Lore Night

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Swarmings and Refugees

Report of the Lore night^[1] April 6th, 2021 animated by Namcha.

Context

❦ For three centuries, homins lived in a much larger set of territories than they do now. These regions are called the “Old Lands”.
The Old Lands are huge, much wider than the New Lands, but they, too, include four main areas where desert, forest, lakes (the sea) or jungle predominate. Moreover, they have features that do not exist in the New Lands, such as rivers, large sawdust dunes and a mountain range separating Trykoth from Zoran.

    In 2481, the “Great Swarming” occurs: kitins in great numbers come out of the depths into Fyros territory, probably as a result of too much-advanced exploration by the latter. The Fyros fight back, but the kitin wave is immense. The wave moves eastward, invades the Matis territory, then the Tryker territory, and finally the Zorai territory. The surprise is total and the homin civilizations are swept away. The Karavan throws itself into the battle, but suffers significant losses. The homins have seen some karavaneers die on this occasion. Apparently, for the homins, the Kamis do not intervene, or do so very late.

    Elias Tryton, whom the Karavan considers a traitor to Jena, speaks to some homins, including the Fyros Oflovak, to inform them of the presence of Rainbows.
These Rainbows bring the homins to an area of the Prime Roots that the homins have since named “Sanctuary” because the kitins have never been able to reach it.
Many homins remain in the Old Lands, however, including those who would later form the Marauders.
The homins find refuge for two years in the Sanctuary. Yasson, the Matis king, one of the last living leaders, regularly reaches the surface via a small pathway to communicate with the Karavan. But, above all, a spirit of mutual aid reigns in the Sanctuary, unknown until now to the homins. The forced stay is conducive to a great mixture of cultures, never seen before. The homin spirit has really advanced at this time.
In the meantime, the Kamis and the Karavan repel the kitins to the depths. And once the surface is cleaned up, the Karavan gives the signal for the climbing back and seals the entrance to the Sanctuary.
When the homins arrive in the New Lands in 2483, they find no kitin.

    Oflovak, aware that some homins have not been able to reach the Rainbows, decides to go back to the Old Lands while all homin peoples work to rebuild their civilizations.
He has a journey of about 2,000 kilometers as the crow flies, using the stars to find his way. It takes him about two years to reach his destination in 2485. He marks the route out and thus homins who had not been able to take advantage of the Rainbows will begin to arrive in the New Lands in 2487.

    The story experienced by the player characters begins in 2525.

Discussion : Who is my character ?

❦ In the game design, the basic idea is that the player characters are refugees from the Old Lands, who come through the Oflovak road.
But by now, many years have passed since the Great Swarming and even the Second one. One might legitimately ask what is still fueling the flow of refugees. One can then propose other explanations for the origins of the player characters.
For example, it is quite credible to say that a character is native of one of the cities of the continent.
The period spent on Silan can then be seen as the time of an apprenticeship rite proposed by the Rangers to young homins. In this rite, one begins as a refugee, in a symbolic way. However, it is not a prerequisite for each homin. And as Chiang should have understood that the kitins have returned to the Jungle, since he has been told about it for a long time, we can think that the imp is pretending.
Claiming to be from a region of the Bark other than the New Lands is still possible, but this should no longer be the norm.
A famous player could say, for example, he is a marauder from the Old Lands, which would explain his advanced characteristics.

Often, upon returning to the Bark, the homin justifies his absence by a long journey to the Prime Roots or the Old Lands; but in fact, that should be seen more as a dream, as if the homin in question had experienced a “resurrection pause”. The resurrection pause of a homin would then be equivalent to his being queued up by the Powers. But the homin would not realize it. He would feel like he was traveling.

Discussion about Planet Atys

❦ The Old Lands and the New Lands together represent a very small part of the planet. There must be areas of very different geography. The artistic view of the planet is misleading. The northern areas of the planet, for example, are rather sparsely vegetated, covered with tundra or even swamps. There are also zones in the penumbra, because of the lack of a bright enough star.

The vast brown plains, which can be discerned at the foot of the cliffs bordering certain regions, correspond to a smooth and compact bark. There no plant grows, except for small grasses, mosses and fungi.

The sky of Atys is, unfortunately, not at all coherent. We can't really be inspired by it.
On the other hand, the pulsating star is coherent. The fact that it is fixed in the sky is not a chance occurrence, nor a mistake. The testimonies coming from the Old Lands say that, there, the pulsating star is at the zenith.

Discussion about the kitins

❦ During the Second Swarming, the kitins didn't disappear on their own; getting them off the New Lands involved a long series of events, such as collecting termites to plug up the mounds from which they emerged. But, even if the story doesn't say under what circumstances, the great wave, as for it, did indeed retreat.
It should be noted that it was white kitins from the depths who occupied the land when the Second Swarming occured. It would be interesting to investigate the behavior of these white kitins after the Second Swarming and whether they were aggressive towards other kitins.

The current invasions seem less important than the previous ones but it is difficult to know if, should homins not react, they will not become more important. Perhaps these limited incursions are only conducted to test the reactions of the homins.

It is very likely that there are still kitins in the Old Lands, which may be the reason for the Marauders' nomadism. It is difficult to know whether current kitins are white kitins or not. Rumors spread by the Marauders suggest that the kitins of the Old Lands are much larger than those of the New Lands. But that may be just bragging.

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