These humans constructed massive cities using stone, sand, and metal, and created many elaborate contraptions. Most remarkably, however, these humans had used biomancy to reshape their bodies, differentiating themselves into different races specialized to perform certain duties within their societies. I have had the good fortune to meet and interview the Lady Heppa, an elf who was present when her kin crossed the Morn Ocean and first encountered the Fugencians. Heppa described the society as initially giving the appearance of harmony, functioning much like one of their miraculous contraptions, but it didn't take her or her fellows long to discern the discontentment among the various racially defined castes. She commented to me that a catastrophic end for the civilization seemed inevitable.
That said, even the elves were shocked by what eventually happened.
Any casual student of our world's natural history is aware of the dramatic, heavenly event that has been dubbed the Star Shift, and is likely just as aware of the cataclysmic events that the Star Shift heralded. The old saying, 'the bigger they are, the harder they fall' proved very true in the case of Fugencian society - intensely dependent on their world's ordered infrastructure, the people could not recover from the disruptions caused by the unexpected changes that followed.
About the Star Shift: Some astrologists believe that Kaleida is not a stationary sphere around which other bodies move, but rather a moving body itself, coordinated with other bodies in a sort of elaborate dance. As proof, they point out that it is highly unlikely that the sun, stars, and all of the other celestial bodies moving around Kaleida would collectively alter their course at the same time and in the same direction. It would be far simpler to assume that something occurred which caused Kaleida itself to alter its movement, and that from our perspective it simply appears as if everything else has moved. Supporters of this theory describe Kaleida as a top spinning around an orcish hearth on a perfectly smooth floor; they believe our top "wobbled" causing both the visible change in the heavens and the catastrophic events which they seemed to foreshadow. Many question the plausibility of this, however, pointing out that when a top "wobbles" it does not simply lean a certain amount and then stop, it either returns to its original orientation or careens across the floor (with disastrous results). Two answers are given by supporters of the top theory: the first is that the critics are taking the metaphor too literally (Kaleida behaves like a spinning top, but clearly it is not a toy), and the second (more nihilistic) response is, "give it time."The Fugencians were evidently immediately alarmed when the constellations, and even the path of the sun, shifted north permanently and (relatively) quickly. According to Heppa, they attempted to take action at a massive scale, as if they somehow already knew what would ensue. However, although they alone seemed to know what was about to happen, conflict among the castes and among the Fugencians' leaders evidently made deciding what to do about it impossible. Although it took months for Fugencia to feel the consequences of the changing climate, the only large-scale response was a badly organized attempt to evacuate the coastal cities.
Evidently, many of the lower castes never escaped the cities, attempting to 'ride it out' in the larger structures. The rise in sea level was apparently far greater than they expected, however, and what buildings were not completely submerged were eventually undermined by the waves, collapsing into the sea like sand castles. Heppa estimates the death toll at the hundreds of thousands, a shocking number to be certain, but I must note that I had the definite impression she was low-balling her estimate because she believed I would not believe the full story as she remembered it.
In the east, the Morn Ocean not only devoured all of the Fugencians greatest cities, it swept many miles inland, forcing urban and rural dwellers alike to move to the high ground of the Faci Mountains for survival. The refugees packed into the cramped mountain valleys to escape the rising water, but starvation, disease, and violence ultimately claimed most of the initial devastation's survivors.
In the midlands, the great river basin that defined the continent's interior flooded and became a shallow sea, wiping out most of the kingdom's most productive farmland. Although most of the midland people escaped to the west and north, the disruption and upheaval broke the back of their society. The refugees clashed with their own kinsmen as they crowded into their neighbors' lands, pleading and eventually fighting for food and shelter. As the kingdom fractured, reformed, and fractured again, frantic warfare brought it lower still. Small provinces became independent kingdoms, and those kingdoms in turn declined into barbaric feudalism or worse.
According to Lady Heppa, her people quickly determined that there was no real way to 'save' the Fugencians, and sailed back to the Old Kingdoms to carry word of what they'd discovered and seen. Of course, quite to their surprise, the Old Kingdoms were contending with similar problems, and in a desperate attempt to resolve their own developing refugee crisis, the elvish kingdoms committed their armadas to a one way trip across the Morn to claim Fugencia and "put what was left to better use".
The ships were packed to capacity with orcs, who were in that time the elves' servants. They endured extreme hardship - a long voyage through unpredictable weather with minimal supplies. Heppa claimed that the rulers of the Old Kingdoms had not been interested in whether the voyage was successful; faced with a sudden population crisis, they had decided that sacrifices needed to be made, and that those sacrifices should largely come out of the orc population. Organizing a seemingly doomed expedition had been deemed a palatable alternative to mass executions.
A note: As to why any of the elves joined this apparently futile effort, Heppa explained that motivations varied. Some of the elves believed that if they did not go, the orcs would not be convinced to set sail, and so they embarked with the orcs believing that they were sacrificing themselves for the good of their people. Other elves, however, couldn't accept the ruthlessness of the plan, and traveled with the orcs, believing that their leadership would give their servants the best chance of survival. Heppa herself claimed that she was motivated by ambition and a degree of youthful recklessness - on the chance that she survived the journey, she'd be given her own force to command, and would be entitled to whatever she could lay claim to.
Heppa estimated that less than half of their ships survived crossing the Morn, and many of the orcs on the surviving ships had perished from starvation or in accidents. Nevertheless, although the orcs and elves alike were in a pitiful state when they reached what was left of Fugencia, the Fugencians were fairing at least as badly, and were in no way prepared to fight highly motivated elves and orcs. The armies from the east easily seized control of the island that had once been the Faci Mountains, gathered their strength, and then spread across the shallow sea, sweeping across Fugencia and conquering everything out to the far western and northern coasts. The surviving humans were either driven from the continent, or joined the orcs in serving the elves.
However, as Heppa acknowledged, this proved uncharacteristically short-sighted on the part of the elves. Elves, of course, reproduce much more slowly than either orcs or humans, and so as they expanded their influence, they also thinned their numbers, to the point of (in a few places) having to entrust their orc servants to oversee themselves. Mixed with the Fugencian humans, who had not been cowed by generations of subjugation, the orcs grew restless and that eventually set the stage for the Great Orc Rebellion.
Though it was a long war that the orcs very nearly lost, the elves were eventually defeated, and scattered to the fringes of civilization. With the elves defeated, the orcs and humans carved the remaining land into a number of smaller kingdoms, maintaining varying degrees of segregation and friendliness over the years that followed.
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Interested in reading more about Kaleida? The Rise of Azraea, Book I, is a high fantasy story with elements of comic fantasy and satire targeting present day, real world issues such as economic inequity, and sexual and racial discrimination. It is currently available on Amazon.
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