#askhistory

Zareen Empire is one of the richest, most developed, and most populous Great Kingdoms on Looming Gaia, and it owes this success to its high-tech industries. However, all this industry has come at a steep cost to the natural environment.

Under the Industrialist Party’s power, Zareen’s corporations face very few regulations and the wilderness becomes their garbage can. The biggest players have chosen a few specific corners to dump their waste, and centuries upon centuries of repeated dumping have made some areas of Evik dangerously toxic.

MLZ01

The most famous of these zones is “MLZ01”–or Military Landfill Zone 01. As its name suggests, this was a coastal zone where the Zareenite military dumped mass amounts of its trash. Among that trash were broken aircrafts, seacrafts, weapons, vehicles, appliances–all things that contained valuable metals and components. No Zareenite was brave or desperate enough to mine this treacherous landfill for these treasures, but their recently-liberated red elf slaves were. These ex-slaves diligently mined the landfill, sold the materials back to Zareen, and built what is today known as the Empire of Damijana upon it.

BLACKLUNG GROVES

Just south of Damijana is another toxic zone called the Blacklung Groves, which are clusters of forest that extend from the west coast to Azar. At a glance, these appear to be lush, healthy bamboo forests growing along the creeks and rivers. They are scenic locations that are tempting to explore, but peoples and animals who venture into the greenery will soon fall ill. Acute symptoms include respiratory distress and mysterious rashes, but the longer one spends in the groves, the more their health suffers, culminating into total vision loss, infertility, and cancer.

So, what exactly is wrong with these forests? In the 5330’s, the Jayef-Ku Chemical Corporation developed a new all-in-one herbicide and pesticide that promised to kill all weeds and insects on contact. This poison turned out to be much more dangerous than the company claimed, harming peoples and all manner of beasts, and was eventually banned. But by then, the damage had been done. This chemical had been sprayed liberally all over Zareen’s farmlands, infecting the water table and washing downward, eventually concentrating in the forested lowlands.

This chemical seemed to kill everything except plants in the grass family, such as wheat, corn, and bamboo. When the water became poisoned, nearly all the trees and plants nearby died. Only the region’s native bamboo survived, and with all its competition removed, it began growing out of control. What were once healthy, diverse forests became vast monocultures of bamboo. This bamboo fed heavily upon the highly toxic soil and water, taking these toxins into itself. The result is a mutated and dangerous plant, as its leaves emit noxious fumes that are said to smell like window cleaner.

In the past, Zareenites tried stripping this bamboo of its smelly leaves and using the timber for construction. All seemed well for a decade or two, until big clusters of the population suddenly developed unique cancers, birth defects, and organ diseases. These ailments were traced back to the bamboo wood used to construct their homes and furniture, which did not have a smell like the leaves, but turned out to be no less toxic. This silent killer claimed many lives before the Zareenite government stepped in with remediation efforts, but many claim that not enough was done. To this day, the toxic timber can still be found in the empire’s poorer regions, especially in older buildings. Its consequences are still present, but the voices of these neglected populations fall on deaf ears.

In addition, some of these impoverished populations continue to chop down fresh timber from the groves and use it out of desperation, either for firewood or construction. They often do not disclose the origin of this wood and then sell it to buyers in other regions. Because the wood has no odor and or distinctive qualities at first glance, it gets mixed in with clean timber and ends up all over the empire. This has caused the slow poisonings to continue, despite the government’s efforts.

Disposing of this timber is a tricky undertaking. Burning it simply releases the toxins into the air to eventually settle onto the soil, where they may poison the water, get inhaled by peoples, or taken up by more bamboo, repeating the cycle. The same thing happens if it is chipped or left to break down naturally. The Zareenite government has built special bunkers to contain all the toxic timber it has reclaimed in its remediation efforts, though this system is not a perfect solution either. Toxic timber remains an ongoing problem not only locally, but has spread to foreign kingdoms as well, especially Zareen’s closest neighbor, Mogdir Kingdom.

KINGSFALL SWAMP

Kingsfall Swamp sits just above sea level. As the lowest region in western Evik, it acts as a collector for all the rivers flowing down from the Stonehammer Mountains. Each of these rivers are unfortunately quite polluted. All these pollutants concentrate in the stagnant water of the swamp, creating a toxic pit of chemicals, trash, and sewage.

Zareen Empire once claimed this region, but later abandoned it due to the pollution and general difficulty of defending such a place. Even before the pollution, Kingsfall Swamp was known as a treacherous place full of predators, poisonous plants, precarious terrain, and bloodborne diseases. Despite all that, there are some peoples who have decided to settle here. Their reasons are many, but it usually boils down to avoiding taxes, fleeing the law, or being unable to afford better places in the empire.

Today, Kingsfall Swamp is scattered with many independent villages and towns, each with their own culture and laws. Their toxic, undesirable environment ends up being a boon in some ways, as no Great Kingdom feels motivated to take this land from them. They are free to live as they wish in this region, so long as they can contend with all its difficulties.

The people of the swamp live humble lives, to say the least. Food is sometimes imported from other regions, but most often it is hunted or grown right there in the polluted land. Rice is a staple crop here, as it grows well in the swampy terrain. and is also unaffected by the Jayef-Ku Corporation’s herbicide disaster. Rice grown in this swamp contains heavy metals and other toxins that are dangerous to peoples. The natives have adapted somewhat and do not suffer acute sickness like foreigners do from eating it, but they do suffer long-term consequences like cancers and organ failure. Health outcomes are quite bad here, and human lifespans rarely exceed 50 years.

Because they are not managed by a Great Kingdom, these independent villages have inadequate healthcare, police, and civic services–or often none at all. Zareenites call these natives “swampfolk” and do not think very highly of them, stereotyping them as poor, uneducated, disease-carrying hicks. Swampfolk have developed their own distinctive culture and can be identified by their clothes, mannerisms, and unique accents. Most notably, they are often identified by the deformities they carry from their polluted environment, such as tumors and missing or extra limbs.

SEE ALSO

Toxilutionism

Zareen Empire

Empire of Damijana

Larainite Cuisine

Zareenite Political Parties

Ask: Zareen

Ask: Technology

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Questions/Comments?

Lore Masterpost

Good question! I know I talked about this more in-depth before, but for reason I can't find the post. In short, Zygrow has created "nymph farms" by artificially creating "optimized" environments where they are likely to spawn.

These farms can take many forms. A hydriad farm may look like a big aquarium, minmaxed to perfection with an optimal balance of plants and wildlife. A limniad farm might look like a big greenhouse, where plant growth is encouraged with grow lights, custom soil mixtures, and scientifically-optimized fertilizers.

Zygrow is perfecting the art of artificial wilderness, and in doing so, they can trick Gaia into spawning nymphs in unusual places like cities or even industrial zones. Gaia doesn't know that modern corn was selectively bred over centuries to create something totally different from its ancestor, because at the end of the day it's still corn, and it can still spawn corn nymphs. These GMO corn nymphs may look different from their wild ancestors, but they are still nymphs all the same, just like the modern corn is still a plant.

Zygrow has performed many experiments with nymphs, and have created all sorts of abominations and interesting new breeds as a result. Chemical fire pyriads, hybrid-beast faunae, slime hydriads, and GMO limniads are just a few of the things they're responsible for.

Aside from spawning new breeds of nymphs, Zygrow can also alter the properties of existing nymphs, transforming them into new forms with new properties.

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Lore Masterpost

I've actually never seen Bojack Horseman, but what you describe here sounds accurate! Just like the real world, "evil" in Looming Gaia isn't always the result of intentional maliciousness.

Sometimes it's just the unintended consequences of something else. Even good intentions can result in evil actions (see Sovereign of Aquaria, or Mr. Ocean, or Karenza...)

Many Great Rulers in Looming Gaia's history took the throne with the best intentions. But oftentimes the money and power gets to their heads and they start acting selfishly, thinking "what's the harm?"

They are so far from the common people in their ivory towers, they don't always see the harm they're really doing to others.

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Lore Masterpost

When I first read this message I was like "no way, no they don't". Then I pulled up two pics to compare and uh...

SHEEEEEEEEIT.

The eyes, mouth, ear shape, and chin are all spot-on. Even the noses are pretty close, Ojio's is just wider. They actually do look related AND WOW I HATE IT. :')

But if they are related, I think that relation is so loose and so far back in history that it's not even worth mentioning. I will say that the Boanningwad weren't the only elves to get caught up in Zareenite slavery, there were foreign elves in Evik at the time that got roped in too, and these different elves had offspring with the Boanningwad. The Marienna (Dario's people) were among them, and Ojio actually does look like he has Marienna-like features, so it's very possible that he just has some of that race in his ancestry and that's why they look similar.

(Many modern Damijan think they're descended purely from ancient Boanningwad elves, but this isn't always true. Many of them have some other elven races mixed into their bloodline, and this gives the Damijan the diverse range of skintones, face shapes, and hair textures they have today despite their closed-off society.)

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Questions/Comments?

Lore Masterpost

The Zareenites liberated their red elf slaves around the year 4300. The slaves were replaced with robots, which dramatically increased the empire's energy usage and pollution output.

600 years later, Sovereign and Mr. Ocean were born off the eastern coast of Noalen. By then, Zareen's pollution was really getting out of control and starting to affect foreign waters.

200 years after that, Sovereign was an accomplished curative mage. He healed sick Aquarians for free, simply to better his community. But the number of patients was increasing every year, they were coming from lands further away, and their ailments were getting stranger and more severe. Based on their similar symptoms, Sovereign began to suspect that these Aquarians were being poisoned by something.

Sovereign traced the cases on a map and noticed they followed specific ocean currents. These currents all passed by Zareen's shores, which by that time were notoriously dirty with pollution. Could the currents really carry this pollution so far from its source? According to all these Aquarians with strange cancers and chemical poisonings, apparently so.

Anyway, the Red Elf Liberation Movement was the major catalyst to the Aquarian Alliance's uprising. These events are directly connected, even though they happened centuries apart. The RELM actually gave birth to two Great Kingdoms: The Empire of Damijana and the Aquarian Alliance, which today are ironically at war with eachother over the pollution...Pollution that stemmed from the RELM in the first place, because Zareenite corporations would rather pollute Gaia with millions of fuel-guzzling robots than even think about paying real flesh-and-blood workers.

I just thought it was too interesting not to mention!

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Lore Masterpost

(Translated with Google Translator)

Idea of ​​Marienna culture: the Marienna developed the practice of using natural creams to protect themselves from the sun and the dryness of the desert.

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Ah good point, I forgot to address this in my last answer! The ancient Marienna's territory spanned across the Serkel Desert, which is an extremely hot and arid region. Skin protection is important for everyone to prevent dryness, sunburns, and cancer.

The Marienna used olive oil or coconut oil to protect their skin, depending on what was available in their tribe's region. These oils are still used by their descendants in that region today, but they are not the only solution for sun protection.

The Marienna traditionally wore large hats and cloaks made from woven palm fibers to shade themselves. These loose weaves allowed air to pass through, so heat would not become trapped in their clothes. They also drew thick black lines around their eyes using charcoal, which protected them from the bright light.

Over time, the Marienna began wearing more sophisticated clothing items invented by the Odazi humans, which were usually made from linen. Local Marienna often traded food for processed textiles in these early times, because humans had mastered technologies that other peoples had not, like processing flax into linen.

The Marienna elves came to enjoy the humans' inventions and eventually adopted these technologies for themselves, but by that time, these cultures were assimilating quite a bit anyway. The Odazi humans, Vankza goblins, and Marienna elves were commonly seen living peacefully together by the 2nd Age. They shared their ways of life, and together they had mastered the art of surviving in their extreme climate.

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Questions/Comments?

Lore Masterpost

The Zareenite government owns a floating "island". It's actually a fleet of giant hexagonal aircrafts that connect together, forming an artificial mass in the sky. It's known as "Fort Fracture" because of the way its modular pieces can disconnect and reconnect to form different shapes and sizes. It kind of looks like a giant papercraft.

Fort Fracture is mainly a military fort. It has all the things you'd expect: tank yard, airfield, armory, barracks, etc. But also has a few residential districts attached to it, where staff and the families of soldiers live. Thousands of people live and work on Fort Fracture while it drifts over Zareen Empire, the sea, and sometimes foreign lands.

It is extremely efficient at transporting huge amounts of soldiers and equipment wherever they are needed. Instead of moving the whole fort, sections just break off and go, then return when the mission is over.

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Ah you're right! Interesting parallels!

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Questions/Comments?

Lore Masterpost