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| Meraic History | |
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| Historical Event | |
| Event Name | Meraic History |
| Dates and Times | ??? |
| Location | Aloria |
| People Involved | Meraic Civilization |
This page is supplementary information to the Maraya Heritage, as Meraic is the name that defines their pre-awakening history, in ancient times when their civilization existed long before the first Elves built mud huts. This information is not readily accessible to characters who were not specifically Awakened Maraya, a subculture of Maraya, who were put into cryosleep in their Vaults after their civilization ended. There is no way a Character would have access to this information without being told by a Maraya, and implying an NPC backstory Maraya who told the story, is considered metagaming. Please do not rob Maraya players from the opportunity of telling a good story. It should be noted, a lot of this information is very generic, with a heavy emphasis on The End, or the last chapter. This is because Maraya civilization existed for over 15,000 years, and so a lot of information was already written by the victor, in this case the Tohn Sona Unity. A lot of his history is presented through the same scope we modern humans would talk about bronze-age civilizations, as Maraya history is vast.
Meraic History
The Founding
Meraic history supposedly starts roughly 15,000 years before their collapse, though it is very hard to pin this down to exact dating, as the exact date of the founding of the Allorn Empire cannot even be established, and there is no way of knowing how much time passed between the arrival of Talea and the unification of the Elves, and the final end of the Meraic Empire. Generous estimates have put the start of the Meraic Civilization somewhere at 40,000 to 37,000 years prior to the present day. Meraic history starts the same as many other civilizations do: they discover metalworking, start forming nation states and religions, and engage in frequent warfare over one another for power and wealth. The Meraic metal-working age was remarkably bloody, with the Meraic nation states having a high degree of militarism and Eronidas-like conscription of their civilian classes, and a large crafts population. Meraic development in comparison to more modern civilizations is fairly unique, from a very early point they were aware that they were the only real sentient Heritage of that era, but that other Civilizations had gone before them, as many Seraph, Second, and Third Civilization ruins were still around (the Maraya would later destroy many of them in the process of building their cities and their research, which is why so few remain to this day).
The Meraic experienced a period of religious turmoil as numerous states waged holy wars on one another, exterminating whole population numbers, until roughly speaking the Dragon Worshiping populations won out. Dragons were very important for early Meraic developments, teaching them Crystaltech and warding off the evils of lingering Magic, that had stuck around since the end of the Third civilization. The Meraic were very efficient at preventing any Magic from taking hold, their early nationhood states were distinctly anti-magic and anti-occult, and modern problematic Afflictions like Vampirism did not yet exist, meaning the Meraic were capable of preventing too much Magic from spreading among their population. Later developments under the Tohn Sona Unity made this process even more efficient, with a brutal register, catch, and kill operation, but there is still some history to consider before the Tohn Sona Unity even starts playing a role.
The Meraic civilization also went through a period of gunpowder development just like the Dwarves and Regalia did, but unlike the latter two, developed a very quick and efficient manner of flight through Crystaltech, which sent their technological developments into overdrive. The Senaat state, one of the larger Empires roughly formed around Ellador, which was much warmer and lush at the time, ended gaining the upper hand by militarizing flight, and terrorized the other Meraic states into submission, forming a great Senaat Empire. The Senaat Empire stood for several centuries, operating as a world-police state that would invade other countries ostensibly for democratic values and freedom of its populace, but always at the vanguard of a large host of capitalist exploiters and industrialists who would treat newly liberated states as colonies through which to suck dry resources by imperialist means. A large revolt occurred under the genius inventor Tohn Ralaat, who would steal military blueprints from the Senaat Empire and share them with the colonies, thus successfully revolting against their control. As the centuries passed (Meraic people could live several hundred years), Tohn Relaat invented ever larger machines of war and started planning the original constructions of the massive cloud piercing city-towers. The Senaat Empire fell, and Tohn Relaat was proclaimed some sort of hero of the people or world leader, which he resented.
Tohn Relaat would write the Tohn Sona, which any modern Ailor might misinterpret as a holy scripture. Rather, the Tohn Sona is a scripture by which to live one's life fairly, honestly, ethically, and productively. It describes largely what is expected of every Meraic (Maraya) citizen, and what they can expect in return from the "State". It also describes the need for the Meraic Civilization to be led by the Tohn Sona Unity, an autocratic council of technocrats elected through meritocratic procedure, which was immediately implemented before Tohn Relaat went into self exile when his first city-tower was built. Tohn Relaat is universally remembered as a savior and almost divine being that created the greatest of heights that Meraic civilization would soar to. Based on his designs, the Meraic soon after developed early stage space-flight, and were able to populate the far corners of the known world, establishing a single unitary state of optimism, progress, and a post-scarcity society, the military was (largely) done away with, and technology was put to serve the Meraic people, not just the wealthy and powerful. Curiously, Tohn Relaat was a staunch atheist, and refused to worship the Dragons which was still common dogma during his time. The Tohn Sona in fact specifically mentioned that religion was a blemish on Meraic civilization, and that it invited the very evil that the Senaat Republic was engaged in, who held the Dragon Triton as their supreme leader, called Mirvat by them. How the Dragons reacted to these events historically was not recorded, or at least sanded down to no longer be recognizable beyond prose and poetry.
Calamity
As the story is often retold, what originally started with a fair deal of optimism and righteous intentions, eventually would go awry. With the advent of space-flight, and with new inventions around the corner, individual inventors started hoarding information to their own benefit, that which the Tohn Sona directly forbids. Supposedly, it started with the Tohn Sona Unity, where meritocratic appointment was not always consistent. Some eras would have large numbers of inventors inventing new things and being permitted in, while in other instances the council was small. Large councils inherently also invited sabotage and subterfuge, as members sought to increase the individual weight of their say, while small councils became nepotistic. Eventually, technological progress started stagnating, and in order to keep ahead of the curve and stay or become part of the Tohn Sona Unity, the highest autocratic body in the world-spanning Meraic state, some administrators dabbled in Magic.
The Meraic State had its own police force the Kul-Merai, which were genetically engineered warriors who fought with tech weapons, more specifically large punching gloves which were a call-back to those early martial Meraic states where unarmed combat was considered graceful and most skillful. The Kul-Merai at this time acted more like a secret service for the Tohn Sona Unity, it was tasked primarily with the eradication of Magic, but became entirely blind to the Magic in the highest order, instead being sent around on redflag operations and false missions to eliminate political rivals or anyone who was about to reveal the dark secret at the top. Why the Dragons did not interfere, despite their common interactions with the Meraic, remains again unclear from the historical context. Over the final centuries, Meraic civilization became more of a police-terror state, with an over-equipped secret service hunting down dissidents and free speakers, so while their civilization lived in technological bliss, there was no freedom of thought or intent for anyone. While they lived in opulence with genetically engineered servants, and had technology to eliminate all of the unpleasant trivial things in life, had extended lifespans and could disappear into virtual mind-scapes, they were often confined to their cloud-piercing towers, towers so massive one could be laid sideways across the Regalian isle and still be longer, housing thousands of Meraic families that would travel to other towers with Crystaltech airships.
Calamity struck, when the Tohn Sona Unity attempted to use a great deal of Magic to create a singularity machine that would produce infinite power for the Meraic Civilization and permit solar-system wide colonization. Their plans were fatally flawed, and demanded that so much power be pulled from the Void and Exist, that it effectively ripped open the Veil (the magical barrier between dimensions) and poured Void Essence into the world for the 4th time, thus initiating a Void Invasion. Before covering the topic of the Bright War, it bears worth mentioning the presence of Arken and Estel during the Meraic Civilization's timespan, or rather, the historical lack thereof.
Arken and Estel
Meraic Civilization sits in the middle of the Immortal War, a war which is claimed by Archon to wage between the Dragons and the Arken, though Maraya Vaulters have no idea what Arken are at first glance. While Mages absolutely did exist in their timespan, the Kul-Merai got so good at tracking them down and eliminating them, that the modern theory is that Arken powers are not strictly linked to the pure act of existing, but also to the presence of Magic in the world in general. The theory, though untested or verified, goes that while there are less than a few hundred Mages in the world, Arken don't have enough passive essence to feed off of, or that the Veil's disruptions that are always present are so small, that they are barely any different from any other Mage, who is simply immortal. They were around, likely hunted frequently by the Kul-Merai, but unable to act on a greater platform, because they lacked the strength they have in the modern era with so many worshipers and followers who dabble in Magic. There is no way to actually verify this, as the Arken lost their memories during the Denial of Immortality, when the Dragons ended the natural concept of immortality, and were able to kill all Arken thus wiping their memories.
Estel must also have existed during this time, as Estel has reasonably existed since the Seraph first opened the Veil to the Exist realm. However, she is never mentioned, or encountered by any historical reference of the Meraic. It should be noted however, that the Tohn Sona Unity was strong enough at this point to affect the very perception of its people around the world. It is very possible that Estel was frequently around, but the Unity simply repressed information about her. Another theory that is popular among Ailor scholars, is that Estel was very much around, but that the Tohn Sona Unity captured her early on with their unimaginable technological advantage, and were able to use sheer power of tech to restrain her, potentially even use her as a source of power for their later inventions, and the very Singularity Machine that they intended to create. Whatever the reality, there is no recollection of Estel among any of the Maraya Vaulters, and any new Vaulter would insist this being did not exist.
The Bright War
The Bright War covers a period during which the Maraya attempted to resist the Void Invasion, for much longer than the Elves (who barely managed five years), but for much shorter than the Seraph (who supposedly lasted a thousand years). The Bright War itself is cited as having lasted about 120 years, with some Vaulter Maraya remembering the very beginning and the propaganda around the Singularity Machine, and the subsequent horror as it wiped out a southern black-site, and poured the Demons into the world. Maraya civilization had largely abandoned militarism, save for the Kul-Marai, because there were no more hostile states, and the populace was severely repressed. Many Meraic industries were quickly converted to produce weapons, and their space-flight capable fleet was quickly repurposed as bomber vehicles. It was crucially the Dragons here who came to the aid of the Meraic, unexpected and without any request from their part, buying them enough time to formalize an army and bring the fight to the Demons. Initially this seemed to work well, but the insidious presence of Magic continued to corrupt from within. The confusion concerning the Singularity Machine had allowed the Tohn Sona Unity to obfuscate their involvement, but sooner or later, Demons started appearing within the very halls of government.
The scandal was eventually exposed, causing wide spread terror, confusion, and break-down of public order. Various regions and provinces tried to declare autonomy, or even started fighting over resources, not fully comprehending yet that the Void Invasion proposed an extinction-scale event. Many of the Meraic did not see the calamity coming until it was far too late, having grown complacent and terrified of going against the consensus over the centuries since the adoption of the Tohn Sona as the only valid scripture to live by. The Meraic lost much ground in the following decades, though the Demons continued to be slowed down by the very high technological standard of Meraic weapons. Even during this warfare period, Meraic inventions started pouring out once more, developing plans for combat vehicles, unmanned turrets, and more. Roughly 30 years before The End, the Dragons presented a proposal to the wider Meraic civilization that at this point had realized they were fighting a losing fight, to enter the vaults, which would be built based on Meraic designs, and powered by Dragon Magic and the Leylines, which the Meraic knew existed, but did not interact much with to avoid angering the Dragons. Several provinces that had not yet fallen to the Demons accepted this plan, and surrendered thousands of their Kul-Marai to become Archon, to empower their fighting chances against the Demons to buy them enough time to build the vaults and work with the Dragons.
Other provinces however, disagreed, holding onto the Tohn Sona's rejection of Dragons as ultimate dogma, and refusing to work with them in what they felt was re-admittance to Dragon Worship as their saviors. Some provinces descended into pure chaos, with end-of-civilization parties consuming whole city towers, as well as others insisting that ever increasing autocratic governance was the answer, where civilians were thrown as waves of expendable soldiers against the Demons, who marched on relentlessly. The final cause, was of the western provinces, who instead insisted that they did not need the Dragons, but wanted to effectively achieve the same thing by lifting Meraic civilization off the planet, and become fully spaceborne, dedicating their resources to a massive spaceship that would act as their new home world. What would later become of this faction, is unknown even to the Vaulters. It was known that their vast space station was under construction, but they do not know if it ever lifted off, as they entered the Vaults before it ever went up, or the front line reached their realm. Some Maraya may be astute to observe however, that what the Ailor know as Crystallum, looks an awful lot like what they were building, but very worn down.
The End
The End of Meraic civilization was chaotic, and costly in the sheer casualties. Meraic Civilization was globe-spanning, but the Vaults were unable to hold more than a million people (also also rejected any magical inhabitants due to fears of demonic corruption). Some people got lucky by proximity of Vault construction near their city-towers, others were only as lucky as a lottery. Decades after the Tohn Sona Unity collapsed, society had effectively become self-governing, with many of the Meraic accepting that they would not live to see the Vault doors open, instead helping what remained of their civilization pack up as much as they could to survive. Hundreds of thousands of Kul-Merai Archon died in order to buy time, and many technological secrets were lost as research labs were overrun, or there simply wasn't enough time to bring functional prototypes and vast databases into the Vaults, with many of the Tohn Sona Unity even wiping old military blueprints while possessed by Demons, or enraged by the idea of their legacy having been the end of all civilization. The individual experience of one Meraic woman is best told, to illustrate the chaos of the final days, found in the next section.
Final Days
Foreword
The following writing is a recounting of a so-called "Mem-Key", a memory recording found in some Qadir shops that is fairly accessible and available even to non-Maraya, though it is insightful reading for Vaulter Maraya, since they might be able to style their own experiences after this one Meraic mother and her family. To many Vaulters, they would have memories of the days before they went into the Vault that was very similar to the one described here, with only minor variances.
A Mother's Last Recording
Eyes opened to a bright room. The walls were made of a gentle opalescent chrome, shapes flowing like papyrus reeds by a river, the floor made of pitch-black marble with slight cracks of gold and purple interlaced. There was a sense of dread in the viewer, a knowledge of what was to come. The inevitable. The announced. And it was today. From what the viewer could tell, the person whose memories were recorded was a female Maraya, probably somewhere middle-aged. She first entered the nursery, transferring one of the yet unborn children into a portable nursery station that her husband could carry on his back, before entering another room where a child was playing with a set of levitating crystals. It was hard to tell if this family was affluent or poor, but the apartments they lived in looked positively palatial. There was gold trim on many things, exotic plants that any viewer of the recording would have never seen or conceived of, and the windows gave such a view. Every once in a while the recording would look out the window as if to expect something, not taking in the wonder of the sun rising above the clouds. Wherever their apartment was, it was high above the clouds, thin bone-white spires with jutted crystal growths spanning as far as the eye could see, and the golden glow cascading over the cloud cover below producing an orange hue wherever the sunlight touched.
The family packed up, abandoning all manner of equipment and strange crystal devices all over the apartment, and got walking. At the end of the hallway they were joined by more Maraya, each families carrying small amounts of belongings and their children, somber faces with knowledge of what was to come, some even took their dimuitive bipedal dog and feline servants with them, no larger than a modern dwarf, but much more lithe. They seemed quite easily distracted and confused about what was going on around them, too childish in comprehension perhaps to understand the gravity of the moment. Large groups of Maraya stepped onto large crystal elevators that levied them back and forth witch such astounding speed, and halting with equal abruptness that somehow did not eject all those traveling on it onto the ceiling. The families rushed down pathways that extended from the massive white spires towards open platforms. It was in this moment that one could truly see how gigantic these spires really were. The All-Beacon Temple's massive spire was a pin-prick in comparison, there must have been hundreds of residential levels, gardens and workshops built into the spires.
And then, the rush started. The family realized something was wrong when the guards marched by, large imposing Maraya with purple eyes and each with a set of massive crystal punching gloves that looked almost comically large for their frames, buzzing with electric sparks and steam vents. Before long, platforms opened up on the sides of the towers and large crystal-lance like turrets unfolded from them, aiming down at the cloud cover below and initiating a fierce barrage of hot plasma bolts into the clouds below. There was no sound on the recording, but the firing must have been fierce, the kickback alone causing wild gusts of wind to funnel over the walkways where the Maraya had now started running towards what looked like evacuation platforms. More and more turrets unfolded until the towers themselves looked like they were held up by thousands of streams of light, shooting millions if not billions of rapid fire plasma shots into the clouds below, but all who looked could not see what they even fired at.
Then in the distance, massive purple and red amalgam tentacles erupted from the cloud cover and a whole swarm of locust-like creatures followed up by a beak of a kind that must have been as large as the entire Imperial Palace in Regalia - which was to say massive. It crashed into one of the hundreds of white spires that presumably made up the Maraya city-spires, causing all manner of explosive flashes to erupt from the base going up. Crystal air skiffs ejected from all layers of the spire, many too late as they were crushed by the falling debris. The family inched closer to the evacuation platforms, ships coming and going, picking up a few dozen before humming off on that distinct Maraya gravity defying crystal-tech. More and more guards ran up behind the group, reaching the edge of the platforms, before their punching gloves unfolded what looked like stabilizer winglets, and rocketed down into the cloud cover below like meteors. The further they got to the evacuation platforms, the recorder could see one of the displays overhead that showed holographic information.
It showed the ground cover, and a vague layout of the continents, showing vast sections the continents already in red. The vague shape of Farahdeen and Essalonia could be made out, but Daendroque and the modern Hadar region was unrecognizable. Only the Regalian Isle seemed recognizable, and it remained entirely in purple, though any viewer would not know what this mean. The area around the spires where they were was about 90% covered in red, with key points of holdouts where holographic displays showed massive crystalline structures marching over the land ejecting streams of plasma light into what the viewer could only distinguish as endless hordes of demons. The family finally reached the evacuation platform and boarded the transport, taking their seats and clasping in, the mother ensuring the portable nursery was still functioning by checking its valves. The ship took off, and then everything started shaking as large tentacles erupted from the clouds beneath.
The sound was obviously still muted, but it was clear there was a lot of screaming and the cabin lost pressure, some of the seated being sucked out of the skiff to the left of the viewer, while she tried to hold on for dear life to her husband. Below, from the hole in the side of the skiff she could see the evacuation platforms smashed to pieces, and what must have been hundreds or thousands of Maraya falling down like ragdolls to the clouds below, as the tower itself shattered and leaned to the side. The plasma cannons went silent and smaller escape pods ejected from the entire spire like small little seedlings jumping from a pinecone. One of the pilots quickly deployed a fixer bot that ran into the hole and deployed an instantly hardening chrysalis that covered up the hole, stabilizing the ship somewhat to jet it further into orbit. Below, the viewer watched the towers topple one by one, and a lot of angry yelling and arguing in the ship itself. It was fairly obvious that the evacuees didn't know it would happen so soon, and everyone was in a state of shock, but arrive they did to the next checkpoint.
This facility was a levitating crystal satellite in a very high orbit. In fact it was so high that all the evacuees put on oxygen masks, with the ozone clearly being visible on the horizon. It was some sort of gathering station where many evacuation shuttles emptied out into a larger liner skiff that could accommodate hundreds. The viewer walked by as they saw a few administrators carry what looked like pods of hibernation pets, the same bipedal dog and cat-likes of before, loading them into a large chassis that looked like a drop pod with all manner of technological devices secured inside before sending it off, causing it to rocket into the horizon and disappear from view. Tech storages? Resource caches? Unknown to the viewer, as there was no explanation for anything occurring. The family sat down in one of the passenger bays, completely packed with people in all manners of distress. Before the ship took off, the woman was looking at a sort of holographic display, though her view was getting watery with what looked like tears in her eyes. Her husband tried to comfort her, she steeled herself, and looked down a list of what looked like Maraya poetry. She eventually settled on a line, tapping it, where it was written: "Mal-uron Thiaar Iiannaam Sohaan, which had a Qadir translation inserted by the Mem-tech engineers to say "The one who was stolen from", part of the woman's favorite poem was presumed. The woman re-arranged some of the letters until they formed Mal-ra-Thiiaa, before she cast a quick glance to the embryo still in the portable nursery, then finally closing the holographic display and storing it away.
The ship took off, but their struggle was not yet complete. Immediately after liftoff, several spike-shaped crystal ships also took off in a V shape formation in front of the ship, and before long, they dove down to meet what could only be described as flying squids with long tendrils hovering up to the ship that was traveling at high altitude. There was immediate panic aboard the ship again, with the mother and father embracing each other, as the ship's engines roared harder, shaking the ship. The mother was able to look out a port window to see the interceptor stream plasma shots at the squids flying up at the ship, shooting down several of them but eventually being overwhelmed until a purple dragon suddenly leapt out of the clouds, sending a long stream of lightning through a group of the flying demon creatures. It sped towards the largest one, clawed up against it, ripped its head off and then jumped off on it to destroy the others. The Dragon's appearance seemed to cause a cheer and elation among the people, as it started picking off the demon things one by one, the remaining interceptors returning in formation, and the aircraft speeding away from the fighting scene where the squid demons had now turned on the Dragon and dragged the fight back into the clouds below.
The recording then went mostly black and showed only flashes of what followed, the craft landing in a jungle area except all the plants were orange, the family walking through two massive doors, and the inside of a Tohn vault, with families being sent down specific corridors and guards holding the front gate and keeping a lookout. The next flash was of an emergency light flashing, the front gate under attach by demons, and the family running away from it as the doors started closing, the guards rocket-punching their way through any that managed to get in. The final view was of the family sitting near stasis-pods, the child was already in one, and the father was about to enter one as well, while the mother secured the portable nursery in one of the devices next to her. She cast a final glance down the large hall where sound suddenly erupted from the recording, the Qadir having inserted a comment saying "this is where the Maraya unmuted the recording". The massive vault started going dark one segment at a time, only showing the dim lights of the pods, thousands of them. The woman fidgeted with a necklace as she muttered to herself which was translated by the Qadir Engineers: "The promise, the promise. The promise that it will all end. They promise they will wake us. It will all come to pass." - as if to steel herself for the coming slumber. She then lay herself down, casting one final glance at her husband to her side who was already in the pod, and then a final glance at the portable nursery to the other side, before her vision went black and the recording ended.
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