#askgaia

These are overly-simplified, but they get the basic ideas across...

Folkvar Kingdom: They broke away from Evangeline Kingdom and started their own kingdom because they disagreed with Evangelite religion and slavery. Most of its territory is in snowy mountains and along coastlines. Folkvarans are known to be physically tough but emotionally cold. This kingdom has the biggest fishing industry in the world.

Matuzu Kingdom: The wealthiest and most diverse kingdom in the world. Everyone wants to live here because the weather is warm and there is lots of money to be made. Matuzans are stereotyped as carefree hedonists who party all day and have drunken orgies all night. This kingdom is famous for its arts scene (music, fashion, theatre, etc.)

Lamai Nation: Most of the kingdom is located underground because the jungle above is infested with vicious dragons and toxic plants. Over half of the population are gorgons, and they have a matriarchal culture that values women above men. It's a very well-defended kingdom that is basically impossible to attack directly. Lamaish are stereotyped as cannibalistic, man-hating witches who worship dragons and sunlight.

Yerim-Mor Kingdom: Once very wealthy, but has been beaten down by other powers recently and is now the poorest kingdom on Gaia. Most of its territory is located in the Serkel Desert, the hottest and most inhospitable region in the world. It's a kingdom desperately trying to pick itself up, but it just gets pushed down and exploited by bullies repeatedly.

Zareen Empire: A high-tech industrial empire. A large chunk of its population are robots, but most of its flesh-and-blood population are commoners and gaians. Fae are disliked here. Its cities are infamous for being overcrowded, polluted, and extremely loud. Zareen leads the world in mechanical technology.

Evangeline Kingdom: Best known for its agricultural industry, this kingdom supplies a lot of the world's food. Its economy sits on the back of fae and gaian slaves, and its culture is very religious and patriarchal. This is a kingdom strictly for commoners, and magic use is entirely forbidden.

Mogdir Kingdom: The Mogdiri are reverent of nature, so they don't farm animals. They don't consider bugs to be animals though, and their territory is crawling with gigantic bugs which they ranch and slaughter. This kingdom is home to the world's biggest magic college, and magic is an essential aspect of their culture. The population is mostly fae and gaian, as commoners are not well liked here.

Etios Nation: This kingdom was founded by gaians, for gaians. These gaians fled from Matuzu Kingdom after it declared all gaiankind to be slaves to fae and commoners. The rebel gaians took over Matuzu's southern territory and claimed it as a new Great Kingdom called Etios. The Etiosi live a simple, stone-age way of life. Things may seem primitive here, but what they lack in technology, they make up for in natural strength, connection to nature, and a cooperative herd mentality.

Seelie Court: Ruled by an immortal divine named Queen Titania. Long ago, Titania created a bunch of monsters called "faeries" to fight her battles. Now she can't get rid of them, and they make up a large population of her kingdom. The rest are fae, as commoners and gaians are not welcome. The Seelie love magic, but "dark magic" like necromancy is strictly forbidden.

Unseelie Court: Ruled by one of Titania's faeries, Overlord Morgause. Morgause was so angry about Titania banning necromancy in the Seelie Court that she defected and started an opposing kingdom, the Unseelie Court. Whatever Titania does, Morgause likes to do the opposite. The Unseelie Court is infamous for having very few laws and regulations, so it can be an extremely chaotic place where taboo things are celebrated (such as necromancy).

Empire of Damijana: A kingdom founded by red elves, who were once slaves of Zareen Empire. It was built upon a military junk yard, but today it is the most technologically-advanced empire on Gaia. Its population is almost exclusively made up of red elves. Its territory has the smallest footprint in the world, yet its population is higher than many others, as citizens are crammed into extremely tall towers. The government spies on every citizen and micromanages their lives.

Bormek Commonwealth: Once a mighty kingdom similar to Zareen, but it got too greedy with nature, leading the local nymphs to declare war upon it. Bormek lost the war and its whole civilization was reduced to a few forts dotting an apocalyptic wasteland. Those who remain still consider it a Great Kingdom an insist that it will one day rise back to its former glory.

Aquarian Alliance: Thousands of small Aquarian kingdoms got sick of all the pollution dumping into the sea, so they banded together into one massive force called the Aquarian Alliance. This kingdom is led by a cecaelia Sovereign, who wishes to stop the pollution, even if it means destroying every last land-dweller on Gaia. It is considered a "terrorist nation" by many other kingdoms because of its aggressive and ruthless attacks.

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Questions/Comments?

Lore Masterpost

I don't think the moon is sentient, but some people upon Gaia do believe this. Some even worship the moon as a deity (vampire and werewolf cults are prone to this).

The moon is simply a very large mass of solid matter that is caught in Gaia's orbit. It has no life upon it...yet. But the Empire of Damijana intends to change that!

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Questions/Comments?

Lore Masterpost

It'll end when I'm dead! ;)

I actually designed the series so that it can continue indefinitely. Some characters appear more than others, but there is no "main character" of Looming Gaia, meaning the story doesn't end when that character dies or solves their main conflict.

The timeline is dynamic, meaning years pass, old characters die off with time, and younger ones simply replace them to continue the story.

The "main story" of Looming Gaia is about the world itself and how it changes over time. It is told only in the background of stories about specific characters.

The series does have different arcs that "end", as in a certain situations get wrapped up. But life still goes on after that, either for the same character or a new one.

This is why I call the series "The WORLD of Looming Gaia", because it's not about any particular story, it's about a million different stories that weave together and create a living, dynamic world. Just like real life, every single person in this world has a story, and all of them connect in some way. My goal is to tell as many of those stories as I can to bring Gaia to life, so to speak.

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Questions/Comments?

Lore Masterpost

That's exactly the idea! Magic never lets any one person become too powerful. If a divine is forging some kind of monster that will cause too much imbalance in the ecosystem, magic goes "lol nah" and botches the process. So, you still get a monster...but it's not quite the badass you intended it to be. Monsters always have some kind of major flaw that their creator never intended.

(I think Isaac may be the one exception here...because while other divines try to forge the "perfect" creature for greedy purposes, Karenza purposefully gave Isaac human flaws so that he would have a human experience in life. Thus, he integrated well with the ecosystem and magic left him alone. It really said, "I don't need to fuck you up, kid, you're plenty fucked up already" lmao)

The same goes for casting spells. Let's say a sorcerer wants to sterilize all the water on Gaia or something. They're doing this for noble reasons, to provide clean drinking water for all creatures. They don't understand the ecological havoc this would cause, but magic does. So, magic rebels and the spell either doesn't work, only partially works, or does something completely different.

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Questions/Comments?

Lore Masterpost

2: ¿Cómo hacen las parejas de distintas especies (como un humano y un centauro, osea con gran diferencia de tamaño) para tener sexo?

(Translated via Google Translate)

1: Seeing how some beasts of this world are doing (siege dragons, krakens, shield kings) makes me wonder what the hell was going on in prehistoric looming Gaia 2: How do couples of different species (like a human and a centaur, that is, with a large difference in size) have sex?

1 ) That's a fun thought! Unlike peoples, beasts were not created by Gaia. They have always been part of Her, evolving from bacteria similar to the beasts in the real world. I'm sure there have been many different eras throughout Gaia's ancient history, each with its own unique creatures and ecosystems. The beasts we see today are just the descendants of those that survived Her great rampage, in which she tore her one continent into many pieces.

Personally I think dragons are some of the oldest creatures, not having changed much from their ancient ancestors. They are living dinosaurs. The continent of Lorrowey in particular has a lot of dinosaur-like animals on it. Also the seas still contain many ancient beasts, like the kraken for example, which has looked the same for millions of years. You can't improve on perfection!

2 ) This may be a potentially NSFW answer, so I'll place it under a cut just in case.

That's an excellent question, but it's hard to answer because what's "beneficial" can be highly subjective.

A monster might be beneficial in one region but detrimental in another. It might be beneficial to one group of people but detrimental to another. Maybe it has a symbiotic relationship with another creature, but a parasitic relationship to another.

So I will say no, there is no monster which is 100% beneficial to everyone/everything else around it. The nature of monsters is that they are synthetic, meaning there is no place for them in Gaia's natural environment. They did not evolve into their niche like other creatures, they were hamfistedly crammed into the world by divines for their own personal gain.

Maybe they're not "beneficial", but I would say poffles are probably the most "inconsequential" monster. They make some people happy and annoy others, but they don't actually harm anyone or anything. They don't hurt the environment because they can't survive in the wild anyway. If it weren't for peoples meddling in their reproduction, they would quickly die out. They're too stupid to hunt and so clumsy that they could barely hurt an insect even if they tried.

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Questions/Comments?

Love is very mysterious and poorly understood. Some on Looming Gaia believe that love is only a chemical reaction in the brain and that all creatures can experience it.

But this doesn't seem to be true. There are many different types of monsters, but the two things all monsters have in common is that they do not have souls and cannot feel love. They don't love themselves or others. They might feel things like empathy, lust, and fondness, but the concept of love is beyond them.

Researchers believe that love is somehow tied to the soul. Music and other forms of art are also tied to the soul, and by extension, to love as well. But no one really understands why.

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Questions/Comments?

Evangelite culture is heavy influenced by a modern form of Lindism, which is a misogynistic religion. So, misogyny has become interwoven into Evangelite culture as a whole.

Evangelites believe that men are superior to women in every way because that's just how Gaia made them. In their faith, Gaia made women to serve men. But Gaia is a being which is above both women and men.

Although Evangelites use female pronouns for Gaia and think of her as a feminine entity, they don't believe she is a "woman" in the same sense human women are. Gaia is on a separate tier entirely, and not bound by the laws and expectations of peoples.

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Questions/Comments?