Part of a series on golden ages
Why the lore dump? Am I doing anything with all this? Yes and no; no because there's currently nothing to be done with it; yes because it's just part of the grind and any little bit of making up how this world works and what's its history will serve to better write whatever I do write, including very mundane stuff. It is the long haul and also serves for me to maintain a semi-healthy attention span, a resource that's been under constant attack globally for longer than I've been alive.

Zeetia referred once to the last of the three great dynastic eras of the reigns of the sacred Phras – who at the time, reigned from the prosperous city-states of the fertile Uwus valley. After this era was brutally ended by the happenings of the blood moon, and the weakened, fragmented Zeetian kingdom fell, only its desertic south, which ironically even the Phras feared as a land of death, spirits and monstrous creatures, would retain the old and disused name through history.

Life in this vast land, in the arid desert bordering the endless Fungus jungle, has always been tougher than up north in the Waterland or in the valley of the Uwus, but perhaps for this very reason, did a few ambitious people rise and leave their mark on the world. Do they not say for instance that this inhospitable place was for centuries the home of the mysterious Wookash people, of whom nothing remains but their strange anthill-like cities?

Before we start speculating wildly about what fantastical things the mute landscape may conceal, let's take a look at the main nomadic people who dominated its surface for centuries. When the lupine and canine invasions of the first Blood Moon poured into the ancient Zeetian kingdom, hyenas, some of the most feared scavengers of the times, elected to remain in the rocky steppes down south; it was tacitely agreed that further north, the densely populated Uwus valley wouldn't be easily conquered by rather small hordes, whereas the young Pathusian kingdom that now occupied this favorable environment would avoid trying to militarily subdue the hostile and barren land down south, and this status quo would remain in place for over a thousand years.

In stark contrast with most other civilisations at the time, the fierce Zeetian knights took for sigils, rather than vivid colors and the image of familiar objects, animals or symbols, abstract shapes inspired by those they observed on the backs of spiders of the orb-weaver variety, extremely large specimens of which have been spotted on the jungle's borders, leading to speculation on how huge the oxygen-rich environment, dormant under the thick fungal canopy, would allow insects to grow. But the system worked in an identical way to every other code of heraldry, as only they who were entrusted in this complex world of shapes could recognize from one glance at the shield, which of the hundreds of clans they were dealing with. In this regard, and wearing to battle insectoid helms, they were similar to their larger lupine cousins. But unlike Wolfdom, the realm of the Weaver queens wouldn't remain closed on itself as a predatory pariah. By mere diplomacy and at war, they would seek marriages with Pathusian and Welden nobility, slowly spreading the reach of their matriarcal system. They say that the tradition of jousts at weddings is based on these ritualised hand to hand combats serving the purpose of determining who, of the female Zeetian or the male Pathusian, would hold the power and retain the lands in these unions.

Many factors contributed to the downfall of this system, not the least mere numbers of population, but the last nail in the coffin was that ridiculous time when lacking a female heir, the queen of Zeetia found herself forced to marry her only son to Theresa, first ruler of Pathusia to wear an imperial crown. From this point on, Pathusian ambitions over the steppes would only expand until full annexation, a very slow process that leaves to this day, visible remnants of a bygone era.