#askgnoll

Those are all great questions!

What is Karenza’s flying city like?

The Ethereal City (sometimes known as "Alqamah", "Sanctuary Island", or "Maenad's Refuge", among many other names) is a large chunk of land that was ripped from Gaia's surface and suspended in the skies by magic. It's always on the move and shrouded by mist, so finding it isn't as easy as you'd think. Some people spend their whole lives searching for it and never even catch a glimpse.

It is held aloft by three minervae, who have sacrificed their mobility to keep the island afloat. These minervae appear as statues standing at opposing corners of the island, meditating in some kind of stasis. They can also teleport the island in dire situations, but this drains their energy quickly. They are tended to by servants, who must replenish the minervae's energy each day by transferring their own energy to them. If even one of these three minervae becomes injured or loses focus, the island will start to sink.

On the center of the island is a great pearlescent temple, where Karenza and her closest circle reside. Surrounding that are more pearlescent structures; houses, shops, and community spaces. On the island's outer ridges are more natural areas, including forests and farms. The island is incredibly compact and efficient, utilizing a lot of magic and clever engineering to make life here possible.

Which of Gaia’s peoples live there?

There are peoples of all kinds living in the Ethereal City. Many of them are the descendants of those who inhabited the island before it left the ground, but there are plenty of people who arrived much later too. People come and go over time. Some are born on the island and die there without ever seeing the world below.

The Ethereal City has an abnormally high population of maenads and minervae compared to the rest of Gaia, so you will find a lot of those (and a lot of nymphs in general). The whole population skews heavily female.

What is the culture like?

Though this place may look peaceful and utopian, it is fiercely policed by Karenza's soldiers. This female-only force wears majestic, colorful armor and patrols the skies on equally majestic dragons. They not only protect the island from malicious outsiders, they police its inhabitants as well.

Every inhabitant must abide by Karenza's holy scriptures. Karenza takes these rules very seriously, and those who break them may be given another chance, banished to the world below, or worst case scenario: flung off the island to their doom. These scriptures encourage virtues such as compassion, temperance, honesty, and courage. Cruel, dishonest, and greedy behaviors are not tolerated. Karenza holds every inhabitant of this island to a high moral standard, and most people simply don't make the cut. It's a place that's very hard to get into and very easy to get banished from.

The culture of this island is very community-oriented. The use of currency is forbidden, so there are no rich and no poor. Everyone produces resources and shares them with everyone else. The island is mostly self-sustaining, but dragon-mounted foragers do bring a lot of goods in from Below (the world outside the island).

Because space is so limited, the population must be somewhat controlled. Though the whole community has a say, Karenza and her council ultimately decide who stays and who goes. In many cases people leave willingly, wanting to explore Below. It's not a decision to be taken lightly though, because once they leave, there is no guarantee they'll be able to return. Those who leave tend to be secretive about the island, in fear of sharing too much intel with the wrong people (like the Cult of the Crescent). They usually lie about their heritage or refuse to talk about it at all.

Violence is strictly forbidden in the Ethereal City, except in cases of training and self-defense. Drawing someone's blood out of anger is a quick way to get yeeted off the edge...

Regular civilians of the island are free to spend their time as they wish, but Karenza's students and council must dedicate their time to her cause: nourishing love and destroying hate. That means running all kinds of missions for Karenza, which may involve visiting Below.

If they tire of their service, they may leave any time without consequence. However, completing missions earns them great and unique rewards, such as magical blessings from Karenza herself. Her best students rack up all kinds of crazy powers before leaving her service, but before they leave, they must promise to only use their powers for good deeds. If Karenza's agents (such as Justice) catch them doing evil, they will be hunted down and mercilessly destroyed.

Does it have a surviving population of Gnolls?

Actually yes! The Ethereal City has a small population of gnolls (mostly descendants of the scrubland gnolls) that have been there since the island ascended. Their numbers dwindle more and more with time, but this is still the highest living gnoll population on Looming Gaia. They are considered extinct in Below, but few people are aware of the gnolls in the Ethereal City.

The Ethereal gnolls don't leave the island because they have heard what happened to their kind Below, and they know there is no place for them there anymore. They tend to be extra mindful of their behavior, because getting banished is basically a death sentence for them.

However, I will say that accidents do happen...sometimes people accidentally fall off the island, get stranded during missions or foraging, get carried away by wild rocs or other predators, kidnapped by Disgrace's forces, or can find themselves in Below for many other reasons too. It wouldn't be too farfetched to say an Ethereal gnoll could still end up there somehow.

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Questions/Comments?

Lore Masterpost

I don't see why not! I'm sure there are extinct species divines out there, but because their kind has become so rare, they have all gone into hiding.

I suspect there is at least one divine hogman hiding out among the hogmen tribes in the Shrieking Mountains. Perhaps there is a divine orc still kicking around in the ruins of ancient orc civilizations, all alone underground. And it's easy to imagine a divine gnoll fleeing into the deep wilderness, basically reverting into a feral animal because they have no one on their side.

These divines would be forced to isolate themselves, or else just hang out with other divines. Cerno would be a safe choice, since he is ostracized from society as well. Green Witch might accept them too.

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Questions/Comments?

Lore Masterpost

Well, that would probably change the culture and attitude surrounding lycanthropy for the better. People probably wouldn't be as afraid of them, so the werewolves would have more freedoms and wouldn't have to hide away in isolation or little packs of their own kind anymore.

On the other hand, what you're describing were basically gnolls, and we all know what happened to them...It's possible that the werewolves would also be enslaved, or genocided, or plagued to extinction.

That's an interesting question, I think there are a lot of different possibilities for these "civilized werewolves".

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Questions/Comments?

Lore Masterpost

Long-term, I think they would all just end up petering out again. These species went extinct for a reason; because they couldn't adapt to the changing world around them. So I imagine they would be poorly-adapted to Gaia as it is today.

Short-term, Etios Nation would make an effort to protect the gnolls and hogmen, probably by devoting a sanctuary to them on their land.

The World Athenaeum would try to develop a vaccine for the strain of rabies that wiped out the gnolls and jab as many of them as possible as quickly as possible.

I could see Mogdir Kingdom, Seelie Court, and the Unseelie Court setting up special refuges for sprights.

Evangeline Kingdom and Zareen Empire would make an effort to house orcs, maybe by building special protected districts for them until their populations were deemed stable.

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Questions/Comments?

1 ) This does sound like the type of thing Zygrow would do. They had a special window of time in Zareenite history where it was 100% legal to experiment on elves, and the result was the red elf gene. Today, slavery is abolished in this empire, so Zygrow does experiments like this secretly and on much smaller scales. As a result, progress is much slower than it used to be.

Zygrow is already in the business of gene editing, and I'm sure they are currently working on ways to make "red" versions of other fae, who are resistant to iron and flame. But to make a creature with only beneficial genes and no bad ones is impossible...there is always a downside to every creature they create, and they are usually pretty bad. Mental instability and cancers are typical among Zygrow abominations. Even the red elves are burdened with poor vision, lots of allergies, and high rates of cancer as a result of Zygrow's gene manipulation. Their unique powers have come at a steep cost.

2) Hybrids are another thing that Zygrow does...or attempts to do. They have not been successful yet. Currently they are trying to cross gnolls with other peoples, because as it is, gnolls are susceptible to too many diseases to survive in the modern world. If they were crossed with a satyr or troll, for example, they would be more disease-resistant, and then they could be brought back from extinction using Zygrow's growth vats.

This project is a secret collaboration with the World Athenaeum, who is also interested in bringing gnolls back.

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Questions/Comments?

Lore Masterpost

Etios welcomes all gaians, no exceptions, so they would welcome hogmen and gnolls into their borders with full citizen rights.

However, I don't think these species would last long there. Hogmen have behavioral issues similar to satyrs (except worse) and they struggled to integrate into non-hogmen societies. This eventually led to their downfall as they pissed off everyone around them and had no allies to back them up.

Etiosi dealt with satyrs by kind of shoving them into sovereign spaces (preserves), and they may try this with hogmen too. But hogmen, like humans, are aggressive expansionists. Their cities would quickly grow beyond the borders of their preserves and they would demand more land, food, water, etc. leading to a civil war. Etios would likely end up genociding them all over again.

The gnolls were susceptible to more zoonotic diseases than other species, similar to fauns. But unlike fauns, they lacked the technology/arcane knowledge to overcome it. Etios is a strictly neolithic-age civilization, so gnolls would not have access to the medical technology they'd need to survive long. One good plague would wipe them all out again.

As for orcs, they would be treated like any other commoner in Etios Nation. They would not be allowed to own land or marry, so upward mobility would be impossible for them.

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Questions/Comments?

Lore Masterpost

Imagine being a human in the primitive 2nd Age, and your little village gets raided by gnolls.

It's after midnight. You're awakened by howling and yapping sounds in the distance. Believing it's just coyotes, you try to go back to sleep...but the sounds are getting louder, like a hundred wild predators are closing in on your house.

You get up and step outside. Suddenly you're surrounded by dozens of barking, blood-smeared, piss-soaked, canine-headed men armed with spears covered in literal shit. They are here to cause as much chaos and plague as possible, so that your village will be too weak to retaliate the next time they come to loot all your stuff.

Terrifying.

Anyway, this was the perspective of many proto-Evangelites and proto-Morites at the time, and why gnolls were targeted by the kingdoms so hard later. Not all gnoll tribes were aggressive like this, but the ones that were caused such widespread terror and deadly plague that everyone collectively decided they weren't playing around with these fuckin' furries anymore...

The exact same thing happened with hogmen. Their barbarism made them incredibly powerful in the primitive ages, but they were not well-suited for the more refined modern ages. Their golden era passed them by and now they are just a bad memory.

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Questions/Comments?

Lore Masterpost