Part 16 of the Palaververse: Ceratos · 2:18am Jan 15th, 2016
One more week, one more nation of the Palaververse written up. This time, let's move as far south-east as the known world can accommodate and look at the Ceratos Empire!
Credit goes to themaskedferret for hammering these into legible shapes and hammering necessary details out of my dozy skull, as always. If there's anything you'd like to see elaborated on, ask away in the comments, and if there's a particular subject you'd like to see covered in the next post, leave a nomination for it.
Seeing as how all of the major nations and players of the world have been crossed off the list, it only seems reasonable to open Fallen Antlertis up for nominations. But I can't imagine anyone being interested in them, really.
Past the awesome-tacular picture, rhinos and associates!
Sail east of Dactylia, or south from the Burning Mountains, and as the seas turn turquoise under a tropical sun, you’ll find the last, smallest, and most remote of the three continents comprising the civilised world.
From an outside perspective, Ceratos seems to have remained largely untouched by the rest of the world, existing in its own glorious isolation. Stories and sailor’s tales from those few who visit pile up and mix with speculation and exaggeration to become the most fantastical of myths. Speak of the continent, and most will know it as the home of the rhinoceros people, united under one great empire. A few others will also know of its vast farmlands and population, all managed by an even vaster bureaucracy under the nose of an imperial court. Others will imagine the decadence and arrogance of that court and the pampered Emperor it serves, imagining themselves to be rightful rulers of all the world in spite of actively shunning it every chance they get. Some will dream of the land’s alien customs, its inscrutable scholars and warriors, and the small tapir population that exist in servitude to their rhinoceros overlords. Others yet will dream with avarice of its riches and the untapped resources waiting within, and its exotic marvels glimpsed only rarely in the markets of home. Trees whose wood can be fire-hardened to become as solid as stone, vases and jewellery crafted and enchanted using techniques unknown to anyone else in the world, and giant spiders which happily act as nursemaids for rhinoceros children.
From inside Ceratos itself, those who hear about these external perceptions consider them somewhat silly, spun out of vague kernels of the truth and nothing more.
Except for the bit about the spiders, which is pretty much spot-on.
Two sapient species call Ceratos home, the rhinoceros and the tapirs. Unlike other nations, the two don’t exist on a roughly equal footing, are incapable of interbreeding, and the rhinos stand above tapirs both socially and physically. Only Pachydermians exceed rhinos in stature, and an average rhino typically clocks in at half again as tall as a pony at the withers. Possessed also of a long and muscled build, rhinos possess exceptional strength and resilience along with the ability to channel magic through their prominent horns in a similar manner to unicorns. A wide variety of phenotypes exist amongst them, such as the hue of their hides, the existence of one or two horns, a smooth or wooly hide, but none of these distinctions appear to have any effect on individual talents. Rhinos make up the majority of Ceratos’s population, and have settled far and wide across the open and fertile grassland of the realm.
The roots of rhinocerous dominance in Ceratos date back to the formative years of the Ceratos Empire, which, at just under three thousand years ago, are so dated and poorly-recorded as to have become the matter of legend. Since near the very beginning of the world, it is told that misrule and anarchy reigned from coast to coast across Ceratos. All of the plains and foothills and forests were carved between a multitude of ever-squabbling warlords and small kings, drunk on their own petty cruelty and ambition, and strife and warfare were routine. Disharmony ruled, and the common peasantry cried out for deliverance.
Curiously enough, that deliverance came in what would become the imperial dynasty of Ceratos, originating in the high range of mountains in the north of Ceratos known today as the Steps to Heaven. The very highest of these mountains (and the highest in all the world), the Final Step, boasted many caverns that gave shelter to a small and persecuted kingdom. The little kingdom’s new king, Sun’s Reflection, sought an end to the chaos and strife that plagued his people and the world at large. And so he meditated, seeking wisdom on how to solve it. And when Sun’s Reflection rose from his contemplation, he had the answer.
According to Sun’s Reflection, the fundamental order of the world came from Heaven, an immaterial and celestial realm in the void beyond the stars, which governed and ran the laws underpinning reality. Seeing that mortal beings had brought disharmony to the material realm, the spirits of Heaven sought to restore the world to become an orderly and well-run mirror of Heaven itself. Sensing Sun’s Reflection’s resolve, they granted him both guidance and the responsibility of restoring the world to proper order, so that both the material and immaterial realms could be aligned once more.
While some modern Ceratosans and many in the imperial dynasty itself take this founding myth with a generous pinch of salt, it provided Sun’s Reflection and the current rulers with as decent an excuse as any to claim the title of Emperor, ruling with Heaven’s own mandate in the name of peace and unity. Once Sun’s Reflection’s warriors had subdued the other mountain kingdoms, they turned their attention to the other kingdoms running across the southerly grasslands. A large network of rivers that stemmed from the Steps to Heaven allowed for the new Emperor’s forces to launch lightning-quick raids and invasions down the length and breadth of the waterways, and the Final Step was hollowed out further and fortified against any retaliation. By the end of the first Emperor’s reign, most of the major river kingdoms had been forcefully brought under his rule, and he passed his title and duty onto his capable daughter, Empress Ocean’s Silence.
A gradual expansion out from the rivers and into the rest of Ceratos unfolded over several hundred years. Ocean’s Silence and her heirs marched out against the other petty realms, subjugating their kings and nobles by force or diplomacy, until their empire had become the dominant force in the continent. This early rule was of a feudal sort recognisable to many others in the world, with lesser nobles swearing fealty to their own kings and these kings in turn bowing to the authority of the Emperor or Empress. Hostages were taken from each conquered court’s young family members and taken to the increasingly palatial Final Step as an insurance against rebellion, and though a few rebellions flared here and there, none were able to check the empire’s progress.
Indeed, the major stumbling block for the Emperors in this era was the species they shared the continent with, the tapirs, who dwelt largely in the eastern marshes and forests and organised themselves into their own reclusive confederation of tribes. The tapirs rarely rise any higher than a pony’s belly, and their latent magics are of a considerably more subtle bent than their larger kin. Tapirs can blend into most surroundings they find themselves in, employing something between camouflage and nigh-on invisibility to keep themselves hidden from danger and unwary opponents. This talent of shifting out of the perceptions of others finds a curious extension in the sleeping world as well, with tapirs the only known beings able to decouple themselves from their sleeping minds and dreamwalk absent magical aid. This mix of talents had allowed the tapir tribes to remain safe in their marshes and forests away from prying beasts and any nearby rhino kingdoms that threatened them, and to remain aware of potential encroaching malign spirits even as they dreamt. They had remained largely aloof from any neighbouring rhino kingdoms, and were content to keep to their own devices.
The tapir tribes, led by High Chieftain Tourmaline, found their lands in the path of the advancing empire, and any Emperor with a mandate to bring the entire world to heel under their authority could have hardly left them free without imperiling their mandate to rule. The tapir tribes politely declined to be brought into the Empire’s fold, and when Emperor Autumn’s Heart aggressively pressed the issue, they less politely sent back his diplomat after driving him mad with waking nightmares.
A long and savage guerrilla war ensued, with rhino armies struggling to pierce the inhospital terrain in which the tapirs dwelled but invariably winning any pitched engagements they were able to force. Imperial sorcerers scoured vast areas of the forests and marshes with storms of arcane fire, and in return, tapirs crept into their camps for covert wetwork and plagued any oncoming forces with nightmares and madness. Autumn’s Heart himself fell prey to tapir magic, when he was found dead in his camp-bed after having been struck dead with sheer terror while he slept.
Rather than denting the empire’s resolve, Autumn’s Heart’s death instead spurred his young successor, Empress Star’s Shine, onto new depths of ferocity, and the war ground on. It ended after two decades with Tourmaline reluctantly agreeing to swear fealty to Star’s Shine. A degree of autonomy was guaranteed for the remaining tribes in their territories, many of which had been laid to waste by the war.An exodus from these new wastelands followed, with many tapirs reluctantly moving to rhino settlements and cities. They invariably became an underclass wherever they went, and only a few were able to achieve respectable employment by peddling good dreams to their overlords. Their natural talents made them prime suspects whenever theft or nightmares occurred. Some of those suspicions may have been justified — the tapirs certainly held no love for their conquerors and many were all too happy to undermine them in small ways — but for the most part, the displaced populations suffered in slum conditions, working the most menial of labour and being treated with mixed parts distrust and disdain.
Regardless, the tapir conquest marked the greatest and among the last of the hurdles for the early Empire, and a decade after its conclusion, Star’s Shine found herself the undisputed sovereign of a continent.
The outside world awaited, with a few patchwork tales of the barbarian species who dwelt there brought back to the imperial court by the bolder traders. But before any explorers could be funded or grand expeditions planned so that the imperial mandate could extend past Ceratos’s shores, the continent they already had demanded pacifying and management. Many conquered lords now began to plot against their overlords, freed from the burdens of war taxes or any focus on a common enemy. A hodge-podge of different rules and customs across the realm made any sort of central administration a nightmare, and internecine squabbling between the lords made the lives of many peasants a misery. The whole land simmered with potential uprisings and creaked under inefficiency, and it all demanded correcting.
Star’s Shine set about the task with the same rigorousness and ruthlessness with which she’d ended the tapir conquest. A bureaucracy had organically developed alongside the court to tax and administer the conquered lands, and that makeshift bureaucracy found itself exalted to become a core pillar of the imperial regime. Distrustful of most of her nobles, Star’s Shine saw that elevation to the ranks of the bureaucrats was a matter of merit, with a rigorous system of exams established to select the worthiest candidates, regardless of their social rank. Those who passed found themselves charged with tax collection, record-keeping, teaching, maintaining law and order, and arbitrating legal disputes based on a new and universal code of law for the whole empire.
Several nobles voiced their objections to these reforms, and after Star’s Shine had addressed their concerns through her usual technique of gratuitous and impression-leaving violence, she turned her attentions to properly knitting the realm together under her rule. The taxation that began to flow in from the first generation of bureaucrats saw to the creation of a vast road network and countless canals, connecting the empire together in a great spider’s web and thus facilitating internal trade, travel, and the movements of the wandering magistrates.
Star’s Shine passed away shortly after construction on the roads and canals began, leaving behind a massively different Ceratos from when she found it. Many nobles and commoners, similarly disgruntled at the over-riding of their traditional codes and customs, hoped for Star's Shine’s daughter, Petal’s Blush, to be open to repeal. Unfortunately for them, where Star’s Shine had been a steel gauntlet, Petal’s Blush proved to be a velvet glove wrapped around a similarly uncompromising steel gauntlet. She continued the efforts of her mother, but also sought to bind the empire together culturally, and turn the swathe of varying states into something approximating unified.
This took all forms. Jade mined from the Steps to Heaven was used to ornament silk robes of a hundred different designs from a hundred different kingdoms, and Petal’s Blush wore them all in succession over a protracted period of holding court and encouraged other noblerhinos to adopt the different styles. Trade agreements between different nobles were fostered and arbitrated by Petal’s Blush herself, in order to bind the different factions together by their pursestrings if goodwill proved insufficient. The Empress publically delighted in seeing all her Empire had to offer, and soon rhinos from across the land attended her court to show off the marvels of their home. The Final Step became the cultural nexus of the empire.
One of the most curious of the presented treasures were the goliath spiders, native to a small and forested island off the coast. The huge and hairy arachnids, at least the size of a rhino themselves when fully-grown, were among the sweetest-natured creatures in existence, and devoured plantains and root vegetables instead of other creatures. Their sociability and degree of intelligence was demonstrated by the spider presented to Petal’s Blush, who spun a silk jersey for her there and then in the middle of the court, and then spelled out words using strands of its own silk.
Although ‘HAv A kEEp-WArm. I mAd It WIF mY bUM’ was widely considered to be a fairly crap introductory message and the spelling and grammar was taken as a sign that the spiders’ intelligence would never amount to much and wasn’t worth fussing over, Petal’s Blush was enamoured regardless. She kept the spider and insisted that a breeding pair be brought to the palace. Soon, goliath spiders were in hot demand amongst the nobility and upper classes, with many happily using the gentle and intelligent spiders as nursemaids for their children. The spiders themselves seemed perfectly content wherever they ended up, though their insistence on weaving silk apparel to keep their charges cosy nearly sparked a collapse of other silk industries. Regardless, they were one success amongst many introduced at Petal’s Blush’s court, and the cultural unity she and her descendants helped foster mitigated the worst of the divisions that followed.
Dissent continued to rumble away in the background, with many rhinos and tapirs still resenting their imperial masters and foreign laws, and often flared into violent life whenever the imperial court seemed especially complacent. The increasing demands of everyday management and commanding the bureaucracy took up more and more of the attention of the Emperors, with many simply unable to stir from the Final Step due to their workload. Greater powers and independence were granted to their generals as a result, authorising them to crush any insurrections that threatened the realm’s order. Generalship typically went to the foremost nobles and those who could raise their own armies from amongst the warrior classes of the empire. As time went by and the Emperors were obliged to bury themselves ever-deeper into the court, the foremost of these generals were anointed as the Great Marshals, empowered to manage military affairs without the Emperor’s direct oversight.
The most notorious of the Great Marshals, Fire’s Hunger, was appointed to his post just under one-and-a-half thousand years ago, and single-hoovedly ushered in a new era for the Ceratos Empire. The disinterested and spoiled Emperor Stone’s Memory was more interested in the pleasures available to his position than the responsibilities that went with them, and under his misrule, corruption festered and went unchecked amongst the bureaucracy. The increasingly heavy taxation that funded Stone’s Memory’s pleasures placed greater pressure on all classes in the empire, and social unrest and instability became the norm outwith the gilded walls of the Final Step.
Fire’s Hunger, a keen believer in the imperial project as well as a rhino that practically bled ambition through his pores, itched to bring the Empire back on track and saw securing the dominance of the army as the only way to achieve that goal. The Emperors may be destined to lead the world to perfection, but a figurehead could be placed at the head of the project just as well. Fire’s Hunger schemed with many other lords away from the Final Step, promising them the return of old privileges and increased local autonomy in return for their support. Mass attacks by curiously well-disciplined groups of bandits were staged shortly after throughout the realm, intercepting and killing many of the imperial magistrates and wandering judges. News of the attacks filtered throughout the realm, feeding the fires of panic and finally drawing even Stone’s Memory out of his indolence.
The attacks were the last straw for many of the more outward-looking members of the imperial court, and they appealed to Fire’s Hunger to help calm the situation. With as much legitimacy as he could hope for in the short-term, Fire’s Hunger marched an army to the gates of the Final Step and entered to speak privately with Stone’s Memory. Once in private, Fire’s Hunger cheerfully informed his Emperor that his misrule was clearly a sign of Heaven withdrawing its mandate in disgust, and that if he cared anything for the good of the realm — or his continued survival, for that matter — he was advised to abdicate in favour of his more tractable younger brother.
Absent any defence but a few purely ceremonial household guards and his ex-nanny spider, Stone’s Memory complied and was bundled off shortly after to a remote island for the good of his health. His brother, Word’s Import, was just turning three and discovering all the joys of applying ink to paper, and his first act as Emperor was to happily scrawl his name on the decree passing supreme temporal authority over the empire to the Great Marshal, so that the Emperors need not be distracted from more lofty concerns.
The Great Marshals now ruled in Ceratos, and the pacts Fire’s Hunger had made with the realm’s lords were duly honoured. The old network of feudal ties reasserted itself after being suppressed by the imperial bureaucracy, and Fire’s Hunger immediately curbed the powers of the bureaucracy. Tax collection and record-keeping would be their only responsibilities on behalf of the state, with administration and executing justice falling firmly back into the hooves of the traditional aristocracy. The Emperor was enshrined as a mere figurehead, sovereign only in theory and at the mercy of their Great Marshal for all practical intents and purposes.
Fire’s Hunger himself had long since acquired rough maps of Ungula and Dactylia from wandering trades, and began drawing up plans for an expeditionary force to snake around the Burning Mountains and make its way to the Ungulan east. Bringing order to the outside world would have to start somewhere after all, and only feathered barbarians were believed to dwell there, no match for any rhino.
However, Fire’s Hunger was killed by a heart-attack in his sleep shortly after his great expeditionary force was outfitted and set sail. A magical nightmare was suspected to be the cause. Shortly afterwards, a tapir, Taipan, took responsibility for the deed, claiming that she’d discovered that the prior bandit attacks had been staged by the Great Marshal and that her family had been amongst the victims. Her claims were denied and suppressed, Taipan herself was killed, and another crackdown on the tapirs ensued. The turmoil of succession followed, as claimant after claimant vied for the position of Great Marshal, and the realm burned for several years before the matter was resolved.
Fire’s Hunger’s great fleet was all but forgotten in the turmoil, and was never seen again in any case. Some speculated that it had done its job perfectly and had made landfall in eastern Ungula, and that it was sheerest misfortune that eastern Ungula happened to consist of Corva. Others say that the fleet was caught by a storm in the Burning Mountains, and sank without a trace in the poisonous waters there. And others say that the fleet blew off course, or deliberately altered its course, and sailed into the eastern Black Ocean, beyond all sight or knowledge or hope of recovery.
The succession war offered a prelude of the Ceratos Empire for the next millennium or so, where dynasties of Great Marshals ruled for a few generations and then invariably fell apart in succession-related strife. The Empire fractured under the regular warring, and many stories and legends from the period recount the attempts of the rhinoceros and tapir peasantry to spare themselves from the strife. Wandering orders of warrior-ascetics emerged from the peasantry in defiance of the old warrior classes, formulating their own martial arts and means of using magic, emphasising unarmed techniques strengthened or otherwise enhanced with magical power. Tensions between the rhinoceros and tapir populations fell to an all-time low at this point, as a common subject of disgruntlement in the form of the realm’s strife presented itself. The often-capricious and changeable justice meted out by their superiors didn’t assist matters much either, and the old era of direct rule by the Emperors came to be commonly regarded as something of a golden age. A twenty-year interlude where the laws of physics became considerably more pliable than before didn’t help matters much either, though it has been recognised in fair hindsight that the source of the chaos in Ungula was probably beyond the Great Marshal’s control.
Cultural and technological progress continued to be made in the empire, though it was often interrupted by the spates of civil warfare, and the court at the Final Step retained its old position as a hub for the empire’s culture and learning. The Emperors offered patronage and support to worthy scholars and artists, and one such act of patronage by Empress Harvest’s Mercy helped bring about the invention of the golem by rhino scholars. Animated constructs given some small amount of intelligence by a complex network of refined and enchanted jade beads, jade-and-terracotta golems soon became a common sight in all walks of life, typically performing menial labour or running humdrum calculations or other automatable tasks. The Great Marshal of the time, Tide’s Constance, even eagerly commissioned a design for military use, essentially consisting of a walking stump with a pike strapped to the top, deployed in blocks of thousands at a time. They became a mainstay of rhino armies in short order, and bow-armed golems were quick to join the ranks as well.
In the end, the outside world rung the death knell for the rule of the Great Marshals, though it at least had the courtesy to do it over several centuries rather than all at once. The first tentative probing by the Kingdom of Asinia’s merchants into the region had revealed Ceratos’s existence to them over eight hundred years before the present day, though it would take another fifty years before consistent attempts to cross the sea and trade became a constant. These initial peaceful forays were met with a patrician kind of scorn by the empire, who still held to the imperial mindset that the outside world was a barbarian wasteland in need of civilising. None of the Asinian’s goods especially excited them, and they were reluctant to part with any of their own treasures. The Great Marshals were also reluctant to let any outside influences give an unexpected advantage to any particular faction in the realm’s internal conflicts. Merchants were permitted to land, but only under a great deal of observation and within a small and controlled space in particular ports.
These restrictions proved onerous for the Asinians, and as their colonies in the Asinial Main east of Dactylia began to flourish, their efforts became increasingly insistent. The empire wasn’t as easy a nut to crack as the Fractious Lands, however, and a navy of junks commanded by the coastal lords was able to police their own waters. Some of these same lords arranged back-door deals with the Asinians, however, and conducted their own trade under the Great Marshal’s nose. Their appetite whetted, the Asinian efforts increased, and the patience of the Great Marshals wore increasingly thin.
The arrival of the Asinian merchants inevitably brought their pirates as well, like sharks smelling blood in the water, and several raids along the coastline liberated Ceratosan treasures regardless. Among these were a breeding population of goliath spiders, whose silk-producing capabilities made them immediate favourites of those aboard sailing ships with rigging, ropes, and sails to keep in good repair. To this day, goliath spiders can be found in many ship holds on the high seas, churning out silk for ship repairs and knitting silk jerseys to try and keep their crewmates cosy. A couple of golems were also liberated by the pirates, and though their ultimate destination is still unknown, most accounts of their exchanges peter off somewhere amidst the core territories of the former Capric Empire.
The raids unsettled the Great Marshal and many of the lords, and outraged many of the population who still firmly believed in Ceratosan supremacy. Couldn’t their lords have prevented this? The whole affair bred more strife and almost sparked another war of succession for the Great Marshalhood, and when the pirate vessels proved capable of running rings around the lumbering junks, the raids continued.
But the true test would come three centuries before the present day, when strife on distant Ungula brought a resurgent Capra and Asinia to war. In the aftermath, Asinia’s desperation for wealth in order to rebuild drove it to every overseas market it could reach, and its reformed and modern Merchant Fleet gave it a great deal of leverage. This coincided with the death of a childless Great Marshal, Forest’s Tumult, and warfare between claimants once again swept across Ceratos. Asinial ships were able to strong-arm isolated coastal rulers into compliance, threatening their other sources of trade if they failed to comply, and the treaties resulting from these threats spawned several different treaty ports on the edges of Ceratos, privileged towards the Asinian merchants. With the military government in chaos and foreign merchants strangling the shoreline, it was a dark hour for the Ceratos Empire, and the whole edifice could have collapsed had events gone differently.
However, in that hour, when the common subjects of the empire had lost all confidence in their Great Marshal, they turned to the stories of the golden age and their figureheads. Calls for the Emperor to take control rang out and redoubled with each passing day. And the then-Emperor, Thunder’s Call, was all too happy to indulge them.
A peasant’s rebellion, aided by orders of warrior-ascetics and several minor lords who could tell which way the wind was blowing, clashed with the claimants for the Great Marshalhood and defeated and killed them on the field, one after the other. As the last claimant was left standing, one River’s Whispering, the remaining pro-Marshal lords rallied around them in an effort to preserve their power and standing.
It was for naught. Thunder’s Call himself left the Final Step and took the field, and many of the Great Marshal’s weary soldiers deserted him in the face of their Emperor. River’s Whispering was stripped of his rank, banished directly into the depths of the ocean, and in a storm of warfare that had lasted less than a year, it was over. The imperial administration had returned.
Their attempts to re-secure their rule down the subsequent centuries was met with resistance. The imperial bureaucracy took time to get back up to proper strength, and the remaining noble dynasties who had enjoyed over a millennium of power and autonomy were reluctant to concede it. More strife and no small amount of savage repression followed in the subsequent years, and many of those who had fought for Thunder’s Call in the hopes of securing peace were left badly disillusioned. But peace of a sort was gradually and painstakingly re-knit. Wandering magistrates and justices resumed their rounds on the high roads, and the delegation indulged in by the Emperors with regards to both their bureaucracy and their military was decidedly more cautious than it had once been.
The treaty ports persisted, despite being an ongoing humiliation for the empire. The Asinians were too entrenched, and the wrath of the Merchant Fleet wasn’t something to be courted lightly. Appointed governors of the coastal provinces continued to receive mixed parts bribes and threats from the donkeys, and so the ports remained open in spite of aggravation in the court. But the silver lining of access to the rest of the world’s knowledge was grudgingly acknowledged, and new ideas and treatises and schematics began to flow into the empire. Rhino and tapirs began to flow out as well, with some seeking their own fortunes outwith the empire. Others, including many of the tapirs, went forth at the behest of the Emperors as part of a new spy network, so that the outside world wouldn’t catch them off-guard again.
In the present day, internal peace has persisted now for generations. The weapons and barding of the remaining warrior classes have long grown rusty, with many now turning their attention to drilling with and commanding regiments of increasingly-sophisticated golems. The vast majority of rhinos still work the land and farm the fertile grasslands, as the early use of golem labour meant that an exodus to the cities in order to staff the new factories never occurred in any large-scale style. The traditional aristocracy cling on still, managing and overseeing the day-to-day affairs of their land in the countryside. Wandering magistrates pass through each village on strict schedules, administering the law and assessing promising youngsters for teaching and examination for the bureaucracy. The long peace, the vast swathes of fertile land, and the glut of new manufactured goods means that most peasants can survive comfortably in comparison to previous eras, though ongoing high taxation by the imperial court leaves many of them without access to luxuries and foreign goods. The nobles, by contrast, enjoy all the silk clothes, traditional delicacies, and golem servants their inherited fortunes can afford them, and a few have even acquired foreign goods such as Asinial mechanisms, Equestrian spell designs, and literature and poetry from far and wide. In the swamplands and forests, the tapir tribes keep their own counsel, in spite of attempts to draw them closer into the empire’s fold. Disgruntlement and suspicion remains high between the rhinos and tapirs, but their pooled efforts in the conflicts of the previous ages means that progress of a sort has been made. In the cities, artisans and merchants flock to mingle and peddle their wares, and factories manned by golems have begun to churn out goods on new-fangled assembly lines. Goliath spiders, wherever they may be, continue to unconditionally love and fuss over everyone they meet.
And in a palace made from a hollowed-out mountain, where Sun’s Reflection once allegedly communed with heaven, his distant descendant, Spring’s Promise, sits and ponders over maps, over supply lines, and report after report from abroad.
The world may be a greater and more dangerous place than the first Emperors reckoned. Powerful and modern nations sprawl all around, and Asinia remains as much of a nuisance as it has always done. Their shield on their home continent, a nation ruled by an alicorn, has apparently been trying to curb their worse impulses, but too little, too late. Rising powers jostle for their place in the sun.
And apart from it all, the Ceratos Empire endures, and the promise made to Heaven remains unfulfilled. The Empire’s wealth remains vast. Its subjects and soldiers are plentiful, and the few good ideas the outside world has had are being put to use in its new factories, in its planned railway lines, its growing fleet of airships, and its increasingly-modernised navy. And, most happily of all, the outside world underestimates Ceratos and what it may be capable of.
What the first Emperor pledged, let his descendants finish. Let Heaven’s will be done. And let the world tremble.
Antlertis!
Just out of curiosity, do you have any idea of how many of these you will be doing? Or just chugging along until you run out of worldbuilding to throw at us? The more the better in my opinion, but at this point I'm thinking of converting them to pdf and getting the whole thing printed. There is some good stuff here and I wouldn't mind having a hardcopy to have. Basically just wondering if you'll be finishing them before the idea escapes my brain.
I can't stop laughing.
Yes, onward to Antlertis! Unless you've got a secret hidden society of underwater dwellers lying about. :V
So.... Japan?
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Nomination for Antlertis noted!
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No real guess as to when they'll end, I'm afraid, though the core series will probably end with Antlertis. My intention's always been to keep doing these until people stop nominating things I can blether about, and a few questions about subjects outside the states and major races have come up, such as military levels across the world and suchlike. They'll probably fall under general miscellany, though, and the core set of major players will likely close off with Antlertis. Which, just between you and me, I suspect might be in with a shot for getting in next week.
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Nomination for Antlertis noted! No thriving civilisation of water-dwellers to discuss in great detail, alas. At least we've still got those spiders helpfully explaining their production process.
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Some Japan elements, yep, particularly with regards to the Great Marshals/Shogunate and the imperial/Meiji restoration. Along with a fair amount of Imperial China.
So....it seems that Ceratos' primary (in this world) influence would be Japan with the Rhinos assuming the Nipponese role and the Tapirs assuming the Ainu role. My recommendation would be for something a little out there: kangaroos; they would be similar to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait peoples of Australia.
Also, l know that this has already been discussed, but you could make this an official fimfic story with this as the backbone of an atlas or travelogue written by either
or
Have you done the Moon yet?
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I like this idea, collating the blog posts into a fimfic, with the commentary stories sidled in here and there for future reader enjoyment!
Smash Imperial China with the Japanese Shogunate, add a dash of race warfare, and you've got yourself an isolationist paradise. Or cesspool, depending on who you ask.
Hmm. I want Antlertis, but exploration of the Dactylian Interior, the Utmost North, and the Utmost South, as well as any other stateless races calls. I suppose Antlertis next, unless there are any other areas that would lead better into it.
Was that a One Sun Mirror reference I saw there? I approve. Not sure I recognize any of the others, though....
Are there any other notable species left to cover before Antlertis? Eg those bizarre bipedal apes infesting Dactylia, or equivalents elsewhere?
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Kangaroos would have been an interesting species to include in the line-up. Alas, most of the Palaververse's sapients (with the exception of the Diamond Dogs and the dragons) are ungulates of some form or another, and marsupials would be an awkward late-game insertion to the mix.
Assembling this into some sort of published story might be worth considering, though, and I'm already semi-considering possible framing devices for it. I'll keep it in mind.
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The Moon remains uncovered, and it's indeed something I could ramble on about to an extent. Not an awfully large extent, mind you, so I'd be inclined to bundle it along with several other smaller topics in one future post.
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Nomination for Antlertis noted! Nothing else would probably lead smoothly into it, though various Utmosts, the Dactylian Interior, and assorted stateless races would all be fair game for nomination and future posts.
3687772
Good catch with the One Sun Mirror reference! Most of the others aren't references, and were just yanked out of whatever much-abused part of my brain manages fictional naming systems.
No major species to cover before Antlertis, alas. Most of the world's other sapients, such as the sea serpents, don't possess states or much influence in the world. And as for the apes, I can't imagine they'll ever amount to anything interesting.
Silken bum sweaters
(Antlertis pls)
3688100
The best sweaters!
Nomination for Antlertis noted.
We, the great Sun's Reflection, are most pleased with the way Our mighty empire has developed over the millennia! We look forward to Our descendant, Spring's Promise, finally teaching those donkey barbarians how unwise it is to trifle with Ceratos.
One thing does worry Us though, scribe Carabas: have some of Our empire's golems found their way into the (metaphorical) clutches of the Capricious Crown? Truly, this would be bad news indeed...
We thank you, scribe, for entertaining Us once more and We hope that you will write next about the mysterious Antlertis. We eagerly await your next missive.
3688459
Your most august nomination for Antlertis noted, Your Imperial Majesty. We, Your loyal scribes, shall see that it is delivered towards the necessary parties with all due haste, and shall see them properly chastised with moderate quantities of boiling oil if they fail to immediately comply with Your divine will.
We are certain that Your worthy descendant of a worthy sire, His Imperial Majesty Emperor Spring's Promise, shall bring the donkey barbarians to heel. They merit punishment in their transgressions against Your realm, which to our dismay include many of the golems produced by Your loyal artisans. Such artifacts have undoubtedly made their way to many unsavoury parts of the world, including those territories which the foreign tyrant known as the Capricious Crown presumes to command. Indeed, the delivery of said golems to these territories long before the Crown's rule provokes concerns that their designs were used by some foreign scholar with more cunning than honour to help create the Crown. Thankfully, its design appears to have not been replicated, and Your own artisans keep their blueprints and schematics heavily guarded for fear of barbarian replication. The donkeys lack the magical talent to properly craft them, and even those with the talent, such as unicorns and ibexes, have not the golem-crafting technology that Your empire possesses. Their efforts amount to mere animated toys as yet.
There is one canon sapient species that you haven't touched yet. Of course it may make sense to do them separately from the rest of the world's species. Because they reside in another dimension. I of course speak of the Breezies.
They're easy to dismiss and overlook. They're the size of this dimension's insects and are even more fragile. Though they have magic it is unreliable because they need a strong but not too strong wind to access it. Given how hostile this world is to them the fact that they appear to bring along no tools or survival gear on their migrations doesn't speak well of their technology base.
Likely from the point of view of rulers like the Capricious Crown and the Fire Queen their "alliance," with Equestria is entirely one sided and founded on the Pony's pity.
So why do I feel that, that is exactly what Celestia and the Breezy leadership want them to think?
So 80% China, 20% Japan, and the Asinials are ever-more Britain. And oh hey, you gave the Crown more dangerous toys.
Yet another reason to MELT IT DOWN
3688776
Hey, yeah, good point! What is the status of the breezies, if any, in this world?
3688776 3689491
The Breezies haven't received much attention in the Palaververse, and part of that's probably due to my own lack of especially interesting ideas for them. I'd be happy to elaborate on what I've got for them, though it'd likely be part of an extended 'Minor and stateless sapients of the world' post along with sea serpents and the link. As far as a basic summary goes, they used to be fairly widespread across western Ungula, dwelling in more dispersed and much smaller communities than the one shown through the magical portal in the show. Many of them converged on Equestria after its founding, favouring the predictable and gentler wind patterns the pegasi produced, and assisted the ponies out of gratitude by sharing some of their own local knowledge and herb-lore.
Starswirl himself paid a further kindness to the wee creatures by crafting a portal to a sheltered and peaceful island off Equestria's south coast after some of their herblore and assistance saved his life after a perilous adventure. The portal would open and close periodically, keeping the Breezy settlers on the island largely safe from anything that might wander through on the Equestrian side of things, whilst allowing for ongoing migration. After Discord's reign of chaos, Celestia and Luna were quite happy to keep Starswirl's portal going and give the island to the Breezies in perpetuity. In the modern day, nearly all Breezies live on Breezy island, with a few adventurous groups roaming out through the portal every once in a while to explore the outside world or as part of a planned migration to collect various herbs and maintain contact with the Breezy populations still dwelling on the Ungulan mainland.
3689275
Used to be about 83% China and 17% Japan, but I like my country ratios to have nice full numbers in them for neatness's sake.
The Crown's got a few of the toys to disassemble and try and rebuild and improve upon, but not many. Heck, the first lot of dangerous toys came to Capra before the Crown was so much as a glint in Grogar's eye. Double heck, they might have helped put that glint there in the first place.
3689748
Ah, thanks.
So, Imperial China with dream-ninjas and magitech robots. I can dig it.
Let's get around to Antlertis, at last.
3691074
Nomination for Antlertis noted! And If I'm going to shamelessly rip off real-world things, giving said things dream-ninjas and magitech robots seems like the only sensible approach.
I vote for the Rarity cube that you use as your avatar.
3693088
Blame this talented purveyor of all things cuboid for it. Her cube-making's currently on hiatus, alas. I've yet to find out how exactly it's done, though I assume she just takes actual ponies or whatever character's been ordered and compresses them really hard.
3693113
Next I vote for secret society of hyperintelligent toads in the creek outside Fluttershy's cottage.
Come on, we both know they're there.
3693134
Christ, man, mind those spoilers. I was trying to keep the Almighty Anuran Conspiracy under wraps for a future story.
3693152
It's not a spoiler if it's obvious, Carabas. Cover your tracks better.
Finally caught up to this post. It's an interesting contrast, a mighty nation that has neither been conquered by another, or threatened by some horrible magical threat, like most other places. I feel like you should make the opening text to a game of Risk.
3689748 Is it true if you find a breezie trapped in a glass jar and release it, they will cover you in a burst of healing magic?
3693152 My vote is for Fluttershy's Toads, but only if you count the renegade colony in Froggy Bottom Bog as well.
3695234
Being isolated from other world affairs can have that sort of benefit, at least. Not many existential external threats, or many threats at all beyond those they can produce at home.
Re. Breezies in glass jars: it's not beyond the scope of probability. Alas, the most likely scenario's that you just end up with a tiny fairy-horse with a lot of pent-up rage trying to kick your eyes out. Being trapped in a glass jar's awful for the temperament.
And I'll keep a lid on the great rift between the Almighty Anuran Conspiracy and the Most Ancient Bufo Conclave and their millennia of intrigue and hidden savagery against all the lesser species for now. There's no point in revealing more details on the setting's real Big Bads than I have to, after all
I just thought of this: Have you ever covered the Yaks? I feel like you must have discussed them, but I can't remember. If not, then I vote you do your own take on Yakyakistan someday.
3698132
I think they were fleetingly mentioned during Bovaland's entry, but with no description attached. They do deserve some attention, though they're a species I've not had many particularly exciting ideas for. I'd probably include them in a bundle post at some future point, along with the Breezies and sea serpents and suchlike.
Day 16: Creatos
- Strange question, but do cutie marks make ponies better at their job then most other creatures? If a pony's talent was mining the would he be better at it than a Diamond Dog?
- If the rhinos sought harmony in the world, wouldn't Equestria be their biggest ally? And is Equestria closer to harmony than the rhinos?
- Has Luna ever meet a tapir while dreamwalking?
- Are there spirits that could attack a dreamwalker while they sleep?
- Poor silk industries.
- And this is why kids are told to never trust strangers.
- What happened to the expedition?
- Forest's Tumult was killed by Asinians?
4460529
- Nah, not necessarily. They just showcase what the pony's adept at compared to other ponies. Achieving more than others from other species is down to the individual talent and drive of the pony.
- Equestria's a lot closer to harmony than Ceratos, yep. Harmony's one of these things best not spread with fire and bloodshed, which the Ceratosan court has no especial qualms about doing.
- Yep! Not too often, but she's exchanged and compared notes with them from time to time.
- Also yep! Nowhere in the 'verse is safe.
- Spiders just can't be let near vital industries like that.
- Always a handy lesson.
- Mysterious things.
- Nah. His natural death by old age just coincided with increased Asinian predatoriness, and thus all manner of bloody happenings.