#askburmek

Ironically, Burmek was once known as the "Mighty Kingdom" in its heyday.

For a while, it seemed Burmek was on top of the world with all its wealth, advanced technology, and sprawling infrastructure. This civilization was on a sharp upward trajectory for quite some time before taking a sudden, even sharper downturn.

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Questions/Comments?

Nope, Burmek is the only civilization that has ever made it to Great Kingdom status before collapsing. However, Yerim-Mor Kingdom is currently teetering on the edge of collapse and many believe it will soon become the second. Only time will tell!

Generally by the time a civilization reaches Great Kingdom status, it's already "too big to fail". It takes some really shitty luck or serious mismanagement to destroy kingdoms this powerful. In Burmek's case it was mismanagement, and in Yerim-Mor's it was misfortune.

There are some large independent civilizations that aren't affiliated with any Great Kingdoms. Kirkmar, Laraine, and Taybiya are a few that have shown up in the series so far. They're big enough to be a problem if a Great Kingdom provoked them, but not big enough to earn Great status.

When independent civilizations become large like this, it's usually for these reasons:

A) The land they're sitting on isn't worth the effort of conquering it. (Laraine)

B) The location is very remote or otherwise inconvenient. (Kirkmar)

C) This civilization acts as a buffer between two hostile nations, which makes it harder for them to mess with eachother. (Taybiya)

D) This civilization acts as a breeding ground for potential slaves for nearby kingdoms to exploit. (also Taybiya)

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Questions/Comments?

Minute by minute? Well, I don't want to write a whole novel, so how about a general overview?

The Burmek Commonwealth was founded and ruled by two divines, Okatogg and Hulushka. They used their divine influence (and brute force...) to wrangle all the scattered tribes of northern Wokina together into one big government.

The Burmek Commonwealth grew into a major world power very, very fast due to its abundant resources and divine leadership. Before long, it had not only become a Great Kingdom, but one of the more advanced ones at that. Other Great Kingdoms had gotten heavily involved in its economy which only helped it thrive more.

Zareen Empire became the Commonwealth's greatest ally and traded a lot of its tech for Burmish resources.

Burmek was on track to become as advanced as Zareen. However, this kingdom had grown way too fast and did not build a stable foundation beneath its greatest holds. Its military and infrastructure were spread way too thin.

As the Commonwealth's technology advanced, the local nymphs began to push back hard. Okatogg and Hulushka retaliated by waging war against nature itself, planning to beat all the local nymphs into submission the same way Zareen had so they would have the freedom to advance indefinitely.

Due to poor planning and the lack of foundation I mentioned above, this war went really bad for Burmek really fast. The nymphs rose up and obliterated them pretty much overnight.

The Burmek Commonwealth collapsed and disappeared just as soon as it popped up. Zareen said "fuck that shit lol" and pulled out of Wokina altogether. Meanwhile, the enraged nymphs fortified the land with hostile flora and fauna so that foreign kingdoms couldn't colonize it even if they tried. This is how the gull-snatcher population got so out of control: the nymphs started feeding them sacrifices regularly.

Okatogg and Hulushka have been trying to raise their kingdom up from the ruins ever since with no success. Because one, everyone hates them for plunging the kingdom into ruins in the first place. Two, they're total idiots who just happened to get lucky the first time.

TL;DR: Burmek picked a fight with nature, then brought a knife to a gunfight.

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Questions/Comments?

also, how to other nymphs feel about this? like what if some random nymph on migration or something stumbled upon Burmek's Super Fun Killing Party

The nymphs of Wokina already won this war, undoubtedly. They control most of the landscape, outside of a few strongholds full of people (Bormek Ruins).

Now it's just a matter of defending the territory they gained and preventing Bormek from rising again. They attack peoples on sight because they don't want those people trading, learning, or becoming more powerful in any way.

So far, these feral nymphs haven't been successful in taking over other Great Kingdoms. They had a home advantage over Bormek, but moving the fight to foreign soil has proven problematic. The other Great Kingdoms are just too developed at this point. Bormek was powerful at its peak, but its power was stretched too thin. Its defenses were full of holes that the feral nymphs took full advantage of during the war, and this became Bormek's downfall. Basically the kingdom grew too fast and forgot to build a solid foundation for itself along the way.

There are other like-minded feral nymphs across Looming Gaia, but they haven't been able to congregate in the same numbers as the ones in Wokina, and therefore they haven't been able to secure much power. Other nymphs might have all kinds of opinions about them, ranging from disinterest to total disgust.

Satyrs do about as well in the ruins as they do anywhere else. The ruins are basically an apocalyptic wasteland where there are no laws and no police, so people are only limited by what others allow them to get away with. Satyrs can behave as badly as they want here without legal consequence, but they are far from the biggest, baddest species around, so they have to watch themselves. Like anywhere else, they tend to have high mortality compared to other species because they get themselves into dangerous situations more often.

There's more info about that on the World Powers page. That article also links to Okatogg and Hulushka's page which has a little more info.

In short, Bormek's leaders declared war on nature because they felt stifled by the nymphs and wanted to be the next Zareen Empire. This didn't work out for them, to say the least.

Bormek poked the local nymphs, then the nymphs turned around and choke-slammed them into the pavement like "bitch, you thought."

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Questions/Comments?

Lore Masterpost

I imagine that like Folkvar, Burmek's people found honor and glory through the art of battle. Unlike Folkvar however, this kingdom was under shoddy, disorganized leadership. Burmek suffered from many internal issues from the get-go. It was basically held together by paperclips and school glue, as it had many different cultures operating under one government with no competent leadership to assimilate them properly.

This internal unrest was what ultimately led to their downfall. The people were highly segregated, and they failed to band together when the nymphs attacked. Under different leadership, they probably would have been able to fend the nymphs off, but every hold was on a different page when the time came and there was no cohesion to their military response. Some holds walled up and hunkered down while others went full-assault.

All that said, I imagine it was a place where many radically different cultures were kind of mashed together but separated into districts. Walking out of one district and into another was like walking into another world. But in places where these districts converged, things could get pretty chaotic.

When I think of Burmek Commonwealth in its heyday, I think of a wild west scenario. Like yeah there's a few cops here and there, but for the most part it's every man for himself. It was a culture of self-sufficiency, which really came in handy once the nymphs swept through and rolled everyone back to the stone age.

The diversity of Burmek's population was its greatest weakness, but also its greatest strength. Many clever minds brought ideas from other lands, came together and created a very fast-progressing culture. Burmek went from the stone age to damn near the airship age in less than a century. It was catching up with Zareen Empire super fast. There was very few laws and little regulation, so engineers and scientists were free to just go nuts with whatever crazy-ass experiments they weren't allowed to try in their homelands.