#grimlands

the grimlands heirs are very clearly changelings. nobody acknowledges this.

part two!

Grimlands recipe spread for @empiropediazine! This was a lot of fun to work on.

LORE. GIVE.

NOTES AS I GO: 1 I tried to finish this in one night however I have to be up at 5am 8/24. 2 I am watching Shelby Shubble's shubathon for her birthday. 3 If said shubathon is still going when this post is uploaded, go watch it :) 4 It is now 1:56 am 8/24, I am still watching the shubathon and have since showered.

Okay!! Im so sorry has taken me forever, I did not have the energy when you sent this last night. ANYWAY...

I tried to finish this in one night however I have to be up at 5am 8/24

You were very loose with this, I hope youre aware, so I will start at the most basic, with the gods I have bc I have NOT figured everything out for all the empires. This is a WIP au at all times of the day. All of this lore, at one point, does tie into the Crystal Cliffs: Academy for Magic (CC:AfM) au lore! Specifically with Scott and Xornoth.

I am by no means an ecologist, geologist, historian, nuclear physicist, politician, post-apoc author, or wizard. But I am a fan of Empires SMP that knows a thing or two about some of those topics. So here I’ll piece together what could be the future of the empires!

The Grimlands

I’m going to assume that the reactor explosion caused by mixing cod-based energy and salmon-based energy was nuclear. you know what that means!

Nuclear fallout!!

Not only does the blast rain flaming debris in every direction, but it also releases a sooty cloud filled with radioactive particles that will travel for hundreds of miles! Black rain from this cloud will contaminate plants, soil, and sources of water. Not just with your basic radioactivity! Eastvale was chock-full of dangerous chemicals used in manufacturing. Those are in the cloud too now.

Groundwater will take a while to get contaminated, but once it is, it’ll take 10 years to become healthy to drink again.

The cloud will stick around for several months, blocking sunlight, killing plants, and bringing the whole area down to subzero temperatures.

Nitrogen oxides released from the explosion will rip the ozone layer to shreds, so as soon as the dust clears, it’ll have little protection from UV radiation.

Luckily, the Grimlands just so happen to be home to some certain flora and fungi that have no issue with darkness, temperature extremes, and radiation: wither roses and corruption! These will spread even further during the fallout, and even penetrate other regions and replace their native flora as they die out.

You know that radioactive cloud I mentioned earlier? yeah, it’s going to get caught in pockets in mountainous regions, contaminating them to a higher degree than other biomes. Sorry, salmon sanctuary.

Hot tub villager dies in 6 days due to radiation poisoning

“This place is not a place of honor. No highly esteemed deed is commemorated here… nothing valued is here. What is here was dangerous and repulsive to us. This message is a warning about danger.”

The Ocean Empire

There’s two main outcomes for the ocean empire: it either stays dry permanently, or it was only dry in the first place because of shock waves from the reactor accident and all the water was about to return in a devastating tsunami.

If the water doesn’t return, the ocean empire will become an extremely salty bogland, or worse, an even saltier desert.

The remaining lillypads will dry out and die without moisture, making a substrate for new life to grow upon in small pockets.

Trade routes will be disrupted and slow down.

If the water returns, it is very likely that the ocean empire will be completely overwhelmed by its force. Its remains will be dashed upon the southern shores. The rubble of the prisma palace will sink to the bottom of the ocean.

A crucial resting and tourism location will be destroyed, but at least ships won’t have to sail around a huge dry spot.

The Cod Empire

The Cod Empire faces a similar conundrum to the Ocean Empire, since we never saw if the water wouldn’t return or if the rulers just fled before the tsunami.

A good majority of the land in a swamp is made up of peat, which absorbs a lot of water. When that water is removed, the peat will sink down several feet, changing the overall elevation of the area.

If the water doesn’t return, the whole area will dry out, and all the moisture-loving plants will die.

The tsunami will wipe out the now-flatter swampland, likely making it saltier in the process.

But there is hope for the cod population. Cod eggs float freely in the ocean, and when they hatch, they don’t require parents to raise them. Minecraft cod are very lucky because they have zero salinity requirements! 

Helianthia

Yes, it may have burnt down. But fire is as much a part of nature as floods and storms!

Forests regularly go through natural fire events. it clears out the old growth, supplies some nutritious new ash to the soil, and makes way for the new growth!

It won’t be long before plants take over and it’s recognized as valuable farmland all over again.

Of course, it’s not completely out of range of the reactor incident’s contamination. Nowhere is. But it is farther.

The Overgrown

The Overgrown is an easy case to write off as your basic forest fire event, just like Helianthia. But it is so much more than that!

Volcanic rifts opened up. They looked close to the surface, suggesting that the Overgrown is a volcanically active area, which would explain its fertility and height compared to the rest of the plains. It’s actually a volcanic plateau/dome!

Volcanism might not be a common event in our puny human timescale, but to an ancient entity like the Spring, it could be like clockwork. That could be how it was able to predict the apocalypse and prepare the seeds of life! Maybe the reactor incident wasn’t because of mixing two forbidden powers, but it was an error caused by tremors from the Overgrown volcano?

It might spew some sulfuric gasses, but side effects of that should clear up in under 50 years.

Now there’s a whole new layer of ash and basalt formations on top of the Overgrown. A similar healing process to Helianthia will begin, starting with lichens and mosses, and working up to grasses, saplings, and an eventual return of the wildlife, all supported by the germinated seeds of life.

But an important part of the ecosystem has run away: the guardian, and presumably, the other fairies. The bees are gone too. Without them, the Overgrown won’t be as resilient or be able to protect itself from human threats.

The Undergrowth

It might seem at first like the Undergrowth got off easily. But it was in the midst of an ecological catastrophe before Shrub showed up, since its mother tree (which connected the forest together) had been turned to ash by the corruption.

Since Shrub took the wolves and left, the undergrowth could undergo something similar to what happened to Yellowstone before the 90s, when it had no wolves. Deer overgrazed the forests and riverbanks, limiting the amount of new growth and recovery the ecosystem was capable of and increasing mudslides.

But that’s just the worst case scenario. Have you ever heard of the “Wood Wide Web?” It’s a system of hyphae (roots) under the ground that allow plants to store excess nutrients and communicate with each other. It’s made of fungus!

All the mushroom-growing that Shrub did could’ve introduced a wood wide web to the Undergrowth, replacing its need for a mother tree.

A different wolf pack could’ve moved into the newly vacant area. There is hope!

The Lost Empire

It was already on the decline. All of Joey’‘s villagers were dead. With him dead too, there would be nobody to rebuild the empire.

He was right next to the reactor blast as well. Even if he hadn’t gone mad and fallen off his temple, he would’ve succumbed to radiation sickness soon.

As the land recovers from the reactor incident, the jungle will slowly take over, and the lost empire will be lost yet again.

Pixandria

Pix has been gone a long time, but he left a strong empire behind that doesn’t rely on a single major export to trade with.

It’s a very old empire, so it would likely be the most stable of all empires at this time.

But one of their closest allies and trade routes have been decimated, and I’m guessing Pixandria is one of the places that the un-blessed ocean empire refugees will flee to if they survive the Tsunami.

The Lost Empire used to help keep the Pillagers in check, but since they’re gone, the Pillagers are going to become stronger and return to attacking Pixandria.

Rivendell

Like Pixandria, Rivendell is an old kingdom. Transfer of power to a new ruler will be smooth and somber.

I wish I could say that about the rest of the kingdom, but unfortunately, it’s battling at least three different environmental crises.

First of all, it has to deal with the radioactive cloud sent from the Grimlands reactor incident. Remember how I said that pockets in mountains tend to hold on to higher levels of radioactive particles? yeah.

Before the cloud clears, Rivendell is going to get even colder and darker. Xornoth’s fungus could survive the darkness and radiation, and the crops of Rivendell are blessed by Aeore, so that may add to their resilience.

Once the clouds clear, because the ozone layer is weakened and Rivendell is at a higher altitude, it will be subjected to higher amounts of UV radiation than the rest of the world.

Because of their adaptation to radiation, corruption fungus is going to outcompete the endemic plant life for a while. Luckily, it isn’t controlled by Xornoth’s malice anymore.

When the clouds part, the unnatural ice Scott made will melt. This can cause flooding, crop rot, and a drop in soil quality as the nutrients are washed downhill. It may damage the corruption fungus.

The people of Rivendell may have to migrate away from their homeland as it becomes too difficult to live there. Many will stay, likely elders.

Mezalea

I mean, the Matral Palace cracked in half, but the apocalypse left them relatively unscathed.

They may be directly north of the Grimlands, but winds tend to travel horizontally instead of vertically, so they don’t get too much fallout.

The lowlands of Mezalea will be flooded by the tidal wave

Un-blessed Ocean Empire citizens that survive will head here for refuge

With their direct neighbors blown up and irradiated, and ocean passage becoming more dangerous, trade may become slower

I doubt Joel took his wife disappearing too well.

Mythland

If Sausage’s ritual to appease/exorcise the blood sheep from mythland didn’t work, they would have a large-scale invasion on their hands.

Well, maybe not your traditional invasion, but invasive species are an ecological catastrophe! Dark oak forests are already susceptible to having too little new growth, and that issue will be exacerbated by all the blood sheep eating everything green and soft enough to chew. I’m willing to bet that blood sheep are also radiation-resistant and willing to take over every niche they can, including that of apex predators. Much like corruption fungus and wither roses, they could spread all over the continent.

As I said earlier, dark oak forests do not permit a lot of new growth. That is because they take up a lot of resources to grow in the first place, and their canopies are too tight and dark to permit light to reach the forest floor. This makes them susceptible to pestilence and mass extinction events.

Blood sheep or no, there’s a tsunami heading for the northeast corner of Mythland. Luckily, the ravine is there to drain the brunt of it, but the newfound force eroding the ravine might cause the great wall of Mythland to fall.

If Sausage was permakilled by the explosion caused by the exorcism, then he would leave a huge power vacuum. Unlike the other large kingdoms that grew over the centuries like Pixandria and Rivendell, Mythland’s expansion was sudden and fueled by the ambition of a single man: Sausage himself. In every case of an empire being conquered by one man in history, after that emperor’s death, the empire will be split by bickering and succession crises into smaller kingdoms. Kingdoms that grow too fast just don’t have the infrastructure or culture to last long at that size.

I can see the General becoming one faction that takes over a portion of Mythland, and Bubbles is certainly another.

And last but certainly not least, the Crystal Cliffs

The Crystal Cliffs is one of the closest kingdoms to the Grimlands, and it is nestled in a mountain. You know what that means: a harsher fallout.

It was a good idea to hand over leadership to Gandalf. He is more experienced and could deal with the crisis calmly and efficiently. What the Cliffs need is someone to bring stability, and Gandalf is the right cat for the job.

If they’re lucky, Gandalf will be able to dedicate enough resources and research to maintain some kind of magic barrier between the Cliffs and the fallout before it’s too late, and the apothecary can figure out how to treat radiation sickness. If they can’t, they’ll have to relocate.

The few citizens of the Grimlands that survived the blast probably sought refuge in the Crystal Cliffs first, because it is the closest surviving empire and had the best relationship with the Grimlands.

With the two dragons and the egg gone, the Crystal Cliffs have lost a lot of their defense and political clout.

Without the Grimlands supplying weaponry and technology, the Crystal Cliffs will lose some defensive capabilities.

The Academy’s acceptance of pillagers will help bolster its numbers, but please keep in mind that there are two kinds of pillagers that are going to enter the academy: the nerd rejects and the traitors. Unless their magical skill and discipline is trained well, it may be difficult to use them as a force to defend the Cliffs.

The Crystal Cliff’s neighbors are all either smoking pits in the ground or dealing with their own issues, so trade will become difficult.

Luckily, the crystal cliffs have something the rest of the world doesn’t: A food source. Chorus plants. They can survive in utter darkness and cold temperatures already, which make them fit for surviving the fallout.

They can trade chorus fruit to struggling survivors to build up their strength and prestige and become a world power.

Pixandria:

There’s a lot of humming, and despite the considered private ethereal nature of their way a lot of body movement. After all sand is a rough nature.

For a city so worshipped in death you’d think the city is sad but if anything death is another chore. It’s natural, somehow the rigorous celebration of death made them accustomed to the natural ending of life. 

Mezalia:

While it’s a very animated city full of dramatic life, truly a hot spot of wealth and beauty it has a stunning silence at times. The city rises and falls in volume as one almost unnaturally.

While Mezalia loves it’s more chaotic dances there’s a true precision to it, even foreigners falling into the hustle of a routine find themselves fit into it perfectly.

Mythland:

The nation, one of many layers with rich history was struck hard by the corruption. The city manages to have multiple dialects among different pacts of people, it’s truly easy to feel alone in there.

Grimlands: