of years of transmissions from probes and observations from space telescopes to sift through.

The best candidate from the perspective of atmosphere and oceanic composition was the worst in just about every other conceivable way. Everything about this world was strange. Ancient transmissions, too garbled to decode, dated to 40 million years ago, but then one day simply stopped. They had sent a probe, but what returned was baffling to every scientist who studied it. They saw a world choked in hideous forests and built of impossible geographical formations, a great red crater amid a sea of black sand, oceans wreathed in strange swirling mists, and three strange energy phenomena the preindustrial civilisations it detected could not have hoped to manipulate, let alone create. Moreover, the creatures it found lived on the land, in defiance of what the Szakade and Veda considered the natural order.

They discarded this strange world from their list of candidates, and set about examining others. Despite their horrible losses and the failure of the Promise, many were still hopeful. Something out there must want them to survive. Home 2 set course for the most promising of the new worlds, and made her second jump.

But each world they tried to settle on was worse than the last. Vicious carnivores with metallic skin, unstable geology and appallingly barbaric aquatic civilisations greeted Home 2's landing; each time she took off again, scouring the surface clean of all but the most simplistic forms of life. It was hopeless. So much so that, very much against Guardian's wishes, Home 2, by this point struggling to function, made her final jump, to the cursed world of surface-dwellers they had ruled out so long ago.

As she blinked into existence, her jump drive exploded in the presence of the gravity wells of four giant planets; since nobody who had left Hazad even knew how the drive worked, nevermind how to repair it, this star system would be either their home or their tomb. Guardian was incensed at Home 2 for even attempting it.

Transmissions from the planet made them more nervous still; rather than the pre-industrial societies their probe had found eight hundred years prior, their sensors found thriving industries and transmissions detailing what were clearly military operations. Home 2's AI, an optimistic "artificial" Veda formed during their journey who have never been in a Groupmind, was hopeful despite the evidence, and got to work trying to decipher the odd sound-based alien languages. Since the breadth of the transmissions indicated a society that was outright impossible, she assumed some must be fiction: she felt it was a good sign that these people told each other stories. Her subordinates, the Szakade bridge crew who had grown up with her, shared her optimism, and the group managed to convince Guardian that it was safe to send down a party to examine the seabed.

They sent down the small party in an unarmed shuttle, the scientists finding wreckage on the seabed; perhaps some sign of a people like their own, and scans from their probes confirmed one of the mysterious anomalies was on the bottom of the ocean too, deep in the mists. They were pondering this as a gigantic alien watercraft approached, and, without warning, began to attack with a weapon unlike any that they had ever seen or heard of.

The survey team barely survived, and their injuries were terrible, tissue ruptures and horrible cavitation injuries across their entire bodies. Guardian was furious; an unprovoked attack by these barbarians on an unarmed survey team, with a weapon that, as far as she was concerned, could have no function but the extermination of a people like theirs. To the Veda, this proved that there were once aquatic peoples on this planet, and the surface-dwellers had waged a genocidal war against them.

Below, the Chiran Cruiser Submarine Sei-Lin 7's crew were baffled; they were there to investigate a report of a crashed, unknown aircraft. The first sonar pings had shown fuzzy contacts that almost looked like divers, but then the contacts, as well as the one on the bottom, had vanished completely. The submarine resumed her duties, later sending a routine report stating they had found nothing.

With this, even Home 2 sadly accepted Guardian's argument that a military deployment would be needed to push the alien forces away from their landing site. There was no option to move on with the jump drive destroyed. She hoped that a show of force would be all that was needed, and that, somehow, the aliens could be persuaded to accept them in time.

Guardian found herself tasked with the difficult problem of selecting a landing site for Home 2, ultimately choosing a path across open ocean which ended in a deep bay near one of the alien cities. While she had no idea what the devices on the cliffs above did, the dense power grid around the largest suggested a weapon of some kind, and so she would have to come up with some way for a species incapable of moving on land to wage a war there. The sheer scale of the device implied it could threaten, if not Home 2 herself, then certainly any attempt by the Szakade to leave.

Still, she was confident: the Siphon fitted to Guardian made it immune to any energy weapon in existence, and she knew of no other way a weapon could function above water, short of a primitive catapult that would be no threat to her.

As Home 2 orbited the largest of the giant planets, Szakade soldiers trained in four-legged exosuits that secured around their tails with their torso outside so they could still use their hands. Power for their suits would be provided by relays mounted on Szarak: testing had shown that the local flora would be fine for the creatures to graze on. Guardian tried to remain confident as she ran them through scenarios she made up as she went along, her ideas very much like the propaganda fiction the Szakade made regarding claiming their new home. Savage, bloodthirsty aliens, all of their technology working precisely as it should.

She, a Veda military commander with centuries of experience, would defeat the aliens in the way all great battles were fought, with clever use of small, disciplined units. With no water to carry sound, she assumed it would travel poorly, and so the 15-foot exoskeletons would be able to operate as stealthily as Szakade troops on the old homeworld. With no water, she assumed conflict would be purely two-dimensional. She ignored Home 2's confused suggestions based on the alien transmissions; she was young and foolish. Guardian could solve this by herself, and by doing so would give her beloved Szakade wife and their children a home. However, the AI's suggestion that the aliens were preparing for war with one another seemed promising; if they depleted their own forces, her task would be that much easier.

Home 2 was baffled at what her long-range sensors picked up and frustrated at Guardian ignoring her. This was not like any war she has witnessed: the broadcast showed one enemy receiving the other as friends. She pondered the possibility of it being some kind of honour code they were following, but the archive films she thought factual seemed very different. Not needlessly destructive, but following a very different set of rules. Ruthless, perhaps that was the right way to think of it. She was perhaps being romantic like Guardian said, but it reminded her of the story of the ancient conflict between two oldest and most powerful trench-cities: how they had finally found common ground in the last battle of all, the one to build her.

On the planet below, things were relatively calm. High above the old, beautiful city of Halleck in Aludra, the 39-inch mass driver Bolverk, the largest gun on the planet, stood guard over the sea. It was more a symbol than a weapon; the Halleck coastal battery had not been fired in anger in almost eighty years. Today a party of schoolchildren would be visiting, and the Battery Commander, a young noble, was busying herself making sure everything was perfect.

At 46, Mariella Lorii was preparing for her final parachute jump as part of Double Edge before retiring from 117 SPU to work as a drill instructor, while her little sister Sophie was preparing for her first alongside her. Her girlfriend Maxine had retired from the military after losing a foot to a mine in Garam during the civil war there, and now ran a motorcycle repair garage. Her older little sister Nadine was studying for a postgraduate degree while running the family burlesque house in the evenings; under her, The Imperial had become one of Alurna's most Respectable places for Ladies to share polite conversation and food while enjoying the acts and appreciating the beauty and elegance of other species.

At 74, Ingrid sen Sola had evaded every possible avenue of retirement, the Field-General still commanding a tank. By now she was on her fifth, Claudia V, an S-4 Black Swan II developed after the Battle of Omar. She was rather enjoying exercises against the first generation of Chiran main battle tanks; she had always felt the Chiran "agile army" concept focusing on light "infantry support vehicles" supported by fast artillery was a mistake. She was also busy dealing with the fact that she had spoken with Claudia V so often that the AI was essentially sentient; this along with Griffon PCAVs*** flying missing-plane formations after the Battle of Omar without ever being programmed to do so had led to a lively debate about AI citizenship.

Shian Xinyang and Shiori Shima, a Chiran-Etrusean duel citizen and an Etrusean, were enjoying a pleasant holiday in Halleck together, taking in the city's famous libraries and bookstores in the old quarter. It was their first time in Aludra, and while Shian had been nervous at going abroad without her beloved girlfriend Fio, so far it had been a pleasant one.

Very few looked to the sky. Aludra and Chira were preoccupied with their first joint military exercise, Operation Double Edge, both eager to show they could make it work but equally eager to show their best and quietly gather as much data as possible about the other's capabilities. Space had never interested either; large space launch complexes would be seen as long-range ballistic missile facilities, a needless provocation, and with both having the ability to shoot down anything the other placed in orbit by this time, space programs were seen as pointless expenditure. It was a private citizen with a small telescope who first sighted Guardian as she passed close to the moon.

*Veda always assumed these were their original bodies, but this turned out to be because Veda in the presence of these cells will instinctively incorporate them into their Groupmind if they are not part of one already. Aludran research indicates they are self-sufficient organisms, and it is now believed the Veda intelligences arose independently of any physical body, with some theorising that their bodies do not exist in this dimension.
**Hazad's year, due to the size of the star, was a lifetime long. Szakade marked their equivalent of years in terms of lunar cycles.
***Pilotless Combat Air Vehicle. Being "unmanned" is fairly normal for Aludran aircraft, and all other options sound silly.

Part 1 | Part 2

Construction

With final approval granted, construction equipment moved in; both the Emera family's formidable assets, which included every construction Leviship in Aludra, and two entire combat engineering battalions from the Aludran Army. Work began with blasting operations to create the artificial cavern that would extend under the central park, with a pair of giant tracked power shovels soon creating a crater four hundred feet deep and a mile across. Since the "table" structure of eight pump towers and an upper deck supporting central park was entirely below ground it would not count as part of the six month "spreadline," and so construction began immediately. Lei and Hana said this was how construction had proceeded at Rasoon, where the pump tower and fountain canopy were completed first and routinely activated to test water flow through the city and ensure there was no erosion of the foundations.

As the lower city took shape, the two young architects were able to venture outside the spray-screened trailer they had previously been confined to on the site, soon helping to direct the construction of the undercity proper. A filter plant was constructed to direct water from the river into a temporary holding lake, and six months after breaking ground a line of generators sputtered into life and water flowed through the skeletal buildings of the undercity for the first time.

One unexpected challenge during the development of the undercity was Lady Lucille, a Hawkeater Moth with four daughters who flew across the Vamar just after the "table" was completed and refused to leave. Since by this point the Hawkeater was regarded as a "non-citizen sentient" species by the Aludran government* the undercity plan required a slight reworking to accommodate her presence. Lei and Hana initially found the 25-foot predatory moth terrifying and appealed for her to be housed somewhere else, but over the course of a few weeks grew used to her and rescinded their requests, hoping that other Mirrai would have similar reactions.

While Lucille and her daughters watched in bemusement, the lower city's tiered walkways and water tunnels were constructed; as with all Mirrai cities, Lower Aqua City was to be partially flooded so that families had swimming spaces in their homes and pools to relax in.

Less troubling than Lucille's presence was the population of freshwater trilobites that established itself in the undercity during construction, in spite of estimates that the species would not like the levels of algae in the water. This led to some amusing negotiations since, for reasons that baffle sociologists, Alun are adamant that trilobites are inedible and should be treated kindly, while Mirrai would normally not have any problem with eating swimming bugs. Introducing representative Kawai to a few of them won her over, however, and an explanation that the friendly creatures were not food was added to the Mirrai citizen orientation.

Landscaping began on the park itself; Farah sen Ahan of the Alurna Botanical Gardens, who had agreed to supervise all aspects of the project involving plants**, had suggested completing the park immediately to ensure any problems would manifest themselves during the rest of the construction process. The last thing the Empress wanted was for the central park to be dying off or an unmanageable mess, and this would allow time for problems to be caught and corrected.

With their work on the central park deck completed, House Emera began to ship in their remaining construction equipment to level the rest of the site; piling works began as soon as the first pump tower tests were positive, with representatives of the Kais and Ruhm families personally supervising work on concrete and steel batches destined for the project. Now the noble families were on board, none would be willing to show anything but their best work to their rivals and the world.

The Aludran hatred of needless suffering meant every effort was taken to empty the site of animals and insects during the terrain levelling process, with staff from the Imperial College of Natural Sciences helping to set up holding areas at the edge of the construction zone. All suitable species would be reintroduced, with the remainder being relocated to suitable habitats.

The year after the first groundbreaking all foundation work was completed and construction had commenced on the first structures. Since most Aludran cities of antiquity were recorded as starting around pagan holy sites, it was decided to build the temples and their associated facilities before any other structures. The first of these was the temple requested by the Chiran government, a late addition to the city plan and designed by noted Chiran architects as a fusion of traditional forms and Aludran sensibilities. The city would feature three main temples, one for each of the main figures of Svedzi worship, and four hundred smaller chapels and shrines.

At the same time as the temples, a series of temporary structures took shape: a railway container terminal and marshalling yard, fuel storage depot, and a series of concrete plants and workshops.

At this point the project was still a mess of deep holes and trenches, which would one day be underground car parks, subway stations and tunnels, or had been dug out for pipe and cable laying. Starting anew, there was no need to drill out the tunnels for the subway system and so a pair of 2,000-ton trench excavators designed specifically for the task had dug them out from the surface. At the completion of the temples only the sections of the subway network that passed under building foundations had been installed.

The next step completed the underground parking structures and subway stations, since it was intended that they would be temporary homes for the project's workers and their families. The majority of workers thus accommodated had been offered homes in the completed city, as it was felt that people working on structures they would ultimately live in and around would do their best work. Central Station was for much of the project called "Central Manor" due to the formation of a particularly large and stable Household among the occupants.

Along with these were a series of underground structures that the Aludrans did not want to see on the surface, including the entire power grid and a series of underground water treatment and purification plants built to Mirrai specifications. Electrical substations were built within a series of honeycomb-like cells designed to prevent damage in the case of an explosion. The one thing not placed underground were telephone exchanges, since Aludra uses fixed lines or operator switchboards rather than automated direct dialling systems. Aludran nobility regarded the latter as impersonal and therefore Improper.

Since the Empress thought that the Monarch Towers would look ridiculous standing over a half-built city, the entire rest of the city would be built before the skyscrapers were raised. While the Emera family were not particularly happy with this arrangement since they had assumed they would be able to build temporary roads for heavy vehicles, they were soon given access to the four largest transport Leviships from the Air Navy Support Fleet, and moved as much equipment into the city as possible prior to the beginning of building construction. Several right-wing Etrusean newspapers took this as a sign of mismanagement and mocked the "crane graveyards" that formed within the site.

Sub-level construction proceeded briskly, with all subway tunnels completed and all but four filled over within nine months and cable and pipe laying concluding a month later. The four remaining tunnel segments were another improvisation by the Emera: the lines passed close to major construction areas, and were to be used to move equipment and materials. The Emera family bought in surplus locomotives and rolling stock from the Alurna and Reidan underground rail systems, since engines for the Aqua City Underground had not been built yet.

This involved turning the adjacent parks into goods yards, a decision that upset Farah sen Ahan. She had hoped to get all of the parks planted at the earliest opportunity so that her staff could tend to them just as with the central park, and Emera guarantees that massive movements of heavy machinery over the freshly laid soil would not result in contamination did not convince her. After a series of impatient meetings with senior members of the Emera family, she was still not happy.

Giselle sen Kais felt that Farah, rather than simply being obstinate, was frustrated: not being technologically minded, she did not really understand what the Emera were trying to tell her. Giselle sent her younger sister Gina to discuss matters with her. While still a representative of Aludra's largest concrete manufacturer, Gina was a carefree young woman who loved nature, and Farah knew she would be able to speak freely with her older sister about any concerns.

With Farah finally happy that her dreams for the four parks would not be drowned in grease and oil, she resumed supervising work on the difficult vertical gardens, the first of which was just taking shape.

The tiers and levels of the city were laid out as the smaller buildings took shape around them, stone paving, ornate wrought iron railings and decorations soon making the bare structures look suitably Aludran. A brief skirmish with Basram on the Southeast border did not affect the construction schedule, and all seemed to be going well for the incredibly ambitious 28-month goal.

At this point, however, one of the Chiran engineers spotted a problem on her plan, and went to her superiors: the lightning conductors on many buildings in the city passed much too close to metal climbing handholds. Architects trained primarily in aesthetics rather than structural engineering had added the handholds, and the plans they had been given to work with did not even include the conductor wire locations. While Chirans would tend to climb the inside of a building during a storm, the layout was unacceptably dangerous, and construction paused while existing plans were quickly reworked and equipment returned to buildings thought to have been completed. The result was a substantial delay given the sheer number of completed structures.

In the end it was just over three years after the consecrating of the temples when groundsheets with the Emera coat of arms on them began to be removed from the largest cranes around the three hundred and eleven remaining bare foundations. The schedule now demanded following the delay would require swiftness and military precision, and the two combat engineer battalions returned to the site to assist in coordinating construction.

Farah sen Ahan was delighted to discover all efforts would be made to clear out the temporary yards by building from the middle of the city outwards; due to the "spreadline" this would leave at most twelve months to establish the four parks, but Farah had spent three years considering the matter and was certain she could manage. She was encouraged by Gina sen Kais, by this point her beloved wife; the ceremony had been conducted in Aqua City's Grand Temple.

All of the city's temples had been in full operation for over two years serving the workforce, and over that period had conducted five hundred weddings and eighteen funerals, four due to accidents and the remainder from natural causes. Even the Chiran temple was in use for the surveyors, testing crews and advisors supervising Chiran accessibility. To the delight of the Chiran ambassador when she visited, Aludran citizens were also attending services and prayers there.

Estelle sen Emera herself arrived as the first girders were laid. With the hopes and dreams of Aludra resting on her shoulders, the formidable head of the most powerful family in Aludra short of the Alud themselves was in her element. Her presence around the site was such that in interviews, workers half-seriously questioned if there was only one of her.

As the first four towers rose, others joined them, the construction starting to shift ahead of schedule. Estelle had decided to leave the Monarch Towers until last despite their central location and that if any project would generate unexpected difficulties it would be that one, but her sheer confidence in her workforce's abilities buoyed up morale at the site. Estelle was fond of reminding them that while others are able to make all possible things, a Lady is able to make all things possible.

The schedule quickly moved to continuous shifts; Alun, being descended from nocturnal ancestors, have few problems adapting to working at night. Three rotating shift sets were set up so that they could still enjoy a mid-shift nap without there ever being a time when work had completely paused.

Almost ten thousand additional workers joined the final construction. Many of them were qualified volunteers paid by their Households, either out of either pure patriotism or desire to win the Empress' favour, rather than as part of the project's budget. The site became a hive of activity as the towers rose together, even the most skeptical coming to accept that the plan would almost certainly succeed.

Though unexpected delays cut into the initial lead, Estelle sen Emera proudly watched as the spires of the Monarch Towers were lowered into position, twenty-six hours ahead of the six-month goal. With three hundred and eleven buildings topped out, a small army of electricians, glaziers, plumbers, decorators, upholsterers and carpenters descended on the site while Leviships made constant runs to ferry construction vehicles too large to move by themselves out of the city***.

The final step was the construction and testing of the city's above-ground water systems, from relatively simple reflecting pools to canals, complex fountains and most difficult of all the system of pumps, lakes and aqueducts that would create Lei and Hana's distinctive waterfalls. Along with this was the dismantling of the temporary irrigation systems that had supported the gardens that would now be nourished by the water system. This work was not without setbacks including several leaks which were difficult to track down, but six months after the skyscrapers topped out, the main reservoirs were fully flooded for the first time. As Lei and Hana watched, Hana's bioluminescent sides glowing faint blue from nervousness, their vision finally became reality. Aqua City was complete.

Occupation

It was agreed that the Mirrai settlers would be moved in first to ensure they were comfortable; any large works project on the undercity would be disruptive to those moving into the buildings above. Happily, the arrival and orientation was without any major incident and soon eight thousand Mirrai families were settled and learning the layout of their new home.

Representative Kawai was delighted to discover she had been assigned an embassy in the undercity, having spent the entire project living in the Imperial Palace's sauna and baths, and even happier when she learned the Empress had demanded she be made ambassador. Four servants who had been appointed as her personal staff during the project were allowed to join her, and two later married her.

The next group were the occupants of Old Aqua City and the five thousand Chiran families. The former's worries that the government in Alurna would not make good on their promises were finally laid to rest as military convoys delivered them from the old airfield to their new home. The final stage of the project, the demolition and redevelopment of the old airport, began before the last buses had even left.

The new citizens were amazed at the sight that greeted them. The dirty, narrow and dangerous old city had been replaced with shimmering towers of pristine masonry and beautiful parks and flower gardens already filled with songbirds and chirping moths. Now truly living up to its name, the city was filled with flowing water, from ornamental streams with fish and trilobites to the great waterfalls, some of them hundreds of feet high.

The Imperial family themselves had commissioned three thousand sculptures and statues**** for public spaces, and much to the surprise of the Old Aqua City residents, several of the old murals on abandoned buildings had been precisely replicated at approximately the same locations. Carnival Square, a cheerful place known for community-organised fairs and markets in the old city, was almost exactly restored at its original location, and the Delfi families who make it the lively place it was were housed nearby.

The Empress had granted official noble titles to the heads of family groups moving into particular buildings, and the first few days included a series of meetings in the central park so the new nobility could get to know one another. Among them were former gang leaders and higher-ups, granted full pardons by the Empress along with promises of jobs for their subordinates if they would assist in enforcing the law in the new city. Much as crime did not go away, particularly not smuggling through the new docklands, many were grateful for the end of open hostilities and petty turf wars.

Six months after the official inauguration of Aqua City as a district of the greater Alurna metropolitan area, a public holiday was declared, a day of festivities to celebrate the appointment of Aqua City's first official Representative at the Imperial Court. While Aludra's relationship with Chira had deteriorated greatly over the preceding year and trouble was brewing on the eastern border, for that one day all was right in the world. In the evening, as families who had come from across the world watched fireworks light up the sky alongside thousands of Mirrai looking up from the gleaming waters of Lake Harmony, they knew that they were home.

*While in Etrusea the identification of Hawkeaters as sentient required a long series of intelligence tests, in Aludra it was entirely due to a Hawkeater called Lady Roselle, who lived on the roof of the First Temple. One day she had entered the Temple during a service, walked the length of the building as the congregation silently watched, and bowed to the statue of Hira. Since "recognising the image of their creator" is one of the Aludran criteria for a species to immediately be considered sentient, all Hawkeaters in Aludra are treated as having rights comparable to any other sentient species, with qualifiers since they cannot work or pay taxes.
**The Ahan family have for centuries been among Aludra's most sought-after landscapers and were responsible for some of the most beautiful mansion grounds in Aludra. Farah had initially been very enthusiastic about participation in the project, but tended to be a little short with the representatives of Kais, Ruhm and Emera since she worried that they did not take her work seriously.
***The availability of Leviships meant that Aludra had little interest in Chiran ideas of containerised construction equipment. For example, even discounting crane Leviships that simply have winches mounted directly to them, a large Isra-Class transport Leviship can move a 3,200-ton capacity ring crane in two loads (or three without dismantling the main boom), while the Chiran equivalent splits down to 135 container loads. The gigantic Aludran railway loading gauge also means a lot of medium-sized construction vehicles are only barely dismantled for shipment.
****Per tradition, not a single one was of the Empress or any previous Empress, such statues only standing within the Halls of Counsel (usually called the Aludran Parliament in Etrusea) and the Imperial Palace. Putting them elsewhere has historically been regarded as Improper, immodest and unnecessary; the country and species already call themselves after the Alud.

Part 1 | Part 3

Mirrai Connection, continued

Attempting to employ the primary architects of Rasoon proved futile since all were settled with large families they did not wish to move, and were skeptical about their ability to survive the far drier climate in Aludra. In the end, the best candidates were two graduate students from the prestigious Seldivna Architectural College, Lei Uwari Aris and Hana Uwari Kiyna*, both of whom were among the many promising young architecture and city planning students who had participated in the Rasoon project and both of whom were curious about the world outside Mirrai.

Since Mirrai at the time did not have a single embassy on the Continent, negotiating their passports required a Representative of the Mirrai city-state of Seldivna be sent to Aludra. The Empress was unsurprised that the only Representative willing to attempt such a journey was young and inexperienced and did not regard it as an insult, and after much consultation, Representative Kawai Uwari Isenka made the journey in a climate-controlled container in the back of a military transport aircraft.

Initially, at her own request, she was greeted as any dignitary would be, but after a short time the young Mirrai was visibly uncomfortable and looking like she was ready to faint. Soon Empress Lana sat with her in the Imperial Palace's sauna as the much happier but still nervous Kawai stammered her way through a list of requests, and the Empress was surprised at the final one: that Aludra be host to the first colony of Mirrai to live outside their homeland. The young salamander looked down at her notes as she did her best to suggest it would enrich Aludran culture without implying there was anything wrong with how it was now, drooping her gills by the end as she was certain she was about to be ordered to leave.

Instead, the Empress accepted; such a unique population would be a way of showing that Aludra was not just for Alun as Etrusean propaganda tended to claim. Kawai remained in the Imperial Palace to act as liaison while the city-state governments of Mirrai set about selecting the agreed-upon eight thousand families. The process was complex and intended to present the best side of Mirrai culture, with the final selections including a rather disproportionate number of priestesses, teachers, scholars, scientists, musicians and artists.


Final Plans

Lei and Hana's first plan submission surprised every Aludran architect who studied it, a tiered city with up to five ground levels and vehicle traffic kept to sub-levels using ventilation and automated fire suppression systems based on those developed for use on Air Destroyers. The only aboveground roads were strictly reserved for the deployment of emergency service vehicles.

This would be less challenging than in some Continental countries since most Aludran citizens do not own a personal car. As well as incorporating a similar subway rail system to Alurna and the tramways beloved of Aludran city-planners, above-ground monorails were to be used for the first time; great efforts were made to design rails and trains which would not look out-of-place, with the final designs aesthetically similar to old steam locomotives. The subway trains would be the same type used in Alurna: electrically driven, but fitted with cosmetic steam engine connecting rods driven by the wheels rather than the other way around.

Like all Aludran city rail systems, the subway trains would use 4'11 gauge (considered the minimum acceptable for twin-deck passenger cars designed for Alcacians) rather than the gigantic 6'6 gauge used on Aludran standard railway lines**.

Over fifty percent of the plan's land area was to be parks and open spaces, with cascading vertical gardens and carefully engineered multi-level waterways creating beautiful waterfalls designed to flatter the forms of their surroundings. For the first time accessibility and comfort for Chiran species was considered too, with external climbing paths included for many buildings.

The latter reached the attention of the Chiran ambassador to Aludra and through her the Chiran government. This was at the height of a period of good relations between Aludra and Chira under Empress Lana, and it was hoped a cultural exchange between the two nations would foster greater understanding between their peoples. In the end it was agreed that Aqua City would become home to five thousand Chiran families, while the same number of Aludran families would be accommodated in Chira.

The two Mirrai had worked with a dozen Alun architects to keep quirks like the Mirrai love of swamps and mushroom-like forms in check, and the Central Planning Authority, Old Aqua City Representatives and Aqua City Provisional Civil Authority all felt the plan had potential when it was presented to them. In particular they were impressed by the use of what they learned was the standard system of waste disposal in Mirrai, using a system of pneumatic tubes connecting all homes and businesses to a central disposal facility rather than collections, since underground Mirrai cities cannot accommodate vehicles of any kind.

The fixtures of the new city were modern, but still styled to make it clear it was an extension of Alurna. Cosmetic wrought iron was used extensively, particularly for streetlamps. As in Alurna, the central district was to be lit by gas lamps since Aludrans consider such lighting romantic. Unlike Alurna, though, which is notoriously dark for species with poor night vision, the lamp spacing used the Etrusean all-species standard. The remaining lighting was to use the "electric gas" system developed eighteen years earlier, lamps designed specifically to replicate the appearance and ambience of real gas lighting.

While Lei and Hana assumed Mirrai's preferred solution of nuclear fission power would not be a problem, they were told on the presentation of their first plan that Aludra's uranium was all reserved for military purposes, while their molten fluoride thorium reactor program was not yet ready for large-scale civil use. The two were unhappy with the Aludran solution of using natural gas and coal power plants on the reactor sites, arguing it would make the city less pleasant, particularly for their people. Aludran city planning still retains some ideas from fortress-cities, including locating power plants within a close radius; modern planners hold that this localisation of the power grid prevents large-scale attacks on major power plants that would affect industrial output in multiple cities.

After many negotiations, the eventual solution was four smaller power stations, two coal and two gas with the latest filtering and rapid-quenching systems, supported with two solar power stations using Mirrai-designed high-output panels developed for the upper surface of Rasoon to decrease the load on the tower's reactors.

As it became clear the plan was practical, the Empress ordered the construction of two new bridges between Alurna and Aqua City, along with an ambitious plan to create a copy of the Galina Bridge alongside the original with both now featuring a retractable section of deck for the passage of what were cryptically termed "tall ships." This was actually the earliest sign of the plan that would eventually become the Grimalkin-class hybrid carriers.

Following surveys of interested noble families and a census of potential migrants to the new city, eighty-five major industrial plants were incorporated into the plan, mostly focused on servicing the new docklands.

Since Aqua City was modelled after Alurna, it would require the establishment of family businesses; Lana's mother, Empress Kiera, had already declared Etrusean-style shopping malls were Improper and her daughter shared the same opinion. The census of potential migrants was also for this purpose; those hoping to establish new businesses were questioned regarding their needs in terms of layout and floor space. Since even the Aludran military only used modular design grudgingly on the basis that it worked for their needs, it was determined that no two stores should be identical, and each was designed primarily with Aludran sensibilities in mind. Modest windows were used and full glass fronts forbidden since a Lady should choose if she wishes to view the interior of a building rather than having it waved at her uncouthly.

Larger businesses and entertainment venues, like industry, would mostly be the direct responsibility of nobility, though a few exceptions like burlesque houses were purpose-built based on existing structures: Park Avenue Burlesque, for example, is a near-replica of The Imperial in Alurna.

The school system, built around Aludra's ideal of five students to a teacher, would require a large number of new staff to be trained, including as many multilingual ones as possible. Accompanying the schools would be two new universities and twelve specialised colleges. Surveys were taken of staff in educational facilities throughout Aludra to find tutors and professors who were happy with moving, and substantial incentives were given for teaching programs.

As the Aludran education system heavily relies on offering voluntary education for early school-leavers, it would be essential to create dozens of museums and libraries, which would require the assembly of appropriate collections. The Alurna Board of Culture took responsibility for this, with its notoriously adorable junior representative Alicia sen Sievna tasked with negotiations. Creating military museums was a simple matter of asking nobles and the Central Historic Depot for equipment and building dioramas, but coming up with Proper collections for the other museums required delicate discussions. The curator of the Alurna Museum of Natural History, Genevieve di Alud, was particularly loath to part with any of its peerless collection of specimens and papers to start a new research department, to the point that the Aqua City Museum of Natural History was actually completed before a deal was reached.

Meanwhile, among the Old Aqua City residents, those who had worked as doctors and medics were offered training as hospital workers in the new one, joining with hundreds of new trainees who would be their colleagues.

The Mirrai habitation in Aqua City presented many challenges given the climate of Alurna, with the eventual solution being suggested by the Emera designers based on their recent experience in building concealed underwater submarine pens in the naval base at Halleck. The plan added a vast artificial cenote underneath the central park, with a hundred-foot opening in the middle of the main lake and the city's waterways altered to give the cavern six main waterfalls with sluices to control the flow and prevent flooding if the lower city's eight pump towers failed. In case of a failure of the sluices, the electrical supply to the lower city used a cutoff system based on the water level: Mirrai are incapable of drowning, so even the complete inundation of the lower city would not be a problem by itself.

A series of water-filled tunnels would allow Mirrai to exit the undercity in tree-shaded areas around the perimeter of the lake so that they could interact with citizens of the upper city; it was felt that it would defeat the entire point of the project if this was not possible. Since it was the main water source for the undercity, the entire lake already had to be clean enough for Mirrai to swim in it, making it technically the largest drinking water fountain in existence. Filter systems ensured the algae in the waters of the lower city did not end up in the lake.

One idea that appeared at this point was for a ring of mixed-use recreational facilities to surround the lake with access from the water tube system, so that Mirrai and other species could do things other than chat at the very edge of the lake. This led to a series of strange meetings for Lei and Hana as designers attempted to work out ways for Mirrai to participate in well-loved Aludran activities. Swimming was by far the easiest since the only requirement was use a disinfecting method that did not involve leaving chlorine in the water, but others, particularly allowing them to share in the inexplicable Aludran affinity for ten-pin bowling, took some lateral thinking.

Greater still was the challenge facing Aludran biologists and chemists, that of creating Mirrai nursery pools. Functional nursery pools were essential if the Mirrai population was to last more than a single generation, and nobody had ever tried to establish one anywhere outside of the Home Island.

This seemed an insurmountable problem with test pools recording values hugely outside the range of acceptable nutrient levels, but negotiators finally persuaded the government of Seldivna to send Mirrai egg tissue cultures to the labs working on the project for more direct testing. It turned out even the Mirrai themselves had never identified all of the factors involved in creating a functional nursery, since several like nutrient leeching from specific types of stone had been dealt with by the traditional methods of building a temple's nursery. This research finally explained why attempts at creating "high tech" Mirrai nurseries had always produced tiny eggs with tadpole-like hatchlings who remained aquatic and totally dependant for over a year***.

Further challenges included the introduction of familiar species of Mirrai plants and animals to the undercity without damaging the ecology of Alurna or vice versa. It was quickly established that there would be a colony of Etrusean Honey Bees and Eastern Colonial Fireflies in the undercity within about a year and that steps would have to be taken to ensure they did not destroy populations of imported species****. This was ultimately handled by deliberately introducing well-fed populations into the undercity along with Mirrai-native species and continuing to feed the colonies well until they came to like having the imported species around. Competition for nesting spots on the roof between Aludran and Mirrai moth species was handled with carefully designed rock facings with "reserved" nesting sites designed to be unappealing to Aludran species.

Botanical studies suggested a minimal likelihood of any well-loved Mirrai species becoming invasive with the exception of luminescent bracket mushrooms that are a common feature of Mirrai homes since they grow on stone and provide more than enough light for the species to see. It was thought unlikely that spores would be able to exit the undercity, but a few structures in the city ultimately ended up supporting fungal colonies on their lower stories, thought to have been carried on construction equipment or workers' clothing.

With input from the Old Aqua City Representatives who were eager to preserve the positive aspects of their home, the final design sketches and 3D models showed an organised yet endearingly lived-in city designed to comfortably accommodate a population of around 3 million. The vision of what came to be called "Alurna's long-lost sister" won over even some staunch opponents of the project, and was declared to be Proper by Empress Lana during the Coronation Day celebrations two weeks after the presentation. The final plans credited everyone involved in the planning process, the list running to over eighty thousand names with commoners listed before nobility and including the names of foreign companies which had assisted in the project. A carved copy of this list would later be added to one wall of the Alurna Museum of Civic History*****.

*The same middle name means both women were hatched in the Uwari temple in Seldivna; indeed, the two were a hatchling couple (two girls who swam in their nursery pool at the same time after hatching at nearly the same time), a very special bond for two Mirrai to have.
** The latter gauge was that of the first Aludran freight railway line, constructed for the new Ruhm boiler factory to ship enormous complete Leviship boiler vessels to the fabrication yards at Blackridge Works in the north. It was standardised during Shri dio Alud's reign due to its suitability for heavy freight, armoured trains and railroad guns. 4'11 gauge was used by very early passenger trains in Alurna which were little more than a novelty, and was the first candidate when the Alurna Underground Rail project was suggested.
***Biologists concluded that this is actually the natural state of a Mirrai hatchling, with the colonian egg creating an environment that allows safe accelerated growth from the "tadpole" state to what the Mirrai consider a healthy hatchling. A "normal" Mirrai hatchling should be able to leave the water for short spells after a few months.
****Both species are Hawkinsae, with wild Eastern Colonial Fireflies a voracious predator of non-Hawkins bees; just three 12-inch-long fireflies can destroy a hive of 50,000 bees in half an hour. The "dual colony" is the result of a defensive adaptation in Etrusean Honey Bees: their soldiers, which are enormous compared to the three-inch workers and almost identical to fireflies, court firefly scouts, which are sterile queens. Success means the scout will return to her nest's actual queen and tell her they are not in their own hive, leading to a display of bafflement followed by the entire firefly colony relocating to surround the bee colony. This leads to an extremely nervous four-inch queen bee having to share her chamber with an 18-inch queen firefly who is still not quite sure if this is supposed to be happening, a relationship which gradually goes from the bee trying to hide in her chamber's side-tunnels to sleeping under the firefly's wing. There are benefits for both species; the soldier bees will help their carnivorous firefly "sisters" to hunt much larger prey than they would normally be able to since fireflies bite while soldiers have a three-inch non-barbed stinger that can dispense enough venom in a single sting to kill a horse. Bee queens also retain dormant viral DNA which results in larvae with almost no brain development, which they use to lay "sacrificial combs" if the fireflies are struggling. Equally, fireflies have the ability to secrete sugars if the bee colony is struggling; important since bees in a dual hive have their hibernating reflex disrupted.
While worker bees are exceptionally stupid for Hawkinsae, their soldiers and queen are not, and keeping them is a matter of earning the trust of the hive, whereupon they will gently shoo workers off of combs when their keeper comes. It is most common for keepers to be bipedal bees, since they have UV body markings that the bees recognise. Conventional beekeeping techniques are practically useless, and displacing a dual colony forcibly is regarded as outright insanity.
*****A decade later following the revelation that missile attack on an Aludran container ship that led to the Fourth Battle of Kythen Ocean was actually carried out by a Doran submarine using a copied Chiran hypersonic cruise missile built at Straugn Works, the words "Straugn Dynamics" were scratched out with the sign of the Seventh Kythen ("Murderers"). It was never clear if a vandal or the museum itself did this, but the panel was repaired a few years later.

Part 2 | Part 3

Plan 311, the construction of New Aqua City in Aludra, remains the single most ambitious construction project ever undertaken.

Early History

The story of Plan 311 begins during the era of the Industrial Revolution on the Continent. While in Chira steel-framed buildings had already existed for about seventy years, on the Continent it was a Basran engineer, Grigori Doros, who first wrote on the idea of using a fireproofed iron frame and deep foundations to support a prodigiously tall building. His illustrator sister Erika assisted in his first presentation to the Duke and Dutchess, Towers of the Future, her paintings showing a vision of Tauberg dominated by great neoclassical towers "wherein the great magnitude of future citizens make their homes (and) business be conduct'd," estimating the future city's population at over ten times the number at the time.

The first true Continental skyscrapers were built at roughly the same time in Messirah in Garam (Crown Messirah, 372ft), Vermillion City in Etrusea (Johansson Building, 277ft) and Tauberg in Basram (Aldren Tower, 300ft), all three making various claims to be the first and claiming the others to be shorter and / or mismeasured*. Crown Messirah was perhaps the most ambitious of the three, benefitting greatly from the cooperation of the nearby al-Hassan integrated steel mill, the supervisor of which threw out the original plans for a riveted iron frame and instead insisted on attempting to use only arc-welded steel, a method that had never even been attempted before. This resulted in the plan being reworked from a rather unremarkable 150ft rectangle to the slender and graceful tower that still stands in Messirah today.

The Empress at the time, the legendary Fiol dio Alud, thought that such structures would ruin the carefully-managed unity of form of the buildings in Alurna. Knowing that simply forbidding tall buildings would make her country seem regressive, she had the Alurna Central Planning Authority draw up a draft proposal for a high-rise development that, she believed, would be impossible to actually construct**.

The plan required the simultaneous raising of no less than three hundred and eleven skyscrapers and all of their supporting industry and services, with no more than six months between the completion of the first tower and the last. The required number of residents of the new city would also have been impossible to achieve with the technology of the time, since averaged out it would require every single residential structure to be at least as tall as the Johansson Building.

311 is a holy number in Aludra, though precisely why has been lost to time: many folk etymologies exist, with one of the most enduring being that there were 311 steps from the door of the original Grand Temple to the altar.

A little over a generation later, everything had changed.

Operation Quadrant

The groundwork for Aludra's "industrial miracle" had been laid by Shri dio Alud throughout her reign with authorisations for many projects considered radical at the time, and was nurtured by her older and younger daughters, Fiol and Keira. By her granddaughter Lana dio Alud's time, Aludra was one of the most powerful nations on the Continent, with first-rate armed forces and an immense industrial base.

By this point, Old Aqua City on the west side of the Vamar river was a sprawling blight on the beautiful city beside it, primarily composed of run-down apartment complexes built to deal with the housing crisis during the industrial revolution and a series of long-abandoned brick industrial buildings and warehouses of little historical value. Several plans to redevelop Old Aqua City's abandoned docklands to take pressure off the increasingly congested container yards on the east side had been considered over the years, but nothing had come of them.

The area was officially abandoned, effectively a tiny state run by a surprisingly effective coalition of organised crime syndicates and community leaders, which had kept the city supplied with basic amenities from the government in Alurna. In recent years, the antiquated infrastructure had led to numerous utility failures including a major gas explosion and fire that is often credited as being the last straw for Old Aqua City: the narrow, dilapidated and confusing streets seriously delayed the deployment of fire trucks from Alurna and led to the destruction of the area's only functional hospital. The only positive was an increase in Old Aqua City's goodwill towards the Empress, who acted quickly to prevent deaths at the hospital by ordering the deployment of transport helicopters from carriers docked across the river.

Old Aqua City's unofficial representatives helped to draw up a draft plan to empty it; the Empress accepted a deal under which the population would be granted citizenship with no charges bought to those who had come to Aludra illegally, and all would be guaranteed homes and preferential selection for employment in the new city. Empress Lana even added a promise of noble titles for the community leaders to ensure they maintained their status and influence in the new city.

The evacuation, Operation Quadrant, began shortly afterwards. The Army moved some 53,000 civilians to housing set up on the runways of the never-completed Aqua City Airport, and set up a cordon around the site to ensure the buildings were not re-occupied prior to demolition. It soon became clear that the seven incredibly thorough sweeps of the city by the Army were less about checking for remaining citizens (all of whom were found in the first sweep) and more about using Old Aqua City as a massive urban combat training range while it was still standing. The final "sweeps" actually demolished a substantial part of Midtown with artillery, battleship and tank cannon fire following the clearance of all remaining personal effects from these buildings, as part of a program to evaluate the effects of gunfire on real buildings. In particular, the two Aludran battleships that took part in the operation, ANV Mirage and ANV Empress Kiera, singled out the Shaw Building, a notoriously hideous experiment in reinforced concrete, due to its bunker-like qualities.

Experience gathered during this exercise was incorporated into the Advanced Gun System project and the overall operation was instrumental in the development of the Broadsword IFV, Mantis heavy attack helicopter (the first helicopter to mount a hard-kill active defence system) and the Black Swan main battle tank. Testing included the bulky prototype of Lindstrom Optics' Smallarm Reflex Sight, which was prioritised for further research and adopted four years later, and the data gathered also led to the first iteration of the endlessly-delayed Aludran Future Soldier program.

New Aqua City

With ordnance clearing and the remaining demolitions in progress initial plans for modest stone housing, in line with the redevelopment of Alurna's faltering slaughterhouse district half a century earlier following the advent of refrigeration, were quickly displaced by the resurrection of a far grander plan.

Historically Aludra's two most powerful noble families short of the Alud themselves, the steelmakers of the Ruhm dynasty and the gargantuan construction consortium of House Emera, have never seen eye to eye, but the marriage of Dominque sen Emera and Sahar sen Ruhm led to a period of cooperation between the two. Plan 311 fascinated the head of House Emera at the time, Lady Estelle, who felt that it would ensure the prosperity of both her family and Aludra as a whole to see it to completion.

With several major Aludran cities experiencing problems housing their populations without extensive and destructive redevelopment, the proposition of building an entire new city won support from several other major noble families who felt it was an elegant solution to the issue. Drawing further support largely proceeded by the classic method of getting Alun to do things they do not want to, this being suggesting it is fine if they think it is too difficult.

The first step had already been done; the unique mindset of Alun had been studied centuries earlier to determine the best way to run a sailing ship, and the engineering of functional social groups had long been a key part of Aludran military training***. Architects were advised by naval designers from the Karim family, with the aim being for residential buildings to accommodate communities rather than disconnected groups of people. To Alun, a building accommodating a group of people who do not particularly know one another is almost as bizarre as it is for bipedal bees; all of the buildings designed for Aqua City reflect this, with the individual kitchens and washrooms very small and only intended for occasional use over the communal dining areas and baths. A group of residents in each building would be the staff of that building, with their accommodation paid for by the remainder: it was assumed the residents would be able to work this out among themselves.

Lady Estelle felt the original plan, which only consisted of skyscrapers and support buildings, would be unpleasant to actually live in. The new preliminary plan included a large number of smaller residential complexes and setbacks in the residential towers to give them communal areas on the lower floors. Among other things, this would mean entire buildings could be assigned to particularly large family units, replicating Aludra's much-loved and very Proper "Household" polyamorous family unit.

Attention was paid to Etrusean efforts to make towers suitable for Alcacians, but their method, using insertable modular floor trays to divide single-floor apartments in half, was felt to result in floorplans that were too generic. Instead, every apartment was designed with a 20-foot reception area and the rest of the rooms on two floors so other-species families could receive Alcacian friends in their homes, and a set number of dedicated Alcacian homes were built based on estimates of arrivals and population growth. There were far more than would immediately be needed, but this was accounted for as they were designed to be converted into indoor gardens or storage areas if they were not being used for habitation.

A long contest led to the selection of three hundred and eleven final designs for the core towers, which were then placed in a preliminary plan and reworked to relate to one another and the smaller buildings that would surround them. Most were in Aludra's favoured art deco and neoclassical styles, with some incorporating elements of Basran gothic forms, particularly those close to the new city's three main temples.

The crown jewel of the new Aqua City would be the Monarch Towers, two graceful 1,883-foot postmodernist spires joined by a high bridge. The design was something of an oddity since it was not of Aludran origin, rather being the work of Zahra al-Murad, a Garam-born gazelle, as her gift to her new nation.

While the preliminary details of what building would go where resulted in a skyline that the Empress found aesthetically Proper, she was concerned that the concept paintings looked more like a military base than a city. Further, she felt that no Aludran city-planner would be able to organise such a massive undertaking; her country preferred slow and sympathetic additions to cities, and Aludran planners were mostly chosen for their understanding of local history and Appropriate sense of composition, not for the ability to build an entire new city from scratch. Asking foreigners from the Continent would be seen as giving up, and so that too was unacceptable.

At a meeting of the noble families already sponsoring the project, Giselle sen Kais, the young scion of the family of ancient stoneworkers by that point responsible for almost all Aludran concrete manufacturing plants, stood up and made a suggestion that left the whole room silent in contemplation. "Wouldn't the Mirrai know how to do this?"

Mirrai Connection

Mirrai at the time was at the height of their industrial Renaissance, fuelled by the discovery of methods to prevent their species from suffering serious poisoning while working with chemicals which for the first time allowed the Mirrai workforce to directly assist in processes like refining and welding which they had previously relied on other species for. Mirrai society was well known for its great scholars and love of the sciences, and combining this with large-scale production rather than small workshops over the course of a hundred years had transformed them into a first-rate industrial power with major supply contracts to most nations on the Continent. Their imports of steel from Aludra meant the Ruhm family already had contacts they could speak with.

At the time, the pride of Mirrai was the completion of their first above-ground city, Rasoon. The was an immense achievement for the Mirrai, aquatic amphibians with the most difficult set of living requirements of any sentient species. Their eyes are very sensitive and direct sunlight is blinding to them, and they require near-100% humidity, a fairly narrow temperature range and regular immersion in water since even as adults they cannot regulate their body moisture; their hatchlings are for a time fully aquatic. In addition their semi-permeable colonian eggs require very specific symbiotic bacteria and nutrients to form correctly, and the bacteria in particular do not occur anywhere but Mirrai itself.

Because of this Mirrai civilisation had largely been restricted to multi-tiered underground cities built by expanding cave complexes, but Mirrai was running out of suitable locations for such cities, and from this emerged a bold plan to construct one on the surface, using a vast nuclear-powered pump tower to endlessly raise, filter and pour water onto the buildings below.

The Rasoon Fountain Canopy, half a mile high and two miles across, was the largest single structure ever constructed**** and even by the Fourth Battle of Kythen Ocean was only exceeded by other Fountain Canopies and the Chiran mobile shipyard Null, which did not officially exist*****. Moreover, Rasoon was at the time the only example of a successful project to build an entire city from scratch.

*In actuality, the largest building at the time was Century Tower in Chira, at 1,355ft with the tip of the spire 1,590ft.
**In spite of this, plans were filed to build a 210-foot experimental Leviship mooring tower in Alurna during this period, but scrapped when the eight thousand ton Etrusean Air Destroyer Bastion attempted to moor at Mercia Tower in Basram with a strong tailwind and pushed the tower over, killing five ground crew. From this it was determined that a wrought iron tower was simply not structurally strong enough for mooring a Leviship, and most such towers were either scrapped or used exclusively for rigid-frame airships only a tiny fraction of a Leviship's mass. Aludra never operated any dirigible airships since two successive Empresses (Fiol and her mother Shri) viewed them as impractical and dangerous, and so all plans for mooring towers were cancelled as they would be unsuited for use by any vessel in the military or civilian aerial fleet.
***Like their four-legged cat cousins, shouting orders at Alun simply ensures they will do anything other than what you're shouting.
****Garam initially disputed this due to a mistranslation of what was actually being claimed, since the al-Hassan integrated steel mill complex has a much larger footprint than the Rasoon Fountain Canopy but is not a single structure.
*****The name Null is inferred from the vessel's communications using a blank field for the sender ID, which is interpreted as <NULL> by decoding software. The most common name used by the Chiran fleet translates as "unknown hardware" since the warning "ALERT: UNKNOWN HARDWARE HAS CONNECTED" is logged any time a ship shares telemetry with it.

The most common Aludran religion is usually referred to as "Svezd" which comes from the Old Aludran "Svezdte" ("The Faith"). Svezd became so closely associated with the common religion in Aludra that it was retained in modern Aludran, with the modern word Mizanae ("(the) stance I take") becoming the general word for beliefs. Svezdi is the collective term for the faithful and Svaed the singular, though Etrusean uses "Svezdian."

Ancient History

Some aspects of Svezd probably date back to before the fall of the comet Nemesis eighteen thousand years ago, though this is impossible to determine since no written records from that period survive. What is known is that in its original form it was more heavily polytheistic than the modern form, which mostly venerates three Goddesses.

The Ancient Goddesses

The ancient pagan forms of Aludran religion have a loose central set of concepts with local beliefs and fables built on top of them. Many of the early stories do not survive or must be guessed at from their modern incarnations, but the central ideas are relatively well-documented in early carvings and temple relics.

No known record includes a story of the origin of the planet itself; it appears the ancient Alun believed there was a being responsible for this, however. Scholars semi-seriously theorise, based on the Aludran mindset, that they refused to believe any story of the planet's origin since a being with the power to create the world itself would have the Decency to tell them about it rather than letting them find out through someone else.

All of the goddesses of nature were the daughters of Kulas and Zul, and in turn their daughters were the creators of all mortal species, those daughters also being Goddesses of the traits the early Aludrans associated with those species. The Alun themselves were the daughters of Fiora, the trickster, and Alysa, the huntress.

Kulas

The Empress of the ancient pantheon and in many stories one of Locke's mothers, Kulas, goddess of the sun, was the strongest of all the Goddesses aside from the unidentified creator, so powerful that she could break through the darkness that It spread over the world to bring light to the mortal world. Kulas is usually shown as a middle-aged tigress with three eyes and a body of flames or gleaming bronze, often armed with a great axe or javelin.

Kulas is noteworthy among ancient pantheons in being a rare example of a sun deity who is not either evil or dead, a result of memories of the three days of night that followed the impact of Nemesis.

Zul

Zul, while simply the word for the planet or ground in modern Aludran, was formerly one of the two most powerful goddesses who came into existence when the universe was formed; with her first breath, she created every plant and tree upon the surface of the barren world. Zul is always depicted as a wise, stern old woman who guided her daughters in shaping her creation, and is a goddess of wisdom and learning. Her normal depiction is a figure made of earth, rocks and moss and combines feline and canine facial features, with four arms and two tails.

The two First Goddesses represent two of the central Aludran ideals of motherhood, the protector and the teacher.

Perkunas

One of the mightiest among the goddesses of nature is the goddess of the sky, mountains and thunder; she is often also associated with war. Perkunas is a figure who appears in both Aludran and Basram religion; the figure is male in Basram and female in Aludra, though it is not clear which came first. In Aludran lore, she is credited with setting the world in motion, doing so with a single blow from her great staff, and it is said that she makes the earth tremble with her voice.

In Aludra she is almost always depicted as a wild-haired lioness, while Basram depictions show the God as a giant wolf.

Locke

The story of Locke, the Goddess of stone, mesas and masonry, is found in both Garamese and Aludran lore; in various depictions she appears as either a muscular feline or an immense bear with two heads and arms made from bronze. Locke is said to be the abandoned offspring of a union between two Goddesses (which two varies greatly) who was cast down to the mortal world and made her home atop a vast pillar of rock in what is now Northern Aludra, where she has dwelled since the dawn of time.

This pillar, today still called Locke's Tower, is a truly bizarre structure, a mesa made of rock that does not match its surroundings and with the geological layers reversed, that was once surrounded by a sea of broken stones*. These stones were a valuable source of raw materials for early societies in the area.

Legends surrounding her depict Locke as a kind-hearted and lonely creature who would bring mortals to the top of her tower to be companions or lovers, and granted them her knowledge of shaping stone when she returned them to the world below. Over the years, she was re-imagined as a general goddess of craftswomen and often pictured working at a forge.

In ancient times, it was considered a sacrilege punishable by death to attempt to climb the mountain. While like the other minor goddesses Locke is no longer regarded as a being who exists in the physical world, the modern Aludran government still regards it as a sacred place, though largely just because it has always been one.

Malika

The Goddess of non-sentient land animals is Malika, a figure usually depicted as a small child and often as a rabbit or mouse; the animals are her attempt to copy the work of her older siblings, with varying results. Aggressive and dangerous animals are her earliest attempts, with friendly ones coming later as she grew better at her work, finally creating useful ones such as cattle and horses to help mortals. She is not the creator of any animal regarded as an aspect of It's influence, such as fleas and ticks, nor any sea creatures.

She is by far the most benevolent of Goddesses, regarding even mortals as her older siblings and only angered by those who would mistreat her creations for no good reason. In the modern era she is the patron of herders and veterinarians and is prayed to by small children with sick pets.

Rei

The Fair Lady, beloved goddess of death, is the central figure of Etrusea's Suunist faith, and also appears in the Aludran pantheon. Her Aludran form incorporates most traits of the pagan night goddess Vyndra, but she retains the appearance of the Etrusean deity; an eerily beautiful black deer with graceful antlers and silver face markings tracing the shape of her skull, always shown in a complex, elegant dress with a sword at her side. On her shoulder sits a white bird, the moon, and as she lifts each foot she leaves snowbells in the shape of her footprints.

The Fair Lady is not worshipped as a bringer of wisdom as she is in Etrusea, merely being a companion to the living who can be prayed to for protection.

Alysa

Alysa is the supreme hunter and one of the two mother-goddesses of all Alun. A fourteen-foot giant as strong as any ten beasts and as fast as the wind, she is a goddess of patience, diligence and duty, and a patron of hunters, soldiers and those who enforce the law.

Alysa taught her daughters to survive in adversity and all the arts of hunting, gifting to them patience, keen senses and great speed.

In early depictions Alysa was usually shown as a lioness or tigress, but over the years it was felt this implied Alun were less closely related to their Goddess than the big cat species and in all modern depictions she is a powerfully built Bengal Cat**. In her older depictions, she wore a traditional hunter's garb with furs, while modern depictions usually show her in a military uniform.

Fiora

Fiora is the trickster goddess and the other mother-goddess of the Alun, and is patron to all those who use trickery or live by chance, from tacticians to gamblers and assassins; she is often also thought of as having a liking for chivalrous criminals.

She is said to have taught her children playfulness, trickery and cunning and to have gifted to them knowledge of telling fortunes and the first butterfly knife, a weapon inseparably associated with Alun.

Despite Alysa and Fiora's completely opposed natures and the fact that Fiora is incapable of being faithful, they are seen as a loving couple, fitting the idea of opposites in a relationship complimenting rather than detracting from one another. Fiora's playfulness tempers Alysa's single-mindedness, for example, while Alysa's stern and honest nature tempers Fiora's gift of flattery. Fiora's inability to give a straight answer is consistent throughout her depictions; the best she can do is answer a question with another question***.

While older myths sometimes show her with a cruel sense of humour, over the centuries this has largely disappeared, with modern depictions emphasising that she is a gentle soul and would not do anything hurtful or harmful.

Fiora is always shown as an elegant black Thai cat wearing a more elaborate version of the traditional outfit of a travelling fortune-teller, a dress made from diamond-shaped pieces of material.

There is a tradition for Aludran parents to give their children gifts said to be from Fiora for the winter solstice, thought to reflect ancient thanksgiving rituals to the goddess Kulas for ending the three days of night. When children are old enough to realise the gifts are actually from their parents, they are told that of course they're not actually from Fiora.

That wouldn't be a trick.

It

This accursed and nameless being is the author of all evil and suffering in the world, and a principle figure in both ancient and modern forms of Svezd. It appears to have originated in oral traditions regarding the fall of Nemesis, with the story later being reworked to incorporate the Imperial family.

It has no form, no name, and is never shown as anything but a stylised Old Aludran glyph or a black rectangle. It is the fifteenth of the Major Arcana of the Aludran Tarot deck, a completely black card that lacks any text or a number. Fortune-tellers often throw the card away as soon as they get a new deck, and in card games it is a "reverse trump" which has a value one lower than the lowest card on the table; if a low ace is present, playing It is a losing hand regardless of what other cards the player has.

The Great Contest

In the original telling, Fiora and Alysa were not yet a couple and the trickster challenged the hunt goddess to a contest; if she could defeat Alysa in a hunting contest, she would win Alysa's hand. It, which also desired Alysa for whatever reason, declared that It could defeat both. In more modern tellings the two are already a couple (having already created the Alun, the original tale being disconnected from the creation stories) and the bet is that if It can defeat both It will have Alysa's hand.

Regardless of the telling, the remainder is the same; mighty Alysa goes first and proves her skills, but with her trickery Fiora manages to take one more animal. It then takes It's turn, but It does not hunt: instead, It inflicts a cruel curse on all living things, that they would weaken and suffer with age and ultimately die, and declared Itself the victor.

Incensed at this cruelty, Alysa hurled her spear into It, and the body fell to the mortal world, spreading darkness and the chill of winter across the world as It disintegrated.

The evil aura left in the world prevents the Goddesses from undoing the curse upon the living; the only Goddess who can still walk upon the cursed world is Rei, since as a night goddess, darkness has no power over her. In earlier versions, other Goddesses like Locke remained in places It's influence could not reach such as mountains and deep caves, but this is not part of the modern story.

Rei's incorporation into the later tale also changes what angered Alysa; in the original tale it was simply the evil of the deed itself, while the later version adds that Alysa was incensed at It trying to get kind-hearted Rei to do It's dirty work, knowing the merciful night goddess would not allow mortals to suffer forever.

In modern tellings, seeing the suffering of the Alun, Alysa bore Fiora's child to lead them, and this was Circe dio Alud, the first Empress. Thus, while all Alun are the creations of their Goddesses, the Imperial family are their actual descendants.

Circe dio Alud, prophet and First Empress

Circe dio Alud is a figure so heavily steeped in mythology that it is difficult to determine where facts about her end and legend begins, particularly since her story was passed down via oral tradition for centuries before ever being written down. Modern historians agree there almost certainly was a historical Circe and that the person interred in the Alud family crypt is almost certainly her, though to what extent her life mirrored the legends is the subject of much debate.

Aludran historians tend to subscribe to the "twin nations" theory that complex settled Alun civilisations had existed for a significant period in both modern Aludra and Khasan, a location in the North of what is now the Namir Desert, and that many of their religious ideas date back to these civilisations. The nation in the desert was destroyed by the Nemesis impact with survivors fleeing along their old trade routes, while the ancient cities of Aludra collapsed into ruin in the chaos that followed, with most of their knowledge being lost in the process. While this view is supported to an extent by archaeological finds and the diversity of skintones in the modern Aludran population, it is often felt to be a little far-fetched by historians in other nations.

The alternative theory is that the civilisation of Khasan did exist but Aludra was at the time a series of small temple-cities which were profitable for spice traders; this is felt to be more in line with the relative lack of Aludran archaeological discoveries, though Aludran historians explain this as most of the old ruins being salvaged by early city-planners. Both sides agree that Alysa and Fiora were probably based on existing goddesses of Khasan.

Regardless, Circe dio Alud was the leader of a nomadic clan of hunters that formed in the aftermath of the impact. Seeking guidance, Circe journeyed alone to, according to legend, the site of the modern Imperial Palace, and there was granted a vision from the Goddesses. Among her revelations was that since prey were finite, the Alud must become the guardians of their lands and forests to ensure the prosperity of their kind, and to that effect they must settle in this land.

As a proof of her meeting with the Goddesses, Circe returned from her journey holding a massive spear-like artifact, the "Queen Lance," claiming it was the spear that slew It, which Alysa had guided her to. It is generally believed this artifact was a Kraken flipper bone she discovered on the shore since its description is similar to "Tauberg's Spear," the Basram royal family's badge of authority. The Queen Lance disappears from Aludran records around three thousand years ago and its current location is unknown; it is thought to have been destroyed when the old Imperial Palace collapsed during the Seri Cataclysm, one of the worst city fires in history.

The Order of Fiora

The Order is a shadowy organisation that is often regarded as the world's oldest secret service, being perhaps as old as Aludra itself. Even the name of the group is unclear; representatives wear robes and expressionless gold masks when they wish to be known, and try to say they are working on behalf of "Fiora," defaulting to "The Order" or "The Organisation" if the former makes no grammatical sense.

From what little can be gleaned, the group believe themselves to be guardians of the Alud, descended from a daughter carried by Fiora just as the Alud are descended from a daughter carried by Alysa. It is not known how the group recruits, where it meets or how it is funded, and its representatives answer to nobody but the Empress herself.

Despite its bizarre methods, The Order is one of the most effective intelligence organisations in the world, which is probably why the Imperial family has done nothing to prevent it from operating.

The Central Church

As the city-state of Aludra became stronger, it became a spiritual as well as an economic centre. With the construction of the central temples of Alurna around four thousand years ago there was for the first time a powerful central authority of High Priestesses who started work on coming up with a central set of teachings.

Scholars gradually collated the scattered teachings of the pagan temples into a series of tomes, the Kyhadib. This was a delicate process involving much negotiation to access writings held by the scattered temples, with their priestesses initially very suspicious of the project's goals, and the Kyhadib is the result of over a thousand years of careful negotiations, incentives, and in some cases when all else failed outright theft. The precise origins of the book's name are unclear, most likely having their roots in Ancient Khasan rather than proto-Aludran.

Historians agree that the increasing power and authority of the central church in Alurna was as much a factor in the Aludran Unification War as the issue of slavery, which is more normally pointed to as the cause. The enemies of the Alud felt that the church's preaching of the Empress as the direct descendant of the Goddesses undermined their own authority, and that removing her from power would prove she was just an ordinary mortal. The war that followed would lead to Empress Keri dio Alud's victory, ending the Aludran Dark Ages and the era of city-states with the Acts of Unification.

Hira and the Modern Synthesis

From the Alcacian mercenary commander Skadi Skuldsdottir the Princess Imperial Lenka dio Alud learned of the Alcacian supreme being Hri and felt inspired to question the High Priestesses on the possibility that such a being might be responsible for the creation of the world, as the Aludran faith never assigned an identity to the creator. From this came her Aludran form, Hira. While Hri is a transcendent being that is to a god as a god is to a mortal and has never been depicted with any image but her name, the Aludran church imagined her as appearing to each mortal as their own species, since they would be unable to survive seeing her true form. Rather than being unfathomable and entirely disinterested in the mortal world, she is a figure based on the ideal of the Empress; a merciful and kind figure who cares about all of those in her domain, even if she cannot care for each one individually. It is not futile to pray to Hira, though it is thought to be unlikely to get her attention.

The Kyhadib underwent its final series of revisions under Lenka's reign as Empress, vastly increasing the powers of the central church. Most of the Aludran minor goddesses were relegated to being regarded as pagan myths or minor guardian spirits, with their temples, which had struggled to maintain themselves on contributions from small groups of worshippers, being absorbed into the central church largely without incident. She was well aware of the civil wars that had rocked Basram during their attempts at church reform, and decreed that her reforms would not damage a single temple or shrine****.

Lenka personally led the rededication of the First Temple in Alurna to Hira, making it clear that its old functions as a temple to Alysa would not be threatened by this and accepting questions from her subjects for three hours following the final prayers.

The old Svezdi creator-figures of other species were reduced to the things they embodied, since Lenka thought it presumptuous to try to explain the origins of others rather than letting them do so themselves. Instead, the Aludran faith regards their own religions as being true insofar as they are compatible with it. For example, to Aludrans the nine Chiran Goddesses actually are the creators of the Chiran people and their ideas about the Soul Gates are true for them, while their creation story is the story of how their land was created after Hira had finished her work.

This also meant that it was no longer regarded as Improper for other species to make requests of Alysa or Fiora; in the modern system they are more likely to listen to Alun, but any species requiring their guidance can speak with them. The New Code also applied changes to the goddesses that had been accepted over the years; Fiora becoming less prone to cruelty and Alysa's depiction being cemented as a Bengal cat rather than a lioness.

The old practice of giving burned offerings to the Goddesses had become more or less an anachronism over the centuries, and Lenka's reforms made official the common practice of lighting candles as a substitute. This is performed at a shrine or church, never in one's home. Chiran-born believers in Svezd will often leave traditional prayer slips along with their candle, which is an accepted variation of the ritual.

Due to the Imperial family's unbroken claim of Divine Right, the modern Church is regarded as entirely subordinate to it, and Lenka codified their duties, including signing into law their traditional duty of looking after orphaned children.

Ideals

Central to the Aludran mindset is the idea that Alun embody a quality they refer to as being Proper, that being the trait which makes an Alun a Lady; this is not a goal they must strive for, but an innate part of their being. Being Proper is characterised to other species as an incredibly complex set of contradictory rules, but many commenters have over the years observed that it can be summarised as "only Alun know how to do it."

Their role is to act as a positive example for other species and to never consider them as lesser for being Improper, to shun cruelty and excess and to be modest, kind, patient and generous, as is their Nature. It is sometimes described as a sort of "soft smugness" in which their beliefs in what they already are must be borne out by their behaviour, effectively being the principle of noblesse oblige scaled up to encompass an entire species.

Svezd regards the existence of suffering and injustice as the lingering aura of evil spread through the world by the death of It. This aura of corruption will someday fade and allow for a new age when people share the world with their creators; until that time, the Goddesses only have a limited ability to affect the lives of mortals.

The primary goal for Alun is to lead a righteous life that emphasises their Properness; if they do so, after death they will dream peaceful dreams until It's influence has faded from the world. There are different sects with different interpretations of what happens if they do not, all based around reincarnation: all agree that the merely unrighteous will receive a new life, though some have it that the truly evil simply cease to exist when they die, or endure a period of terrible nightmares before they are reborn.

Scripture

There are several major tomes to the Kyhadib, with the most important the Book of Sagas, documenting a slightly fanciful version of early Aludran history, and the Book of Wisdom, which consists of the teachings of various prophets and scholars that form the core of Svezd. The Book of The Law is an ancient description of the Kythen system and is still the basis of the Aludran legal system, though many crimes once in the Eighth Kythen (fraud) are now regarded as less severe than in the original system. A number of other tomes like the Book of Visions and Book of Sayings are not part of the actual Kyhadib compilation but regarded as complimentary to it.

There are numerous rituals associated with actually reading the Kyhadib; one's hands should be clean while handling it, and the book is normally wrapped in a cloth which is folded in a specific way and unfolded to rest it on. Tradition is to keep it on a small table on which is nothing else save for a lantern (the Kulad) which is lit while reading, symbolic of the wisdom of the Goddesses undoing It's influence. Any companion tomes to the Kyhadib are kept on the same table.

The final book is the Book of the Promise, also called the History of the First and Final Day. This documents the day when It's influence finally leaves the world and it is remade as a place without death, injustice, pain or sorrow and the righteous dead are returned to life to dwell with their creators. The book is particularly known for its final passages and the presence of four blank pages followed by a statement that directly addresses the reader.

"Those who have lived not a single Good life in the time Before will on that day perish utterly in the final death, and shall vanish from the world forever, and their names be forgotten."
"But of those who remain, all sins will be forgiven."

(...)

"Even yours."

---

*The most accepted theory for the origin of Locke's Tower, in particular based on the composition of the rock, is that it is a city-sized chunk of debris that was ejected from the Chiran crater during whatever event created it some 40 million years ago, and landed upside-down in Aludra, shearing off most of its exterior in the process. It is entirely unclear to modern scholars what process would be capable of doing this.
**While these places do not exist in this world, it would be a little stupid to make up a name for a real-life cat breed if I just have to explain what it means down here anyway.
*** One commonly quoted example of this is a story where Fiora has charmed the daughters of the goddesses of truth, purity and peace, and all three wish for her to tell the truth to prove that she loves them. She replied, "Daughter of truth, would you lie for me? Daughter of purity, would you sin for me? Daughter of peace, would you kill for me?"
****This was a stark contrast to the church-burnings and destruction of icons that had occurred under Basram's leader at the time of the attempted reforms, Baroness Helena Elias (often recalled with the epithet "the Barbarian") and ultimately led to her assassination by Duke Martis and the change from Grand Barony to Grand Duchy. This continued Basram's curious tradition of having a lower-ranked noble as ruler; Alun often wonder if Basran leaders just don't know they can declare themselves kings or queens if they want to.

Background

The Battle of Sarren Valley was a long time in the making, with skirmishes and negotiations gradually pushing the border back to the mineral-rich valley over the course of two decades. Historically, Sarren was part of Etrusea, and though it had been in Aludran hands since the Reformation War, almost fifty percent of its four million inhabitants still bore joint or full Etrusean citizenship.

The region also contained hundreds of manufacturing plants, two hundred and fifty coalmines including two of Aludra's largest, and eighty iron ore mines. Several acts of sabotage in the two main coalmines, Zollyn and Karzen, over the preceding year had led to increased security measures, with Etrusean nationals singled out particularly.

With tensions high, war was actually triggered by a convoluted plan hatched by Etrusean intelligence. Aludran security forces had been alerted that something was planned, meaning when a young activist, Mika Jannes*, tried to scale the fence at Karzen Coal Pit, she was shot and reported killed, though she was actually in a coma after falling fifty feet into the pit.

While this was not the plan (she was supposed to have been arrested), Etrusea ran with what they had, arguing that this was proof that Aludra was misgoverning the Sarren region and that an intercession to protect their citizens was justified.

Operation Blackjack

The Etrusean plan involved a rapid deployment of light armour supported by extensive heavy bombing by the Army Air Force, which was felt to be more than enough to deal with the light mechanised division stationed on the border and seize the regional capital, Geran. This was to be supported by the 250-foot fast aerial corvette Falchion, with the mission given the code "Operation Blackjack."

In the event, Aludra used the partially-completed Transport Air Destroyer Valiant to transport sixty tanks and heavy IFVs of the 31st Armoured Division to bolster the force at the border. Horribly outmatched, the Etrusean taskforce was forced to retreat before the bombers had even left their bases, with minimal support from Falchion and a handful of Fencer ground-attack aircraft.

Since Valiant was still top-secret and it was worried the skeletal frame of the Leviship might reveal her as a submersible designed for a future attack on Omar, she left as soon as the tanks were on the ground, leaving them to make their own way to their bases. Since two Fencer ground-attack aircraft with cluster bombs were not accounted for and there were fears of the tank column being attacked in civilian traffic, the 31st's commanding officer, Major Ingrid sen Sola, ordered her tanks to split up, each moving with a single IFV, and return to their families. Ingrid's opinion was that it would not be respectful to the laws of proportionality for the Etrusean aircraft to attack two armoured vehicles rather than sixty. It would later turn out this action was unnecessary since one Fencer had crashed in a farmer's field while the other, severely damaged, had landed at a small civilian airfield in Aludra, but it proved an excellent propaganda exercise. Tank transporters were later sent out to retrieve the vehicles.

Aftermath and Operation Anvil

Etrusea relinquished all claims over Sarren Valley and grudgingly offered a full formal apology for their allegations against the Aludran government. Mika Jannes later fully recovered; her handler had told her that her actions would enable negotiations to help Etrusean citizens like her beloved wife, whose papers she was supposed to present to show she was an Etrusean national rather than Aludran. While she was to be charged with treason, the Empress instead granted her a full pardon.

Ultimately she indirectly achieved her goal; in the days following the battle there were fears of an even greater clampdown and reports of weapons being smuggled to Etrusean citizens. Instead, with the ability to blame all previous tensions as agitation by the Etrusean government, the Empress ordered a large-scale reduction in security measures in Sarren; while there was a brief upsurge in sabotage incidents, these quickly dropped off as the heavy security presence was replaced with locally-recruited sheriffs, many of them Etrusean. Relations today are calm.

The Spring Offensive of the following year, Operation Anvil, was a thunderbolt from a clear sky, a massive Aludran armoured force supported by the S-Class aerial battleships Scorn and Spite pushing the Aludran border over a hundred miles East. For a time it was feared to be a full-scale invasion with the goal of seizing Vermillion City itself and the use of nuclear weapons was seriously discussed by the Etrusean government. However, it was soon realised the entire Northern flank of the Aludran force was a feint and the true goal was taking the Keska Lowlands to create a buffer zone around the Sarren region.

The incredible initial success of Operation Anvil led to a large commitment of Chiran forces to the critical Enola Valley region, and the skirmishes that followed were inconclusive. Aludra returned to the negotiating table and restored much of the territory in the North to Etrusea (including, to the surprise of many, the large munitions plants at Iron Point, which they returned totally undamaged) in exchange for retaining the Keska buffer zone.

Note: "Army" and "Navy" Leviships

There is a vague delineation between Leviships designed to primarily to operate over land and those designed to operate over water, though both are operated by the respective country's Air Navy. The first "true" land-attack Air Destroyer was Perkunas during the Aludran Reformation War, though large dedicated bomber Air Destroyers were never particularly popular.

A small aerial corvette like the Etrusean Falchion is constructed like a large, multi-turreted tank with many systems adapted or taken directly from land armour; in particular almost always mounting explosive reactive armour. The most common mission of such a vessel is low-altitude engagement of air defences designed to attack conventional aircraft; in effect, it is a giant attack helicopter. Such relatively small Leviships are usually vulnerable to high-velocity IFV and tank cannons; Falchion, for example, retreated after serious damage from 40 and 50mm cannon fire from Broadsword IFVs and Black Swan tanks.

A Navy Air Destroyer like AANV** Scorn, on the other hand, is built in a manner far more closely resembling a warship, with the primary protection a combination of heavy composite armour and a multi-layered hard-kill anti-missile system.

There are only a handful of land vehicles capable of dealing any meaningful damage to a capital-scale Leviship like Scorn, mostly outsized self-propelled guns like the 370-ton Aludran Tarantula, and ground forces dread encountering one.

*While this surname would normally be rendered Jannez in Aludran, she always preferred how her wife wrote it.
**Aludran Air Naval Vessel

The meeting of the Chirans and Karwen occurred under odd circumstances, just after the conclusion of the Aludran Reformation War. It was triggered by a Chiran patrol submarine spotting a pair of unknown Aludran Leviships engaging in an operation the crew could not identify, in the shallow waters off the Layahat Islands in the Strait of Huron. It was felt by the Chirans that the Aludrans might try to chase off a smaller warship with the two battleships loitering around the site, and so the 810-foot Type 03 battlecruiser Lian was deployed to survey the site and report on construction.

The prolonged patrol by the Lian revealed the nature of the Aludran operation, the first attempt to create an offshore drilling platform. The ambitious plan by the influential Emera family was to supplement Aludra's domestic supplies of oil and natural gas, using an anchored Leviship since at the time the Aludrans did not have the technology to construct a fixed platform. With Chiran command satisfied that the Aludran operation posed no threat to their own vessels, the Lian, running rather low on supplies, was ordered to return, stopping off at one of the islands to replenish water since it was known to be safe to do so. The captain chose the nearest island, Karwen-Mihan, which Etrusean maps indicated had a long, sandy beach to the North which dove into deep water almost immediately; it had already been studied for use as a harbour before the Chirans had agreed not to construct port facilities on the Karwen Islands in the Seventh Treaty of Lyle.

On that same day, a little Karwen ottergirl named Su* had come to her special place hoping that there would be foreign ships in the sea; she was fond of making models, hoping the practice would help her with her dream of becoming a woodcarver. A skilled carver is a respected and vital part of a Karwen village, making useful items like furniture and fishing equipment and even more importantly religious icons for ceremonies. Su didn't want to just end up making fishing nets like her older sister Li, much as she seemed happy with it.

Su loved exploring and was allowed to if she finished her daily chores and was careful, and two years earlier had found a derelict hut half-swallowed by the jungle, up on a hill overlooking the shimmering waters of the Strait. It was her special place to sit and think, and where she decided on her future after finding a small metal knife under a pile of broken pottery. It was a sunny day when she first saw a foreign ship in Huron, and she was fascinated by it, scampering to find a piece of wood and getting to work on approximating the shape before it vanished over the horizon.

By the time of the Chiran landing, she had several dozen model ships; when nothing came by, she would sit and imagine the adventures they had, try to work out what exactly they were for, or figure out what sort of people owned them.

On that day, she was amazed when a ship not only appeared but approached the island, dropping anchor in a bay a short distance from her. Though going too close to the north side of the island during the day was strictly forbidden, Su knew she would never have another chance to see one of the ships up close, and her fascination defeated her apprehension. Approaching it led to her realising just how big it was, and she settled on working up one end and then trying to circle around to the other without being seen.

As was normal for Chiran ships, Lian carried a contingent of crew trained as Guards, a tradition going back to the times when a port's Guards would embark on vessels carrying important shipments to protect them from pirates. Two such guards, Weiling Chen, a red panda from a farming family in the Western province, and Mei Zheng, a graceful and well-spoken lemur from a minor Southeastern noble family, were among the group sent ashore to scout out the beach, in part to see if it was safe to let the ship's Spotted Silk Moth Jia out for a flutter. They were sent ashore fully armed largely for the sake of proper caution only: as far as they were aware there was no sentient life on the Karwen Islands. That was at least until Chen picked up an unfamiliar scent in the tall grass nearby, gesturing for Zheng to come with her and move quietly.

Su did not hear the approaching sounds since she was focused on getting the shape of the ship's bow exactly right; all of her other models would need some work too, and she was running through what to do to each one as she worked, to get them looking as good as this one would.

She was shocked when the two soldiers were suddenly standing over her, but did not run; the priestess of her village had always told her that everything happened for a good reason, so she must have been there to meet whoever the strangers were. She could recognise from how they carried themselves that they were hunters**, but strange as they were, that they were still just people. The best she could think of was speaking to them.

Her name was initially reported as Mai, which is actually an extremely polite way of saying "hello" in Karwen usually reserved for important members of a village's council. Su did not try to stop them calling her that because it made them less frightening if they were being silly. Once she got over her initial nerves, she took them to see her models; though she did not understand a single word they said, she was happy to have people she could actually show them to, and who seemed interested.

While she did her best to not lead them back to her village since she knew it would cause trouble, they eventually persuaded her and were greeted by a more than slightly shocked village council. The Karwen certainly knew there were other people in the world besides them, but the two foreigners with their strange, complicated, identical clothes, enormous tails and oddly-patterned fur were unlike anything they'd ever seen or heard of.

After a time, Chen set out to report in, feeling the well-educated Zheng was more suitable for dealing with a situation like this; at the council's insistence, a group of hunters with spears accompanied her. The Karwen with her walked tall and proud, unsure of precisely what they were supposed to be doing in relation to the stranger but all wishing to show they were no lesser than her. They fell silent when they saw the Lian.

Zheng, on the other hand, was doing her best to speak with the puzzled members of the council, tracing shapes in the sandy ground in front of her as she spoke of her home and what they were doing there. It would be far longer before Chirans and Karwen could speak coherently to one another, but by the time she was done they were certain that if this woman had been sent to do them harm, they would at least suffer the most cheerful doom in history.

To her surprise Su wasn't punished, the council meeting openly since Zheng and the larger group of Guards and navy officers who had arrived didn't understand them anyway. Su sat to one side as the council debated, sending out runners to other villages; by the evening, the Grand Council of the island had assembled itself while the Chirans set up tents and a radio set just outside the village so as not to seem threatening.

Most villages were there in their entirety, children included, and so Su sat and worked on the stern of her model as best she could remember it while they talked. They debated long into the night whether the strangers should be asked to leave immediately or welcomed and perhaps persuaded that the Lahayat were bad people so they would scare them away from the Kawen's fishing grounds once and for all.

The six wisest elders sat silent as the others spoke, as tradition dictated, until finally one raised her staff for silence, her slow, creaking voice intoning that this was a good omen and the goddesses had smiled on them. Her granddaughter was sent to the Chiran tents to bring them over, and that night they shared a meal under the stars.

*The Karwen naming tradition is complicated: children are given a short name, often just one syllable, followed by their birth-mother's first name. Over their life they will add portions of the words for their trade, their position in the village, and if they marry the original names of all the wives they have sworn a marriage oath to as their middle name. Surnames are the names of their family lines (much like the "name of the blood" used by the Garamese clans), and are only ever used when making representations to village leaders, since it is extremely rare for anyone in a Karwen village to not be known to everyone else to the point such a name is unnecessary for daily use.
**In Karwen society hunters are also soldiers; they were mostly required to defend from incursions from their sworn enemies the Lahayat, another group of otters from the islands to the northeast.

If you haven't already, first read Some history of the world: the Aludran Reformation War.

Background

The settlement of Janek is one of the oldest in what today is known as the Lin Territory of Aludra. Janek was once a major port in the shadow of the Chiran Shield Wall, in the middle of a lake that was virtually an inland sea, fed by the Vamar river. Following a series of massive earthquakes six hundred and fifty years ago that originated in volcanic activity in the Shield Wall, the old city of Janek mostly collapsed and the Vamar River was permanently redirected, turning Alurna into the main port city on the river and leaving Janek a landlocked city on raised rock surrounded by marshland. This was drained using a system of levees and turned into rich farmland, while a new city of Janek rose from the wreckage of the old.

The city on the lake and the city that rose from the marshes shared a claim to fame, that the great fortress of Janek was invincible. Though ships had assaulted the port and armies the great wall many times, in all of history none had ever set foot within Janek's walls, and it was said the citadel itself was impenetrable.

Janek's relative isolation from other cities in the Lin Territory meant that while it lent a large number of troops to the revolutionary forces, its governess had little role in the formation of the state of Linthe. Janek was passed over as the seat of the Linthan government in favour of the smaller but more central city of Gollande.

With the loss of Gollande on the first day of the war, effective control of Linthe had fallen to General Isadora Rhiel, an experienced military officer but a poor negotiator.

By the time of the battle, Janek was one of the most extensively protected fortresses on the Continent and by far the strongest of Linthe's fortified cities, boasting a double reinforced concrete outer wall with two more natural stone walls protecting a citadel lined with battleship armour. Janek City had long grown beyond the fortress wall, with the inner city consisting of expensive housing, administrative areas, and major civic institutions such as universities and museums. A series of underground factories were protected by the inner walls.

The early days of the assault were primarily directed against the three modern satellite fortresses south of Janek; Forts Nais, Falen and Utres were subjected to massive bombardment from Aludran siege howitzers, with Falen and Utres falling to subsequent infantry assaults while Fort Nais was all but obliterated when its magazine exploded. The smaller satellite forts had mostly been evacuated due to their lack of heavy anti-aircraft armament; Rhiel felt that such forts would simply be fodder for the Perkunas if they were defended. By this point most of Janek's children, elderly and infirm had been evacuated to camps north of the fortress while those of fighting age remained.

Three main trench lines had been dug south of Janek in preparation for the Aludran assault; by the third week of the Janek offensive the last had fallen to a concerted assault by tanks and infantry moving behind Alcacians pushing heavy wheeled ballistic shields. With the fortress now exposed, Rhiel ordered the levees blown up, partially flooding the civilian districts and farms outside the fortress wall and forcing the attacking Aludran forces to either use roads pre-sighted for artillery fire or wade through swampland covered by heavy machine gun batteries.

Janek Fortress was armed with over a thousand cannons, including a 14-inch high-angle gun on the pinnacle of the citadel known as Long Tom, as well as the infamous south-facing 12-inch L/70 anti-siege gun Stiletto. At the time Stiletto was the most advanced gun on the Continent, forged at al-Hassan Ironworks in Garam and fitted with an electrical drive system linked to a 20mm ranging gun mounted on a platform over the cannon's loading floor. A push of a button next to the ranging gun would automatically train Stiletto to fire at the gun's exact point of aim. Stiletto's commanding officer during the siege was Chantelle Lien, a former instructor at the Gollande Rifle Academy and gold-medal sharpshooter.

Shots from Stiletto succeeded in preventing Aludran attempts to set up large artillery guns to target Janek Fortress' south wall and Lien became notorious for targeting officers with the ranging gun. With the flooded Vamar river allowing Rhiel to mass Janek's entire movable armament on the south side, the Aludran offensive began to bog down.

Aludran artillery had mostly levelled the outer city during assaults aimed at destroying the outer walls with explosives, leaving very little cover from Janek's mostly-intact gun batteries. With virtually no experience with dropping bombs from fixed-wing aircraft, the best efforts of the Aludran Army Aircraft Force was having no meaningful effect on the combat power of the southern gun battery.

Their one hope of a breakout was an area of high ground surrounding Oaken Mill Farm southeast of the fortress, mostly sheltered from Janek's guns by the Selvetta Ridge.

Garamese deployment

Isadora Rhiel had largely failed to convince the surrounding provinces to send her aid against the Aludran forces. The sole exception was Sarrah Leyla al-Fayed (usually "Leila Lafayette" in Aludran accounts), the governess of Messirah, the western tip of Garam. Janek had historically had many dealings with her province and had assisted in repelling barbarian hordes from Messirah's capital during the Dark Ages. Worried that the Aludran expansion would eventually target Messirah, and in particular the gigantic al-Hassan Ironworks, the most sophisticated integrated steel mill in the known world, al-Fayed made her case to the Queen of Garam. She ultimately persuaded the Queen to deploy Garam's elite tank corps CARNOV as a show of force. Al-Fayed hoped the mere presence of almost five hundred tanks at Janek would force Aludra to the negotiating table.

Aludran spies had identified trains carrying crimson and yellow painted tanks covered by Garamese flags to the northern border in the weeks before the battle, and had tracked the tanks of CARNOV as they moved to Janek Fortress. With the assault on Janek already underway when they arrived, al-Fayed's demands for negotiations fell on deaf ears, and she sent orders to CARNOV's field commanders to engage the Aludrans in a decisive battle at the earliest opportunity.

In the days before the battle, Aludran scouts reported substantial engineering efforts to fill in the flooded fields in the direction of Oaken Mill, and Empress Fiol concluded this was most likely an attempt to strike at the Aludran east flank. She ordered every operational Aludran tank to meet the Garamese force head-on, with the ambitious goal of breaking through CARNOV and opening up a new axis of attack on the fortress.

Pre-battle

Aludra massed some three hundred and fifty tanks in the massively enlarged 9th Mechanised Cavalry Division, mostly domestically produced copies of the Garamese vehicles they had purchased earlier in the war, equipped with 8.1mm machine guns and two sponson-mounted three-inch cannons. Perhaps the most unusual addition to the Aludran force was their domestic tank prototype, a 47-foot leviathan called Phantom*. Arrayed against them were all four hundred and seventy vehicles of CARNOV, including some examples of the newly designed Model AX with a roof-mounted turret as well as casemated sponson guns.

While CARNOV was theoretically the more experienced unit, they had never fought other tanks; their experience was primarily against Kala-Urukan's clan cavalry and light howitzers in Eastern Garam, though they had drilled extensively. The Aludrans, on the other hand, were primarily hand-picked crews of battle-hardened veterans.

The commander of CARNOV during the battle was Sinar (General) Farah Izana, a former cavalry officer from the loyalist Eastern tribes known for her intelligence and ferocity. Facing her was Major-General Yvette Sena, a young officer from the north of Aludra who had served as an artillery officer during the border skirmishes with Linthan irregulars and distinguished herself when she led her battery's crews in repelling a bayonet charge by an infiltrating force. She had been pre-selected to join the new Mechanised Cavalry by the Imperial commission set up by Empress Fiol to purge the military of incompetent nobility with hereditary or honorary ranks, and promote talented commoners to replace them.

Both forces were backed up by towed direct-fire cannons and both planned to place these in the village close to the farm. The Aludran force also included a shock troop detachment in case the Garamese forces reached the village before them.

The Linthan forces contributed their only Air Destroyer, the 311-foot Nitra, while the Aludrans deployed the 275-foot Queen's Lance and the 630-foot ground-attack Air Destroyer Perkunas, which had just completed repairs following an attack by saboteurs when she was fuelling at Hanet.

While Queen's Lance was a relatively small Leviship, the Aludrans were already experimenting with replicating the technology the Chirans had used against them, and Queen's Lance was equipped with several prototype unguided rocket launchers on her flanks.

Aludra had access to around one hundred machine-gun equipped spotting monoplanes, which had been modified to be able to carry a single bomb, while the CARNOV deployment included thirty dedicated fighter biplanes.

In secret the Empress issued orders for Major-General Sena to embark on the Perkunas and take overall command of the battle using the Air Destroyer's radio. Empress Fiol had heard stories of Eastern Leviships fitted with signal flags being used as vantage points for commanders in the days before cannons, and was fond of the idea of combining this with wireless radio. There was some friction between Major-General Sena and Captain Nichelle sen Emera of the Perkunas, the two being respectively a commoner and the head of one of Aludra's most powerful noble families, but both were firm patriots and ultimately worked together without incident. It is generally believed that their animosity stemmed from Sena replacing Jean sen Sura, a shy and non-confrontational noble Lady who took her rank by obligation through her family's oath rather than a desire to be in the military; most likely, Emera believed that she would be in effective command of the entire operation.

Battle

The offensive began during an unseasonal snowstorm, with neither side prepared to risk the other taking Oaken Mill unopposed. The Aludrans were confident that the clouds would render it impossible for the fortress to target Perkunas at long distance even if she flew higher than had been planned, and though some thirty tanks failed to start in the cold weather, the remainder were readied to move.

The Aludran offensive began in the early hours of the morning, with no preparatory artillery bombardment since both forces wanted the ground intact to advance. Two Aludran shock battalions moved ahead of the main tank force through Jolien Woods and immediately engaged a Linthan scout unit that had been hidden there; taken by surprise, the Linthan unit were all dead or captive within fifteen minutes. Sena ordered them to continue on into the worsening blizzard and take the village.

Finding Garamese and Linthan crews still setting up their guns, the Aludran force launched a concerted assault on the village, advancing in the face of machine-gun fire and fighting house-to-house, their superior training in urban combat giving them a distinct advantage over their opponents. At some point the artillery unit succeeded in contacting the fortress, and soon the sound of engines could be heard from the north.

Rhiel ordered the contingent of biplanes to launch strafing runs against the village in support of the artillery company, attempting to pin down the Aludran battalions until the tanks arrived. Since the Aludran force included a number of Alcacian troops with Bardiche light cannons and heavy machine guns, the Garamese were shocked by the volume of anti-aircraft fire they encountered from what they thought was only an infantry unit.

At the same time, Perkunas spotted the smoke from CARNOV's engines, and Sena ordered the Aludran tanks forward, along with several dozen aircraft to take pressure off the village. The Aludrans advanced in a broad double-V formation to allow maximum ability to fire, while the force from CARNOV used a denser boxlike formation designed to protect from mobile cavalry. The two groups met around midday, with CARNOV's tanks spreading out as little as possible in an attempt to focus their fire on the middle of the wide Aludran line.

After four hours of fierce combat, with the Aludran centre severely depleted and in danger of collapse, Sena requested that the Perkunas deploy in direct support of her forces. Perkunas descended for a bombing run, and was immediately spotted by Nitra, which had been ordered to loiter around the ridgeline. Nitra moved to engage the Aludran Air Destroyer, which lacked any armament for engaging Leviships, but was intercepted by the Queen's Lance. After exchanging fire for fifteen minutes, a salvo of rockets from Queen's Lance hit the Linthan Air Destroyer's port side, already damaged by cannon fire. Nitra's boilers exploded, and she split apart and crashed near the mill building.

Ignoring machine-gun fire from remaining biplanes, Perkunas laid a line of iron bombs along the Garamese line, with Air Destroyer's logbook noting forty-four vehicles burning following the attack; modern historians put the actual number closer to thirty, since the bombing officer would not have tried to determine which vehicles had been destroyed before the run. Anti-air artillery crews dropped their guns wherever they were and scrambled for trucks carrying ammunition, with several shots successfully striking the Perkunas, one hit separating one of her engine gondolas as she responded with her gun batteries.

With the Garamese force reeling, the Aludran tanks rallied and pressed home their assault, aided by cannon fire from the village. A second bombing run by the damaged Perkunas led to an order to withdraw, with many Garamese crews abandoning their vehicles to flee the advancing Aludran forces.

Aftermath

One of the more well-known propaganda stories from this time occurred after the battle. In the immediate aftermath, a draught horse foal with a wounded leg was found wandering the battlefield and spent several weeks thinking an Aludran tank was her mother. The foal, Kobyana, was featured in Aludran propaganda showing the kindness of their soldiers to the point that it was requested she keep her name, which they did not know the meaning of, when she was returned. She had been named by the mill owner's daughter, and this eventually resulted in Oaken Mill having a 19-hand mare named "muffin."

The loss of most of the CARNOV unit was a huge embarrassment to the Garamese government, with Leyla al-Fayed losing much of her influence with the Queen, and its loss emboldened the clans. In the years that followed they seized a substantial area of the country east of the capital in the name of the great Urukan, leading to the Third Eastern War.

The second front opened up by the Aludran victory at Oaken Mill forced Rhiel to split her defences to address the assault on the southeast flank of the fortress. The reduction in security would prove fatal when a group of Chiran-born mercenaries led by a former Eastern Temple Guard, Xi Aoku, scaled the southern gun tower and destroyed Stiletto with demolition charges. Chantelle Lien died in single combat against Xi, the officer drawing her sword to give the other crew chance to escape the loading floor.

While the first Aludran assault on the outer wall would fail due to Rhiel's decision to deploy chlorine and mustard gas shells from Janek's secret stockpiles, the 11-inch railroad gun Rochelle and the gargantuan 23-inch Little Zoya, the gun that breached the fortress wall at Lons, were already being assembled and a battery of siege howitzers prepared without Stiletto to target them. A week after the loss of Stiletto, the southern outer walls collapsed in six places under bombardment, with a shot from Little Zoya opening a breach in both walls over fifty feet across on its own. Even deployments of the newly developed phosgene gas could not stop the new Aludran advance, and the battle soon shifted into the streets of Janek City itself.

*Phantom, transliterated into Chiran as "zan-ta-me," is actually more known for appearing as the first boss of the videogame Bold Fleet than for anything it did during the battle (it is generally believed to have been one of the tanks that failed to start). The only reference photograph available to the Chirans was a poor-quality shot where trees in the background appeared to be in front of Phantom, meaning in the game "Colossal Prototype Tank Phantom" was depicted as being 170 feet long.

So you've probably noticed that Aludran isn't English: the reason behind this is that I decided that "we" speak Etrusean, and so that appears as English (Aludran warship names are traditionally written in Etrusean, which is why Grimalkin's name appears normally). Aludran and Chiran aren't whole languages, but I'm trying to be consistent with them.

For example, the second half of Jiang's name here is the same A-shaped glyph as the second half of the name of the battleship Liang here, Chiran is a syllabary. Also the glyph on her plate carrier and tail is the number 3 as seen here where the number on the left side of the nose is directly translated into Etrusean on the right (it isn't the same number; Etrusean is decimal while Chiran is base-nine except the second digit which is base-ten because they learn to count nine stripes on their tail with their fingers and then flip back to nines again for all other numbers).

So, let's go through what some of the other nonsense I've been writing means!

http://www.furaffinity.net/view/17881750/

"EKOH" - "Crayons"

"NOH" - Aludran imitative of a cat-person meowing (a regular cat meowing is "new")

"SOHII RO" - "Air Force." Sohii Ro literally means "group of things air."

The runway markings are Mirrai numbers.

http://www.furaffinity.net/view/17192968/

"SORII ZUL" - "Army." The actual Aludran word for army means an army rather than the army, and so this is "group of people land." Zul is the ground and by extension also the Aludran word for the planet.

The Navy, incidentally, is "Sorii Lo." This is Lo with a horizontal line through the o (short o sound) rather than a diagonal line (long o sound).

The different name for the Air Force is because it started out as part of the Army and was essentially called the Army Aircraft Force. In a previous journal it was labelled as Army Flight Corps which is the original name of the Etrusean Air Force.

"ALUN MIZAN LO SEII SORII ZUL" - This is a propaganda poster, and essentially says "Aludrans stand behind their army" ("mizan" is "take a stand," "lo" with a long O is "with," "seii" is "their"). "Alun" is the Aludran word for themselves as a people ("Aludrans" is nonsense in their own language). Confusingly in Etrusean "Alun" is the word for cat-people as a species regardless of their nation of origin (the equivalent in Aludran is "Alunda"); Aludran spies have to be very carefully taught to say they're Aludran in order to say what species they are in Etrusea.

"KON ZO" - Literally something like "series do," a phrase used for checklists and the like.

"HARH KOZHII SU ZULIMAR" - Literally (No) (step)(group of things) (to) (world)(after), which may or may not be some kind of reference to something. As "Kon" is a series, "Koz" is steps as in stairs. "Harh" is a demanding "no" (something like "do not") while a normal "no" is "ha," it's a pronounced cat hiss and you can actually just hiss to emphasise it even more.

"KO HAMAR KOLUZANA" - The Final Countdown. Maxine is a film fan and this is a poster for a fairly recent Aludran movie made with the cooperation of the Navy and featuring the supercarrier ANV Grimalkin being sent back to just before the Battle of Laurent Abyss. She encounters the Dreadnought ANV Empress Minerva, actually played by Aludra's last surviving Dreadnought Lady Irene, and Admiral Kalin di Alud (playing herself) must decide whether to change history.

Ultimately she persuades Captain Natalie sen Verna of the Empress Minerva that history must play out as it did, explaining that her duty is to the Aludra of the present and not the Aludra of the past. She compares the modern map of Aludra to the one Captain Verna has, and Verna declares she doesn't believe it.

"No, you don't. Nobody does. But thanks to you, your daughters will."

During her time on the Grimalkin Captain Verna sees a black-and-white movie of what she realises is her own ship turning to starboard to avoid gunfire from a Chiran battleship before being struck by a Strakken anti-ship missile and exploding, and the movie ends after the Grimalkin has returned to the present with her realising she is in that moment, closing her eyes and ordering the helm to turn hard to starboard.

The film is known for being respectful towards the Chirans rather than demonising them, the intent being that Aludran-national Chiran species could watch it with their families without feeling uncomfortable. This was in line with government policy; at the time, before relations collapsed, the first official cultural exchanges between the two countries were taking place, and government policy was to portray Aludra as a peacemaker. Chirans tend to regard it well, as it matches the Chiran philosophy to live the life that is and not the one that might have been.

At the time, the Grimalkin's S-10 Griffon drones and their armoured box launchers were still regarded as top secret and could not be shown. Due to this restriction, screens were set up inside the central hangar deck to conceal the deck lifts and actuating mechanisms of the flank launchers, an upper air wing accommodation deck was fabricated in a film studio to stand in for the drone handling deck, and two of Grimalkin's stern modular cooling plants were removed so a pair of retractable jump ramps could be fitted to increase her conventional launch capacity. Most of the scenes of conventional launches were carried out with the assistance of the crew and air wing of the STOVL carrier ANV Victory, which was in port for repairs during filming. Handling equipment used in place of the drone storage racks in the main hangar bay was fabricated by Emera Industries from scrapped crane parts, and stowed aircraft were actually balsa wood decoys designed for use on airfields.

The movie would later be remade after the Chirans and Aludrans became allies, and featured the second Grimalkin and the Chiran flagship, the battleship CDS Jian. The remake instead has the Jian accidentally shoot down the spotting plane that first sighted the Aludran fleet and focuses on the friction created by the Jian having to signal the past Chiran fleet to attack, with just one small change to the order being all it would take to reveal that the Etrusean coastal defence guns did not have radar guidance as the Chirans believed at the time and lead to Chira controlling most of the world.

Hamar is from the same root as imar in Zulimar; "samar" is the future and cutting it off with "ha" creates a word which is effectively "no future." Kol is a step in time (same root as kon / koz) and uzana is "downwards."

The other poster I considered putting there was for the movie Octopus but I didn't think a one-word title would really work. Octopus is an Oceans's 11-like story centring on an inescapable Chiran prison complex which Aludra had only learned about when the Chirans had their first PoW exchanges. Octopus was a massive facility on the floor of the Kythen Ocean that had been repurposed from a submarine base to a prison, the eight cell blocks radiating from a rotating central command segment giving the facility its name. The escape method shown in the movie would not work (being based on misinformation that supply submarines docked at the top of the facility rather than the bottom) but it is still well-liked as an escape caper and an example of misdirecting the audience.

The movie features a real conversation recalled by a former prisoner between her and a Chiran medic, regarding why she would want to help Aludrans. She went back to Chira when relations deteriorated and her sister stayed and later died of a previously unknown heart condition. She told the Aludran the reason she worked there was that if she spent her time treating the enemy, she could believe her sister wasn't murdered by the country she loved.

And I couldn't resist having Sophie purr with an Aludran barred U.

http://www.furaffinity.net/view/19317548/

"NIR ALUD OMII" - "By the honour of (the house of) Alud." This was the proof mark originally stamped on gold sovereign coins made by the treasury of the Alud during the Dark Ages. During the Reformation War it was taken on as a slogan by the Aludran military and was commonly carved into the blades of knives.

"LORII" - While this is a surname, it also means something; "water people." This was originally the name of a clan located near the Vamar River that runs through the modern city of Alurna, but since this clan was stripped of most of its power during the wars that ended the Dark Ages it became a trade name for those associated with the rivers or the sea, be it fishing, shipbuilding or military sailors. In Lorii's time, though, it's just a common surname.

http://www.furaffinity.net/view/18990194/

"ZIA, E NA ASTRID" - "Hi, my name (is) Astrid." "Zia" is the short form of "Ziadra," the more formal Aludran greeting.

"HARH KOZ" - "No step."

"ORUL" - "Joyful," though this is actually the name and coat of arms of the noble family that owns the cosmetic company Astrid works for.

"FHON" - "Fire."

The Hawkinsae are two distinct, diverse phyla of vertebrate arthropods, one sharing many traits with arachnids and the other being terrestrial crustaceans. They are named for the Etrusean biologist Sofia Hawkins, who was the first to describe the "Hawkins Gap," noting a distinct area of body mass ratio in which there were no insects at all and thus concluding that the Hawkinsae were a distinct group. Since then it has been concluded they are actually two, but in general the term is used to describe both groups outside of biological sciences. The Hawkinsae are predominantly single-sex species using similar methods of reproduction to their mammal, reptile and amphibian counterparts, though there are some with males; some lay eggs, while others have live young. Many species nurse their young, usually using glands located underneath the sternite plates on their undersides.

Both branches have an odd trait of not being belligerent towards bipeds, which has gone from being a useless quirk to perhaps the greatest advantage the Hawkinsae have.

All Hawkinsae in the arachnid branch are related to a common extinct ancestor, the Devonian Sea Spider. This 12-foot tailless whip scorpion shared features common to all its descendants; two large, well-developed forelimbs, a primitive calcified endoskeleton in addition to its exoskeleton, true lungs, eight walking legs, eight eyes, two sets of antennae, and three distinct sets of mandibles. This creature lived in shallows and used a hunting strategy resembling that of a modern crocodile.

The ancestor of the crustacean branch appears to have been a creature similar to modern amphibious trilobites. These species generally still have eight eyes and three sets of mouthparts, but typically have fourteen walking legs and no well-developed forelimbs.

Bipedal examples are typically descended from cricket-like tree species with highly developed rear walking legs and the rest decreased in size; for example, moth-people are related to a genus of hopping moths, and have six bumps on their lower ribcage that are the remnants of their other legs and are used to anchor their wing muscles.

These species have merged primary eyes; bipedal bees have a single pair of eyes with a four-lobed pupil made from all of their ancestral eyes, while other species retain shiny compound eyebands on their cheeks and have a two-lobed pupil. Their similar facial form is achieved with a lower jaw made from two fused mandibles, while another pair typically manifest as front toothplates that can move independently of the rest of the jaw. The remaining pair are reduced to vestigial floating plates in the cheeks.

Chiran Spotted Silk Moth

Spotted Silk Moths are among the smaller Hawkinsae: a full-grown moth has a wingspan of around a foot, and over an average lifespan of around 30 years they will grow by another six inches or so. They are omnivores, but can survive happily on a diet consisting almost entirely of simple sugars; they do have some instincts related to hunting and will eat small insects. Their three sets of mouthparts are divided into two pairs of dextrous inner mandibles and a pair of horizontal sideplates that close over them and are used for nibbling.

Like all Hawkins Moths, their forelimbs are held vertically and resemble mantis claws, and they have three distinct types of eye; two complex forward-facing eyes, four shiny compound eyebands, and two almost invisible rear-facing eyes that allow them to perceive motion behind them. They lack eyelids, but have a small indent on the inner face of each foreclaw containing soft, moist fur-like hairs that they use to wash their primary eyes and to cover them when sleeping.

Their antennae are of two types, a straight horizontal set for general sensing and a very fine, feathery set for precise flight information that curve back over their heads. They are very protective of the latter and do not like them being touched. Unlike insect moths, they do not use celestial navigation and so are not confused by artificial lighting or flames.

They are social, friendly and endearingly stupid creatures, with the approximate intelligence of kittens. They share the common Hawkinsae capacity for associative reasoning, though their ability to do so is quite simplistic. They communicate with each other using claw gestures and simple vocalisations; soft chirps, purring sounds, or urgent squeaks if they are alarmed.

Like all Hawkins Moths, Silk Moths have no larval stage, bypassing this state in their egg before hatching as miniature adults. As hatchlings they are almost completely white except their foreclaws, which are hardened so they can open their egg, and over their first few molts they will slowly acquire their adult colour, an all-over blue with white speckles on their wings. Their thorax is covered in soft fluff, which is greyish when they hatch, turning blue to match the rest of their body over time.

They have the most simplistic skeleton of any Hawkins Moth species; their small size means they do not require leg bones for support, instead only having a skull, ribcage, hipbones and an extension of their spine that runs the length of their abdomen. The stiffeners in the front surface of their wings are cartilage rather than bone.

Silk Moths are diurnal and spin messy nests with trip lines that they rest their foreclaws on while sleeping; in the wild, they will nest high up on the trunks of trees and spin the triplines so a predator climbing the trunk will trigger them. Their silk glands incorporate the hip muscles of their rearmost pair of walking legs, which are permanently folded against their abdomen as a result; they are used both as steering vanes in flight and to manipulate silk while spinning.

Domesticated moths are traditionally taught to sleep on a silk cushion placed inside a porcelain bowl. The moth will spin her nest around the bowl and lead the trip lines only up to the edge of the cushion, allowing the nest to be dismantled easily while they sleep without alerting them. Silk Moths will become distressed if their nest is dismantled too frequently, but otherwise will simply wonder where it has gone until they forget what the problem was.

Spotted Silk Moths are important to the Chiran economy; as well as producing silk, they also pollinate the carnivorous Chiran Tea Plant*, a sundew-like bog plant which has a mutualistic relationship with them. Tea plants produce sweet red growths with a distinctive scent to draw moths to them since Silk Moths are not attracted to flowers; these are laced with extremely potent poisons that are harmless to Silk Moths. They will instinctively avoid the trap leaves, though the sticky secretions will not adhere to a Silk Moth's body anyway. This means wild Silk Moths are typically purple in late summer. Chiran farmers typically remove the "fruits" as soon as they start to develop and replace them with sugary substitutes, since it makes their moths safer to handle.

In some Chiran belief systems a Silk Moth was thought to be a soul that had entered the mortal world but was not yet ready to be born. The story of the moth-in-the-moon, Jia, results in this being the most common name for moths owned as pets; farmers, however, will never use the name, believing it to be unfair to their other moths to name one after the spirit.

Hawkeater Moth

The Hawkeater Moth is the supreme aerial predator of Etrusea and the largest of all Hawkins Moths, with a wingspan that can reach twenty-five feet and a body length of up to six. Like most predatory moths, the Hawkeater sacrifices one pair of walking legs; these are raised up to attach to their front pair of wings, which are articulated like bird wings and formed of large scale segments which resemble oversized feathers. The rear pair of wings are simpler. Also like other predatory moths, Hawkeaters have the ability to hover by beating their wing pairs in opposite time.

Their inner mouthparts are fused into a beak-like structure specialised for tearing, and their sideplates are heavily muscled and reinforced. Their body is covered in thick plating and an overall stony grey, with mottled patterns on the wings; the bony plating is often host to lichens that assist them in blending in with the rocky hills they would naturally make their nests in. In modern Etrusea, they prefer to nest in abandoned buildings.

Their sheer size means they cannot stand on surfaces in the same way as smaller moths, instead producing an extremely tough resin from their footpads, which they alternate with an enzyme that dissolves it.

They have the same configuration of antennae as their smaller cousins, though the horizontal set are stiff and covered in plating. They possess steering membranes on their abdomen and a fantail resembling an enlarged lobster tail. When their children are young, they will cling to their mother's abdomen and sense muscle movements, steering her with their own wings; a Hawkeater with four daughters is actually more agile than she would normally be.

Their offspring are born live, usually in pairs; the parent who carries them will raise them, while the other will return to her own territory and occasionally return to see them. They are not strictly solitary and form loose groups, but retain large areas of territory out of practical need as an apex predator. Many do not have children, and Etrusea's Hawkeater population is relatively stable as a result.

Hawkeaters are one of two non-bipedal species regarded as sentient; they almost completely lack the ability to process spoken or written language (only being able to understand the concept to the point of knowing that words mean things), but are remarkably intelligent. Etrusean testing with a Hawkeater with four young daughters determined that she understood the purpose of the tests as well as the tests themselves, and would occasionally have her children perform tests she did not believe were supposed to be for her because she found them too simplistic.

They have mutualistic relationships with several smaller Etrusean bird species that keep them clean, and sometimes try to extend this to biped species; it is a bad idea to leave an opening to one's house large enough for a Hawkeater to enter unless one wishes to find a giant moth waiting in the shower hoping to be washed. They will sometimes take stray animals as pets; they also tend to regard small Hawkins Moths with affection and find their behaviour charming.

In spite of their name, they typically prey on large non-predatory birds such as geese and swans. The name comes from an Etrusean children's tale that may be based on a true story, about a young Basram noble who causes trouble by flying his hawk wherever he pleases, until finally he flies it near a forest that is home to a moth that snatches it out of the air. The moral of the story is usually said to be "don't be arrogant," though in Aludra it is interpreted as a warning to understand why the rules exist before one breaks them.

Chiran Enasi

Enasi are large grazing pillbugs used as beasts of burden in Chira. An adult Enasi can be the size of a truck and weigh over three tons. They are almost always dull grey with paler grey at the edge of their body plates, though they may have paler mottling. Their first set of antennae is tiny, while the second set is a large pair of jointed feelers that they use to sense ahead of themselves, compensating for their relatively poor eyesight.

Unlike the smaller related species found on the island of Omar, an Enasi only has the ability to curl up as an infant; as she grows her body flattens out, leading to an adult more closely resembling a woodlouse.

Enasi are not particularly intelligent, to the point that they will often simply lie down and cover their eyes when startled. They are sufficiently large that they have no natural predators. They can be trained to pull ploughs and tow carts fairly easily, and are very important to Chira's rural economy, where they are still as common as motor vehicles.

They react badly to anything being attached to their antennae and will try to eat anything put in their mouths, which means handling them requires teaching them to understand hand or foot taps; they respond to a combination of sound, pressure, and movement in their peripheral vision.

While Enasi are also used for food, they are not farmed for meat; this would be impractical, since an Enasi takes fourteen years to reach her adult size. Usually they are killed with anaesthetic poisons when they are elderly, since such poisons are harmless to the Chiran metabolism; there is a lot of ceremony associated with doing so to give thanks to the creature for the work she did during her life. Their carapace plates are typically kept to be used as plough blades.

Kraken

Krakens are vast sea creatures that possess both gills and lungs, descended from ancestors that laid their eggs on land but never became fully terrestrial, and abandoned this strategy as it became untenable. They appear to be related more closely to crustacean Hawkinsae, but have all but lost their rearmost legs, while their front eight limbs have become gigantic oar-like flippers. They appear to have once had compound eyebands, but these have become so large that a Kraken has one hundred fully-functional eyes. Their body is shield-shaped with a long tail, and they possess a set of lungs in each main body segment; their breathing openings are in the upper surface of their body and normally sealed under the joints between body segments. They open up as the creature breaches the surface, and a Kraken blows out distinctive twin spouts of water from each segment as she breathes.

Krakens can stay underwater indefinitely using only their gills to breathe, but use their lungs when they are hunting; they are omnivores that can feed on plankton, decaying plant matter or virtually any other sea creature, and were known to attack wooden-hulled ships in the age of sail. Only one such attack is recorded on a modern ship, by a juvenile that almost sank the factory ship of an Aludran fishing fleet.

They are rarely sighted; it is generally suggested that all known sightings are of animals outside of their normal feeding grounds, and that they live almost exclusively in the Sea of Clouds.

The largest known Kraken was a 350-foot example photographed by the Chiran fleet before the Battle of Laurent Abyss; it has been suggested she was drawn to the surface by the silhouette of the enormous Chiran fleet carrier Alana. There is substantial evidence that Krakens can grow larger than this, however.

In particular, the relics called the Queen's Lance and Tauberg's Spear are thought to be flipper bones that washed ashore after being shed by a Kraken of incredible age. It is believed this creature is a literal "living fossil" and quite possibly the last of her kind, since her flippers possess archaic features not present on any known specimen of a modern Kraken. Their scale, if the creature's flippers are of similar size compared to her body, suggests a creature no less than seven hundred and fifty feet in length, which would mean an age of around twenty-eight thousand years. This creature may have been the one that inspired Alcacian legends.

Kraken in legend

Alcacians, the horse-ogres of the misty isles, believed Hri, the supreme being, forged the world on her anvil from the first metal at the dawn of time. Hri is an entity of such immeasurable power that both Gods and mortals are the same compared to her, and is not worshipped since no mortal's voice could possibly be noticed by her.

As Hri worked, the sparks that were kicked up from her forge drifted away and became the Goddesses and Gods of the Alcacian pantheon. When she completed her work, she set it down and them drew her mighty axe and drove it across the whole world, each nick in the blade creating a mountain range, dividing the land from the sky as far as the horizon in the East where the spirits of the dead dwell.

Kraken, the first living thing and the only one not created by the Gods, was born at the horizon where the land touched the sky, and created all the waters of the earth, for such was her will. Seeing this and fearing the power of the creature, the Gods planted the seed of the world tree, and presently the mother of all trees lifted the sky far above the earth and scattered her seeds across the world, creating all plants. Kraken covered much of her domain in a great mist she blew out from her body, allowing the Gods no dominion over her ocean.

Frustrated by their failure to bend her to their will, the gods attempted to outdo her vast ocean, filling the lands of the world with life. Finally they created others with wisdom and the power to create with their will, to be their servants; in those times, there was only one of each, and each stood fifty feet tall.

In time mortals, led by Freya, the mother of all Alcacians, sought to overthrow the Gods who enslaved them, and fought them in a great battle, Ashkhost, that lasted a century. Finally defeating the mortals at great cost to themselves, the Gods feared to enslave them again. Instead, they commanded that they no longer be one of each kind, so that mortals would never again have the strength to defeat Gods. This division also removed the ability of mortals to make things real with their will, and instead each was granted a voice** by the Gods.

Those who became the Brannae (little people) each became ten and fled to the domain of Brannock***, far across the ocean, that the Gods would not find them. Sly Freya only became four, that her children would have enough strength to do battle with the Gods again if they sought to make mortals their slaves as before, and remained in their sight on Alcacia. Only Kraken dared to defy them.

Kraken swam in her boundless ocean, and did not heed the Gods' call to become many; as such, she had no voice given to her. But Kraken blew water from her body as she broke the surface of her ocean, and in so doing formed a great arc of every colour of light to write her voice in the sky. Each time her water touches the land, Kraken's silent voice is seen across the world. Sometimes she remembers the cowardice of all living things on the land, and her waters rise up to punish them, but mostly she is content to bring the waters to the land twice a day, that mortals should never forget her.

*Chiran tea is misnamed due to Chiran intelligence assuming the drink made from brewed leaves on the continent must be the same as their "tay" due to its similar name; because it contains the sugary secretions from the trap leaves, it is sweet and contains a narcotic the plant uses to immobilise its prey. It has a mild relaxing and calming effect on biped species, and is a traditional evening drink in Chira, with many family ceremonies based around preparing it; it is also popular in Etrusea and Aludra, and on the island of Mirrai.
**The Alcacian concept of "voice" is an early conception of sentience; to eat any creature that is able to speak is a monstrous crime. Alcacians used to believe their non-sentient cousins the Bruna, huge bear-like tree-climbing creatures that still dwell in the forests of Alcacia, were Alcacians who had consumed the flesh of sentients and become beasts.
***Alacian knowledge of Brannae is odd since the "little people" were regarded as stories for children in Skuld's time; it is believed there may have been an ice bridge between Alcacia and the continent at some point and these legends represent dim memories of continental species.

Just putting up a few things I have lying around :)

The great contest

Almost all nations have some memory of the fall of Nemesis. Though it was eighteen thousand years ago, the days of darkness, years of winter and the sight of a vast halo of dust kicked up from the dark side of the moon by an even larger fragment of the comet remain in stories of dead sun gods and the moon as a creature with wings. The latter is responsible for figures like Chiki, the pet bird of the Etrusean goddess of death, and Jia, the Chiran moth spirit that hatched from the moon to spin a new sun from her silk.

Old Aludran pagan beliefs describe three figures who remain part of the modern faith; the trickster goddess Fiora, the hunt goddess Alysa, and the hated figure known only as It, the author of suffering. While Fiora and Alysa are respectively shown as a black Siamese wearing the diamond-patterned dress of a fortune teller and a huge Bengal cat as strong as any ten beasts wearing a traditional hunter's garb (often changed to a military uniform in modern depictions), It is only ever shown as a black rectangle or a stylised old Aludran glyph.

It is said that for an eternity, sly Fiora had admired noble and strong Alysa, but it was not in the goddess of deception's nature to openly state her feelings. Instead, she challenged the hunt goddess to a contest; if she could prove herself the greater hunter, Alysa would agree to be her bride.

It desired Alysa too, for whatever reason; Aludrans do not assign reasoning to It, treating the accursed creature as always inexplicable. When It heard of the contest, It also challenged her.

Alysa took her turn first, and took many with her great spear. Second came Fiora, the cunning goddess proving a match for Alysa and taking one more animal through her trickery. But when it came the turn of It, the creature did not hunt, instead inflicting a cruel curse on all living things, that they would suffer and die*, and presented itself as the victor. In fury, Alysa hurled her spear into It, the body falling to the mortal world and spreading darkness and the chill of winter across it. Fiora and Alysa taught their daughters, the ancestors of the Imperial family, their skills of trickery and hunting that they would survive.

Aludran religion is not dualistic because It is already dead, only the creature's influence lingering in the mortal world. Those who die having lived well will dream peaceful dreams until It's influence has finally left the world and the goddesses raise them to live again in a world without suffering; those who live poorly may either cease to exist or suffer a period of nightmares before being reborn for another chance to live righteously.

The Queen's Lance

The Queen's Lance is an ancient relic of the House of Alud said to have been given to the family's founder Circe dio Alud by the goddess Alysa.

While the Queen's Lance itself has long been lost, its description matches the Basram relic known as Tauberg's Spear; both are believed to be flipper bones from a gigantic Kraken.

The artifact is actually correctly called the Queen Lance. Its modern name is a mistranslation; in Etrusea, the story is always said to be about the "Queen's Lance." Prior to the Battle of Laurent Abyss, an Air Destroyer named Queen Lance had been constructed in Etrusea, but was given the mistranslated name. This was the subject of some controversy at the time, with questions as to whether it should be accepted and a series of very quaint news articles saying it was the greatest challenge the alliance between Aludra and Etrusea would ever face.

Queen's Lance had been accepted by Aludra by the time of the Battle of Laurent Abyss and served extensively during the Reformation War. She shot down the only Linthan Air Destroyer, Nitra, when the latter attempted to engage the Perkunas during the Battle of Oaken Mill, part of the Janek Offensive, and by the end of the war had been so heavily featured in Aludran propaganda that schoolchildren were referring to the original artifact as the Queen's Lance too. The fact that Queen's Lance was Etrusean fell out of the history books for almost half a century, since it was not politically convenient.

Today insisting on the "correct" name is thought of as nitpicking. A good way to puzzle Aludran children is to ask them which queen it belonged to, since Aludra has never had a queen.

The Seal of Unity

The Seal of Unity is one of several sealing-stamps of the House of Alud. The original was used by Mari dio Alud to seal the treaty that established the modern state of Aludra, but it disappeared in Fiol's time.

The Seal was made from an ingot of red iron; this is high-quality iron contaminated with cadmium selinide, fragments of the iron core of Nemesis. It was once thought to be a divine metal; forging it was certain death, but the steel made from it was superior to any other. To work it was thought to be an honour, the crowning glory of a smith's life.

A new Seal had been made from the same ingot of red iron as the original, but recovering the first Seal was something the Alud had always desired. The fate of the original Seal was discovered the same day the Empress explained why the Imperial family knew every one they'd been given before was a fake and declared it was obviously gone.

It turned out that the stamp of the Sul family was made from the Seal of Unity, and they eventually pieced together the story of how in the world this had happened since the Sul family included the Empress' most beloved wife.

Stamps made with the Seal became fainter and fainter right up until it disappeared, and so it is believed it was sent to be re-cast. The sealmaker it was given to was a crew member on one of the ships sunk in the Battle of Laurent Abyss and left no instructions to her family, believing she would soon return. With all the confusion and Shri's abdication it was temporarily forgotten, and since Fiol did not declare war on Linthe it was not needed. By the time the Alud realised it was gone they had the problem that nobody outside the Royal Household knew what they were even looking for, and the paperwork on where it was had been lost in a minor fire in the Imperial Archive.

Fiol just ignored it and signed documents because she felt it proved she was literate, but her daughter wanted to use a seal and so had a new one made and offered her own weight in platinum to anyone who bought them the real one. By that point the dull-looking old seal had been melted down and used to make a stamp of authority for the Sul, a fairly minor noble family. The Alud didn't let it be known that the Seal was made from a fragment of Nemesis because they knew they could detect fakes more easily that way.

Gina sen Sul, later Gina dio Alud, was very proud when it was found her family's seal was part of the comet, and she was well-loved enough that no suspicion fell on her when she told the Empress. The youngest daughter of the Sul family, Gina was a gentle, sweet and shy grey Persian who loved cooking and birds, the exact opposite of a criminal mastermind.

*Before this, creatures died but did not suffer, and did not die unless something killed them. Aludrans are obligate carnivores and do not believe there was a time before they could eat. Particularly in modern imaginings when the Aludran pantheon includes Etrusea's beloved death goddess Fair Lady Rei, It is regarded exclusively as the author of suffering and disease.

Piracy has been common throughout the history of the Continental Powers; Etrusea straddles the mighty Lorna River which has tributaries to most other Western nations, and the shipping routes that lead to the Lorna and through the Strait of Huron have always been full of trade vessels bearing valuable goods to and from the nations South of the Namir Desert and from the Far Western nations like Lyle and Mirrai. In particular, pirates operated in Huron, which, with its dense coastal forests and many small islands, was a perfect place for vessels to disappear to sheltered coves and bays.

The start of the golden age of piracy in Huron was the conclusion of the wars that established the modern state of Aludra and led to their abolition of slavery (largely due to Empress Lenka dio Alud being the daughter of the previous Empress and a tabby slavegirl). Aludra semi-officially granted letters of marque to privateers who restricted their activities to capturing slave ships, turning a blind eye to their holds being emptied of valuables.

This practice largely ended following Etrusea banning slave ships from transiting the Lorna River following a rather bizarre series of events in which a slaveship, trying to escape inspection, had managed to accidentally destroy a coastal fort with a smoke shell, but the pirates remained and soon turned their attentions to other prizes. Trade routes became a dangerous place for vessels without military escorts, and the Continental Powers scrambled to build up their navies.

Most of the more famous pirates operated towards the end of this period when matters in Huron were the subject of a lot of public attention; perhaps the most well-known were Florence Heath and her first mate Doris Teach, not least because the great Aludran poet Emelia was part of their crew in her youth. Heath was an elegant grey Persian cat captain in the Aludran navy, while Teach was a stocky doberman gunner's mate from Basram. The two were dismissed in unclear circumstances most likely involving each other, though there is a school of thought that Heath, being from a common family, was relieved of her command in order for her ship to be transferred to someone with a noble title.

Regardless, finding themselves in a bar on the waterfront, the two came up with a plan to round up Heath's loyal crew and steal her ship, Constellation, before it could be sailed away. Slipping out under cover of moonlight, the Constellation vanished into Huron, soon being implicated in raids on merchant ships carried out with military precision by a skilled and well-motivated crew.

At first Heath restricted her activities to Aludra's enemies, but when she learned her country had issued a warrant for her arrest she begun attacking Aludran ships as well, quickly assembling a fleet of fast warships. She was known as a consummate professional who was disgusted by cruelty, the very image of a noble pirate.

Her nickname "Red Eye" came about after she was captured and scheduled to be executed; a sympathetic local priestess allowed Teach to set up a Garam-made jezail in the tower of her church, and Teach killed the executioner just as she was raising her musket to a kneeling Heath's head. The gun went off next to Heath's face and left her with powder burns and a permanently bloodshot left eye.

Her most famous exploit was orchestrating the raid that seized the Aludran coastal settlement of Fort Falken, which also led to an Aludran navy battle squadron being sent to deal with her once and for all, sailing outside the normal shipping channels to take Heath by surprise. She would have been in a much better position to deal with them had it not been for a treacherous captain, Alice Blaine, making off with one of the ships loaded with plunder from Falken. A furious Heath pursued Blaine in the Constellation, now named Red Eye after her nickname, and sank her ship. The pursuit, however, left her vessels scattered in the face of an attack by the most powerful warships of the Aludran fleet.

(Centuries later the whole story of Blaine was starting to be thought of as just something the poet Emelia made up to make a more interesting story to impress noblewomen, then a Chiran Cruiser Submarine found the wreckage of Blaine's ship while surveying the seabed for minelaying. It's generally referred to as Blaine's Tomb, and Blaine herself is a byword for short-sighted greed.)

With the Red Eye burning and taking on water, Heath steered her straight at the Aludran flagship Polar Star. The remains of her crew stormed the ship, Heath and Teach ultimately fighting their way to the Polar Star's wheel before Heath was cut down. Teach was shot in the back while leaning over Heath holding her hand, and Emelia's anger at this is the source of the granny-not-in-front-of-the-children epithet "that coward sailor," which is a lot more insulting in Aludran than one might reasonably expect it to be.

Heath is sometimes confused with the "Sky Pirate" Shion Omar; in particular, Heath is often shown wearing an eyepatch, which Shion was known for. A cat from the state of Garam, Shion was known for commanding a fleet of captured, traded or stolen aerial ships centred on her pride and joy, an Etrusean aerial galleon she called Empress of the Skies.

Shion met her fate as she would have no doubt wanted; an endlessly proud woman who never backed down from a fight, she engaged Despina, the state-of-the-art flagship of the Etrusean Air Navy and the first vessel to be called an Air Destroyer. She did this despite knowing very well that she could not possibly damage the vessel, the Continent's first ironclad, anywhere but her wooden bow or stern or by hitting her gunports directly. Her last known words, recalled by one of her crew who jumped overboard, were "A fine trophy she'll be!"

Shion Omar's death was the end of the golden age; from then on, the presence of coordinated naval forces rendered it impossible for pirates to amass fleets that could hold their own against national militaries, and later actions were generally restricted to hijackings and ransomings for centuries; trade was largely safe, though mercenaries would tend to accompany valuable cargoes just to be on the safe side.

In Chira, their major issues with piracy did not begin until the West face of the Shield Wall, the circular mountain range that surrounds their entire country, partially collapsed; fairly soon foreign raiders found their way in and began robbing fishing boats. Particularly infamous were a cougar and cheetah pair, Janice Kyne and Rachel Fawkes, largely because the three Chiran species are naturally frightened of big cats and the two tended to play up their image as dangerous creatures by wearing "no more than was required to render themselves armed," as the history books put it. Finally the Western Shirai's government had enough and send out one of their floating rocket batteries to track down and obliterate whatever port they were operating from.

The operation was a disaster; the Chirans had almost no knowledge of the open sea at the time and the Battery Ship capsized in a ferocious storm, with Kyne's fleet setting out to pick up survivors, rather against her better judgement. The two were taken back to Chira in chains but spared any real punishment when the presiding magistrate, who was rather obviously interested in the two, declared she would keep them in her custody to ensure they committed no further crimes. The case is studied by modern Chiran legal scholars as an example of how ridiculous and arbitrary their legal system used to be, given the magistrate was able to dismiss "such minor concerns" as the two defendants being guilty in her summary without anyone batting an eye.

Since Chira rapidly adapted their knowledge of naval design to the challenges of the open ocean, the era of pirates operating in the Western Shirai was short-lived; Chira was about to strike out to the East and start the conflict with Aludra that would last for generations.

Some of Heath's crews who escaped her final battle had founded the pirate settlements of Haven and Enclave in the jungles between Aludra and the edge of the Chiran Shield Wall, which would themselves become bases for raiders alternately funded and equipped by Aludra and Chira to harass the other's shipping during the battles for the Strait. The two settlements were named using common words to avoid showing favouritism to any specific country; their names are the closest equivalent in the speaker's language.

The settlements of Haven and Enclave have recently (ie in Shian's time) been bought back to people's attention; following the end of hostilities between Aludra and Chira, they basically lost all reason to support the two settlements which had grown to depend on foreign aid. A series of hijackings ended with the attack on the Etrusean ocean liner Lyra which unknown to them was carrying the Aludran Minster for the Interior and her Chiran wife to their honeymoon in Chira. An RPG ignited a container of fireworks on the deck which was supposed to be used on their arrival and started a fire which gutted the Lyra, killing over seventy and almost killing the minister's wife. Lyra limped back to Aludra escorted by the Aludran flagship Grimalkin and the Chiran flagship Jian, the "black empress" sailing into Alurna something most Aludrans thought they would never live to see.

Shian's first visit to Chira coincided with a series of massive fleet exercises in Huron aimed at neutralising the fleet of powerful warships Chira and Aludra helped to create, specifically the four Chiran-built fast battleships that had fled Enclave ahead of a ferocious bombardment by the combined fleet aimed at destroying their fuel stores and shipbuilding facilities. Precisely what's going to happen there is a question for the future.

The first record of a Leviship in any sense of the term dates back to around 5500 BME (Before Modern Era) in the Etrusean Calendar. The description is by the lioness warlord Serrin of Arnath, a city-state now part of Etrusea, saying that her unnamed foes:

"...had harneſth a rocke of ſingular ſize that they dide plath divers archers upon, & dide equipe with ſale that it mite be ſteer'd..."

Such early Leviships were little more than rocks with flat upper surfaces, sometimes carved down into bowl shapes to protect their crews from counter-fire. Plate 7 of the collection of Samara Palace, said to be an engraving by the great inventor Latifah of Narsus, is a series of illustrations on methods for anchoring, boarding and working a raw Levistone block, and even at that time (~4550 BME) it appears these were well developed and considered proven.

It is widely accepted that Latifah constructed the first wood-framed Leviship for the Sultan of Narsus in 4520 BME. The "Star of Narsus" was a hexagonal construction with bronze-reinforced wooden walkways connecting six carved Levistone blocks with projecting prongs, each carrying a mounted ballista (a technology that would be lost around a century later when the state of Narsus collapsed) with a central platform mounting a full-sized siege catapult. This fearsome engine was steered using sails mounted on the central platform, and is described in many accounts from the surrounding states. It appears to have ultimately disintegrated in a storm some time around 4400 BME: Narsi Oak timbers found at the bottom of Lake Culden in Brecht are widely believed to be the remains of the Star.

The development of the steel anchor bolt was a key step in the transition to modern Leviships; frame Leviships like the Star of Narsus were built around and between the Levistone boulders, while bolted Leviships could be attached directly to them. The first bolted Leviship, the Principality of Jasua's Moneta, was constructed around a row of five boulders which were arranged in a line, making her largely immune to issues with buckling in uneven winds which plagued the frame ships. Moneta still did not completely enclose her Levistone; Leviships of the era always used unrefined blocks or boulders, and their size required the stones project above Moneta's deck and below her underside.

Around 1200 BME the Basram alchemist Miguel di Fortuna conducted his famous experiments with Levistone, as part of his inquiries into what his field had always considered a divine or supernatural material. Among his discoveries were the first methods of mass-producing refined Levistone, and that when heated in a copper vessel designed to protect it from open flame, the resulting stone would increase its lift greatly; he would later conclude this was proof that Levistone was a method of converting phlogiston into mechanical motion.

His observations led to drastic refinements in Leviship design. The first vessel to incorporate his ideas was Majestic Princess, the royal yacht of Queen Emelia of Semanua, now part of Aludra. This vessel set the pattern for centuries of wooden Leviships, using six heating chambers with spherical stones over wood burners, allowing her to be constructed with a continuous keel like a conventional ship.

A scale replica of this beautiful vessel can be seen in the collection of the Alurna Museum of Culture; the ship herself was dismantled when Emelia's granddaughter Queen Esmeralda gave the Majestic Princess to the Empress of Aludra as a gift. Her heaters were used in a pair of aerial galleons, while her interior is now the Emerald Wing of the Aludran Imperial Palace.

Aludra might not even exist as a nation today, but for the efforts of Her Imperial Majesty Fiol dio Alud.

Fiol was the daughter of the celebrated military commander Viola sen Fai and Empress Shri dio Alud. Shri wanted her to be skilled in the arts of battle, something Shri had never had any taste for, and so she spent a lot of time with Viola supervising campaigns against Linthe insurgents trying to take more from Aludra's northern borderlands. Traditionally, at least one of the Imperial family supervised actions by the army, and that led to an event that most believe made Fiol who she was.

While commanding her troops at the Battle of Callahan Pass when Fiol was ten years old, Viola was hit by a stray rifle bullet; Fiol always said she died instantly, but Fiol also created the first military where every soldier was trained in basic first aid, and most make an obvious conclusion from this. Fiol's instructors in the military arts following that day declared her a poor student, with little interest in the Basram-derived principles of chivalry that had largely ruled military thinking among the continental powers; Basram and Aludra both thought of Etrusea's massive Army Air Force as uncivilised. Only one, an Oryx from Garam, thought much of her ideas; today, her early writings are thought of as the first steps towards modern combined arms doctrine.

Shri proved her worth at statecraft, but the military devolved into inter-service rivalry without Viola's hand to guide it. The Navy usually won out, with the prestigious new Dreadnoughts winning more and more of the military budget, at the expense of an increasingly inadequate Army with inexperienced and underpaid officers, and a virtually nonexistent Army Flight Corps consisting of a handful of armed spotting planes. Erosion of the Northern border was a constant problem in the seven years leading up to the Battle of Laurent Abyss.

The loss of most of the Aludran fleet at Laurent Abyss to the previously unknown power from further west was devastating both to Aludran military strength and to national morale; twenty-five thousand sailors went down with their ships, including most of the senior staff of the Aludran navy. The colossal depth of the Abyss made recovery out of the question. The fleet was simply gone.

The incredible superiority of the ships from Chira, at the time incorrectly known as Shirai, was an even harder blow to the notion of Aludran naval supremacy. Shri was inconsolable, and eventually chose to retire to a manor house in the countryside, stating she had spent too long in the company of sorrow. Fiol's coronation as Empress took place a week later.

She inherited a state that had lost its pride and almost all of its military strength. In addition, due to Etrusea's refusal to hand over the ten Chiran ships docked in Vermillion City following the near-miraculous sinking of the Chiran fleet carrier Alana by Etrusean heavy bombers, they had severed all diplomatic ties with one of their most important allies. Linthan government figures openly joked about her mother's abdication, and attacks on the border intensified. These forces were alleged to be "citizen militias" by Linthe and were not officially part of the Linthan military; no formal state of war existed between the two nations.

Fiol's first act as Empress was to settle one of the most painful issues her nation had ever faced, how to grieve for those who would never return. She ordered the creation of the cemetery known as the Empty Field, the endless rows of headstones placed around a statue of Lady Freedom kneeling in tears with both hands holding up a tattered flag, bearing the words "When they ask you why you fight, witness to them the names of the twenty-five thousand who are not buried here." In dedicating the memorial to the tragic past, she promised her people a bright future.

Fiol wanted nothing less than to restore Aludra to its old borders, and the first step was retaking Linthe; Linthe's vast reserves of iron ore and the Aludran-built Kellis Steel Mill, at the time the largest in the world, would be vital if the fleet was ever to be rebuilt. While Linthe was allied with Etrusea, the Etruseans were by that point committed to Operation High Bridge, and cutting off their lifeline to Chira after the sacrifices they had made to create it would be unthinkable.

Fiol considered the Laws and Acts of Chivalry one of the key weaknesses of her nation; she admired foreign methods and the increasing abandonment of line infantry tactics in the wars further east, and was fascinated by use of early tracked vehicles in Garam and Doras. She called a few select generals to her chambers for a meeting, holding up the signed and sealed treaty as she spoke. Long ago, the Empress who had signed the Laws and Acts had declared it highest Kythen to break them; as she cast the treaty into the fireplace, Fiol said that the Chirans had built a great nation without valuing those principles. She always had the utmost respect for their achievements, and believed that by studying them, Aludra could become a power equal to them in time.

The plan she outlined was a strategy unlike any war the continent had seen before; rather than declaring her intent and meeting the opponent's army in open field, she planned to immediately seize the Linthan capital, using the rail lines that Aludra itself had laid there. While relations between the two nations were cold, they had never grown too cold for grudging trade, each dealing with private rail companies so as not to address the other directly.

Her trump card would be the armoured siege train Kulas. Already the Kulas had shown her worth in protecting critical rail lines in the North; now, heavy with additional armour from three scrapped cruisers, she would carry the newly-formed Sixth Shock Army into the heart of Gollande.

Aludrans will proudly say that the policies that were introduced to pay for restructuring the military would have destroyed a lesser country, but when Fiol spoke of making Aludra whole again she made them believe it was possible. A combination of shortages of dyes and Fiol's unusual disdain for ornamentation led to the adoption of a grey uniform ("field grey") over the old red, and the removal of the bright colour schemes and embellishments from military vehicles, in favour of increasing the weight of their functional components.

The battles on the northern border were fought as holding actions; the Linthan "militias" began to notice their enemies seemed oddly more determined, and the early gains bogged down into a stalemate, not helped by the increasingly aggressive deployments of the Kulas along the northern railroads. They reported their lack of progress to their superiors, but were simply ordered to push harder, for Aludra would soon fall in the hands of a child.

The war began on a bitterly cold winter morning with Aludran-trained partisans seizing track signals and cutting telegraph wires along the main rail line into Gollande to secure a route for the Kulas: while these attacks were noticed and in some cases even responded to, the Linthan government was not informed; it was thought to be simple sabotage by malcontents. Nobody noticed the points had all been jammed to create a line from Aludra to the capital.

Gollande was typical of the garrisoned cities of the time, a multi-layered walled fortress centred on a large citadel that acted as the national capitol, surrounded by smaller forts and a triple outer wall with cannon batteries; with almost eight hundred modern guns, the city was thought to be practically unassailable. However, its status as a key junction in the Aludran continental rail network had necessitated breaches be opened in the walls, and there was never any adequate effort made to secure these. It was assumed that the convoluted process of declaring war described in the Laws and Acts would leave time to dynamite the rails; little thought had been given to defending against an enemy who decided to simply attack.

The sight of the massive Kulas pulling into Gollande Central Station was certainly unusual, but it was assumed to be some kind of diplomatic visit; the handful of times Shri had travelled to Gollande had been by armoured train. It was not until Kulas began to train her siege battery on the capitol that the local captain of the watch raised the alarm, and by the time it had sounded incendiary shells were already striking Gollande Citadel.

Fiol had taken the step of visiting her nation's prisons, promising letters of pardon to gangsters and bank robbers if they would share the methods they had used in their exploits, ostensibly so the police could better combat them in future. In reality, she and the tacticians she worked with were assembling the first training programs dedicated to city combat. And so, when the Kulas' cars opened, they revealed soldiers armed not with rifles, but sawed-off shotguns and early submachine guns. Along with them were Alcacians in heavy armour, easily able to carry the two-hundred-pound wireless sets of the time to communicate orders from the officers still on board the Kulas, she in turn using her new command car to send and receive word from the War Council and the Empress herself back in Aludra.

The rifle companies of the city garrison, trained primarily in traditional line infantry tactics, were totally unprepared for an attack from within Gollande itself. As the capitol burned and the Kulas began to fire on their barracks, they massed in orderly units and attempted to engage the attackers in parks and open spaces, only to be driven back into the winding streets and alleys by small, elusive groups who seemed to know their every move. None realised the giant armoured periscopes raised from the Kulas were being used to relay their positions to the infantry, or that their enemies had trained in painstakingly accurate replicas of the areas they now fought in. Rifle fire was answered not just with bullets, but grenades and the dreaded and long-forbidden flamethrower. Many, finding themselves surrounded, surrendered, and sat in lines under the watchful eyes of their enemies as the battle raged on into the night; by dawn, the city had fallen. The survivors of the inferno in the capitol building who had mocked Shri dio Alud's abdication were summarily executed, while the remainder were spared to stand trial in Aludra.

As the population of the city emerged fearfully from cellars and boltholes, expecting to meet an army drunk on victory and intent on plunder, they instead found a highly disciplined force led by Commander Tani di Alud, a former chief of Alurna's police known as the one-eyed lioness.

News of this shattering victory let to triumphant displays in Alurna, and support for the war soared. The morning bought one of the most ferocious artillery bombardments in history on the Linthan lines at the northern border, followed by a full-scale breakout by Aludran forces aimed at seizing and fortifying the rail line to Gollande. Aludran aircraft harassed Etrusean planes straying too close to the battle lines, a pattern that would repeat throughout the war; not realising what was happening, the Etruseans put this down to an attempt to interfere with High Bridge out of spite.

The operation to secure the rail lines and subsequent construction of fortifications gave the remaining cities some time to organise; with the Council of Ministers either dead or captive, overall leadership eventually fell to General Isadora Rhiel, the fortress-city of Janek serving as her new capital. While Rhiel had only scattered reports of what had happened in Gollande, her first order was to dynamite all rail lines leading to the remaining cities from the capital.

It was almost a week before the Aludran offensive began in earnest with an attack on the trench lines that had been constructed south of the city of Lons, centred on a line of lumbering tanks the Aludrans had secretly purchased from Garam and supported by all seven of Aludra's Air Destroyers. While the Lons garrison and elements of the Linthan army sent to reinforce them managed to knock out three of the tanks and another six broke down before reaching the trench line, their line was broken and they were forced to withdraw in the face of a massive advance by Aludran infantry and cavalry.

A very well-known propaganda postcard from this time shows a dramatic image of General Keri di Alud on a rearing horse on a hilltop with her sabre raised, ordering the Fourth Guards Cavalry forward with the Air Destroyer Perkunas behind her. An Air Destroyer supporting a cavalry charge was unheard of at the time.

Perkunas was instrumental in the attack on Lons fortress; the giant Air Destroyer, twice the size of the others, had been rebuilt to carry bombs, with her dorsal armament for fighting other Air Destroyers completely removed and her elegantly carved exterior changed to slab-sided armour plates. The use of Air Destroyers for ground attack was common in the east, but Perkunas was the first to be built exclusively for such missions.

Rhiel was soon faced with news that Lons had fallen and the critical city of Hanet had surrendered without a fight. She toured the remaining cities to give speeches, still limping from a failed assassination attempt by increasingly bold Aludran loyalists, and had Janek's heavy artillery redistributed to the Southern cities, forming a fortified line twenty-eight miles wide to meet the Aludran advance. Though a skilled commander, she was a notoriously poor diplomat, and was angered as the surrounding former Aludran states ignored her statements that they would surely be next if Linthe was to fall and refused to assist in the defence of Janek.

The Aludran advance flowed outwards, taking the now isolated fortress of Kessel and forming a continuous front that reached from the western border all the way to Gollande; ferocious battles took place in the towns along the eastern edge as Rhiel struggled to prevent the Aludran forces encircling and attacking Janek from the undefended north. She won a brief respite when a group of saboteurs managed to severely damage the Perkunas with demolition charges while she was fuelling at Hanet, delaying the Aludran advance long enough for Rhiel's troops to destroy the bridges over the Vamar river. This would force the Aludrans to meet her defence line head on, or risk a suicidal fording of Vamar while it was in full flood.

Fiol sent a party of negotiators to Janek to speak with Rhiel; ostensibly to discuss terms for a ceasefire, though in reality the Empress was more interested in finding out about her opponent. Rhiel, sensing a ruse, ordered that the party be blindfolded to prevent them examining the defence lines; they reported back that she seemed to have little plan beyond holding the city. In all of history, no attacker had ever breached the fortress of Janek, and it was said the citadel itself was impregnable.

The Janek Offensive began a month later, and was one of the bloodiest battles to date, Rhiel proving once again to be a skilled and tenacious leader. For the first time, fixed-wing aircraft participated in the fighting, rooting out Linthan positions as the Aludran army advanced under cover of some two thousand artillery guns. The battle raged for six weeks, finally ending in vicious hand-to-hand combat inside Citadel Janek itself, breached by the wreckage of the Perkunas which had been shot down four days earlier.

Though run through with a cutlass, Isadora Rhiel survived the battle; she was taken to a hospital in Gollande. She would claim for the rest of her life that she signed the authorisation of surrender while delirious, but most believe the Aludran account that she did so upon seeing the people of Gollande thriving under Aludran rule; this certainly matches pre-war accounts of her animosity toward the Linthan government, her position in Janek being closer to exile than promotion. Rhiel ultimately accepted a position as governess of Gollande, with Tani di Alud as the commander of her city guard, and later also her wife.

News of the fall of Janek spread across the other territories, most of which quickly accepted Aludran rule and were incorporated into the empire; within four years, Mihas in the north had been taken back from Garam, and Aludra's borders spread as they had in the Golden Age. Rationing in Alurna had long ended, and Aludra's first new battleship, Empress Viola, was launched six days after the campaign concluded. Fiol, however, was already looking west, desiring to retake the Strait of Huron from the Chirans.

The Aludran Reformation War is regarded as the first truly modern war fought by the continental powers. The technology of destruction surged forward; telegraph lines, wireless radio, railways, mass production and new weapons and tactics were all put to the test, and the great fortresses of old were shown once and for all to be obsolete.

Some had questioned the account of Fiol's tactical genius, arguing that it obscured the works of the many who had advised her and contributed to her strategies and campaigns, to create a myth. Almost a century later when the Aludran throne was being refurbished, a secret compartment was found beneath the seat containing an engraved steel plate. Written on it were the names, engraved as signatures with seals, of the tacticians and advisors Fiol had worked with, certifying their acceptance of obscurity for the good of Aludra. On the other side were Fiol's requests to her descendants, to witness these names to the people, "Look over my city and my land, and the wonders I know you have added to it, and tell them of these patriots who, in their unbounded nobility, accepted that history not know them until today."

Like the Great Urukan of Garam, the name of Fiol dio Alud brings forth many feelings today; she represented the death of what some considered a more civilised age, and her ruthlessness made her easy for history to judge as cruel. Her refusal to sack conquered cities and the discipline of her forces earned her grudging respect even among her enemies. But to Aludrans, she is and probably always will be celebrated as one of the greatest leaders who ever lived, and as someone who in Aludra's darkest hour believed in a country that had almost forgotten how to believe in itself.

Glossary

Air Destroyer: General term used for any military Leviship, though sometimes "Air Cruiser" is used for smaller vessels.

Alcacia (Alcacian Isles): Relatively small nation of giant horse-people (a two-sex species) averaging eleven to fifteen feet tall, located across the ocean south of Etrusea, within the Sea of Clouds. The term "Alcacian" is generally used as a species name, regardless of the ethnicity of the people in question. Aludra and Etrusea both have substantial Alcacian populations. Aludra's are mainly descended from the mercenary company led by Skadi Skuldsdottir who fought in the battles that bought the entire territory of modern Aludra under the control of the House of Alud and ended the Aludran Dark Age. Alcacia has little interest in continental politics, and is allied to Etrusea.

Aludra (Aludran Empire): Medium-sized nation predominantly of cats (an all-female species) between Basram to the east, Garam to the north and the great forests surrounding the Chiran Shield Wall to the west. Aludra is a monarchy, and for centuries has been led by the noble House of Alud, a line of white Persians; prior to being the name of the country, it was the name of the city-state they ruled. The capital is Alurna.

Basram (Grand Duchy of Basram): Medium-sized nation predominantly of dogs (a two-sex species) and squirrels (an all-female species) between Aludra to the west, Garam to the north and Etrusea to the east. Basram maintains its ancient codes of knightly honour as a key part of its society; the old knightly orders survived by investing much of their wealth in the industrial revolution, becoming entities similar to corporations in the process.

Chira (Chiran Dominion): Large nation to the far west of the continent of many connected islands surrounded by a ring-shaped crater boundary known as the Shield Wall that isolated it for much of history. Primarily consists of roughly equal numbers of three all-female species; genets, lemurs and red pandas. In Fiol's time, the Chirans were enormously technically advanced compared to the continental powers. A member of the Triple Alliance.

Continental powers: Term understood to include the major powers west of Namir, with the exception of Dion and Chira, which are both isolated by geographical features.

di: Diminutive form of the old Aludran word "of," best translated as "belonging to." Nobles who swear an oath of loyalty to the House of Alud replace their family name with "di Alud." Multiple people with the same first name usually result in some epithet or title being added after their first name to distinguish them.

dio: Superior "of" in old Aludran which is close to the normal meaning of the word. "dio Alud" is the title of those who are related to the House of Alud by blood or marriage.

Dion (Kingdom of Dion, pronounced de-own): Moderately sized nation of many all-female species to the far north. Primarily located within a colossal ring-shaped mountain range averaging seven miles high known as the World's Edge, formed by a circular deposit of Levistone. The source of most of the Levistone used by the continental powers, which primarily drifts towards Etrusea. A member of the Triple Alliance.

Delfi (Delfi Commonwealth): Tiny nation east of Etrusea consisting almost exclusively of raccoons (a two-sex species); in some countries "Delfi" is used as the species term for raccoons, though this is rare. Effectively a part of Etrusea for its entire existence, it is officially a protectorate.

Doras (Doran Alliance): Medium-sized nation primarily of lizards (an all-female species) south of Garam and some distance east of Etrusea. Briefly part of Etrusea during the Etrusean War of Unification, but broke away almost immediately.

East: In almost all documents related to continental history, the term "east" stops at the western border of Namir, with "far east" referring to the nations south of it. At the time, Rucelia, on the other side of Namir, was only known from stories by travelling merchants and Kosmaril refugees, very few of which were taken particularly seriously.

Etrusea (Etrusean Federal Commonwealth): Large and extremely diverse nation located on the Lorna River between Basram to the west, Garam to the north, Brecht to the northeast and Delfi to the east, with no majority species. Formerly a monarchy ruled by an Empress, when the last Empress died leaving no heir it became the world's only democracy. The capital, Vermillion City, is an enormous agglomeration of many urban areas created largely for political reasons at a time when there was a threat of civil war. A member of the Triple Alliance.

Garam (Unified Territories of Garam): Immense and constantly shifting territory of many cultures and peoples, the area called Garam has historically been many countries; in Fiol's time, however, it was remarkably close to its modern borders, reaching from the edge of Namir up over Brecht to cover the land between Basram and Aludra and the World's Edge. Often joked to be ruled by a principle of "democratic apathy" wherein the government survives by not offending any one group sufficiently for them to overthrow it.

It: Entity in ancient Aludran mythology which bought suffering into the world. It is never shown as anything but a mass of darkness, and has no name. It was killed by the hunt goddess Alysa and It's body fell upon the mortal world, spreading darkness and the chill of winter across it. Modern scholars generally hold this to be an ancient verbal account based on the impact of the comet Nemesis eighteen thousand years ago.

Kulas: Sun goddess in ancient Aludran mythology who spread light across the darkened world after It had been slain.

Kythen: Ancient Aludran word meaning "forbidden." The Kythen Order, the world's oldest legal document, is a diagram of crimes, dividing them into ten by severity; slight (two types), transgression (one type), forgivable crime (three types), unforgivable crime (three types) and finally the highest Kythen, "abomination," which regards the perpetrator as not even a thinking being.

Lady Freedom: Depiction of the Aludran ideal of a free nation. She is usually shown as a middle-aged white Persian in a flowing dress, breastplate and a tall military cap with a feather, holding a flag in one hand and an anchor in the other, with a sheathed sword at her side.

Laurent Abyss: Oceanic trench south of Aludra and Basram, averaging over three miles in depth and including some of the deepest known parts of the ocean.

Linthe (Republic of Linthe, pronounced lin-thay): Breakaway state that seceded from Aludra following the Eight Year War. Diverse population, including many from both Basram and Aludra.

Namir: Vast expanse of poisonous black sand dividing the single main continent in two, created by the impact of the comet Nemesis. Once home to the ancient empire known as Mir (the world), "na" is a generic modifier in that language, making the name "the altered world." The former extent of Mir is shown by the fact that the desert is also called Namir in Rucelia.

Operation High Bridge: Etrusean airlift operation to Chira following a massive tidal wave that cut off Western Chira; it cemented diplomatic relations between the one-time enemies, and led to the founding of the Triple Alliance.

Perkunas: Mighty goddess of the sky in ancient Aludran mythology; also referenced as a similar male deity in Basram pagan beliefs. It is unclear which came first.

Rucelia (Rucelian Union of Soviet Socialist Republics): Gigantic nation accounting for over half the world's population on the eastern side of Namir, diverse but with large populations of rats (a two-sex species) and mice (an all-female species). Unknown in Fiol's time save from stories, due to the near-impossibility of crossing Namir or navigating the Sea of Clouds, though refugees from the war that created the Rucelian Union are present in most nations.

sen: Modern Aludran "of," used by other noble families to replicate the oath-swearing originally popularised by the House of Alud during the Aludran Dark Age.

Shirai: Chiran term for the gates through which souls are believed to pass between worlds, also used to refer to the nine states of the Chiran Dominion, eight of which contain Shirai. This term was mistakenly believed to be the name of their country for a time by the continental powers.

Strait of Huron: Critical shipping lane between Chira and Etrusea, bordered to the south and west by the Sea of Clouds, a great expanse of never-shifting mist created by undersea vents charging water with Levistone. Defined by the Karwen and Lahayat isles, home to civilisations of all-female otters. Following Fiol's time, almost constantly contested by the Chiran and Aludran navies, leading to an unprecedented naval arms race.

Urukan: Religious figure among the nomadic tribes of Garam, once a mighty leader of them, and believed to be reincarnated each generation.

So I've just posted a newer WIP of the "our dreams" panel sequence (replaced the old one rather than uploading it new), hope it's looking good. Having PC issues that have kept me from doing much work, I do have one that's pretty close to completion now but I need a little time to get it looking presentable.

Would any of you be interested in learning more about the history of the world this all takes place in? I have a pretty big thing on Aludran history leading to their conflict with Chira I could post as a journal if anyone wants to read it.