People of the Solar System

In Sol it is whorls of nuclear energy that became people. They are called angels, for their perfect society long ago solved all problems of morality. They do not interact with the rest of the system, but occasionally exile the imperfect, sending them burning through the ether to land on some planet or asteroid or moon and become djinn.

On Mercury it is rocks that became people. They are slow, methodical beings who spend their time in contemplation, for they do not die and require nothing to live. Their powers of introspection and self-control are second-to-none but convincing them to accept you as a student will require incredible patience.

On Venus it is plants that became people. Stately and always flowering, they prize the colors of their leaves and petals. Their movements are slow, deliberate, and carefully practiced so that they are always in an elegant pose. Their understanding of beauty and grace is perfect, but they will not allow you in their society if you will ugly it.

On Mars it is lizards that became people. They spend 4/5 of their lives asleep, and the remainder in frantic action, performing maintenance on the automated machines that run their society. Martian machines are valuable trade goods and trade ships carrying them will be welcomed throughout the system.

On Ceres it is fish that became people. They evolved under the ice, in total darkness, but they and their cousin animals are bioluminescent. They build aquariums out of asteroids and travel the system in glass spheres. They do not like to show themselves, but display alluring lightshows, for which they are nicknamed sirens.

Around Saturn it is birds that became people. They fly between Saturn’s many moons on mirror wings, snatching up shards of ice and bringing shiny rocks to their nests. Their culture is centered on vendettas; each bird can recite a list of who has wronged them and how.

Around Jupiter it is insects that became people. They fly between Jupiter’s many moons on transparent wings, devouring each other and anything that enters Jovian orbit. Their society is without morality, as they are unable to feel any sort of pain.

On Uranus it is coral reefs that became people. Their bodies sprawl across the shallow zones, feeding on radioactive plankton and thinking vast, slow thoughts. It is assumed that their philosophies are filled with unique insights, but their language has never been translated.

On Neptune it is the ocean that became a person. The water ammonia mix of its seas carve channels in the ice, inscribing perfect memories and flowing in patterns of perfect thought. Neptune wants nothing more than to bring itself closer to the sun and awaken the other planets.

The Horses

The people of the five-tongued river breed horses descended from the celestial horses of Snowcloud mountain. The horses can walk on the water of the river, but no other river, lake, or sea will hold them. The people live along the northern stretch of the river, from its source at the base of the mountain, and as far south as Icefall ravine, where cold steppe gives way to cold desert.

The river is a road to its people, a natural causeway wider than any built by mortals. The people ride their horses along it, and hitch the horses to large barges that can carry far more cargo than a cart.

Their settlements sit at each fork and curve, long towns and villages whose buildings sit at the water's edge, hiding from the wind in the small river valleys. The nearby lands are used to raise hardy crops, tough enough to survive the cold and the dry, but tough enough to break teeth too. The low hills further out are the pastures for the horses, as well as herds of pale pigs that grow wool and unusually round goats that produce massive volumes of milk.

One of the princes of the coasts sent an envoy hoping to buy some of these water-walking horses. He had hoped to use them against his enemies, reasoning that ships do not expect to have to defend against cavalry. He was most displeased to learn that the horses can only walk on some water, and petitioned his god for celestial horses of his own.

The Kingdom of Fireflies

The king of the Kingdom of Fireflies is a sickly man. He has never seen the sun and it has harmed his health more than any of his subjects. It is all he can do to reach his throne room, and he must survey his kingdom from his castle windows.

The kingdom is small, built into the sides of the cavern containing the underground lake Bluelight. Everyone lives in carved out spaces in the walls, lit by glowing blue-green lichen. Some are alcoves with patches of dried lichen too sleep on. Some are as fine as a palace on the surface, or so their owners boast, despite no one having seen the surface in living memory.

Open spaces, side passages and islands in the lake, are reserved for agriculture. The people of the Kingdom of Fireflies grow grubs, planting them upright in the gravel with only their shiny black heads showing. The grubs are fed all manner of organic waste, slowly but surely growing fat. A farmer must judge, without digging up the grub, how close it is to pupating and maturing into an firefly. The closer to pupation, the fatter the grub, but the fireflies are inedible. A portion of each crop is allowed to mature, the fireflies swarming above the fields pulsing frantic mating signals, and under this light the people hold their harvest festivals, gorging themselves on grubs until the fireflies fall, then splitting them open and collecting their eggs for the next planting. The king looks for clusters of wandering lights, so that he can know his people will be fed.

Mermen live in lake Bluelight. They are not like the mermaids of the surface the King has read about. Cave mermen are pale, with semi-translucent skin that has a shiny, slimy look. They no longer have eyes, although they still have eye sockets. Instead of legs they have tails like eels, long and sinewy. They trade silverfish scales and steelcrab shells for tools, which they struggle tomake themselves. The king sees them sometimes, from his bedroom window, silhoutted by glowing algae.

The king's castle is carved out of a rocky promentory jutting out above the lake. It was created to closly imitate the childhood home of his grandfather, who grew up in a castle on the surface. It contains many artifacts of the surface, although few of them have escaped rust or rot. Visitors marvel at the workings of metal their ancestors had wrought. They themselves only know how to craft leather, chitin, stone, and bone.

Someday they will reclaim the surface from the evil that banished them, but the king knows he will not live to see that day.

Making Use of an Empty Thing

At the north side of the steppe, where the great grey mountains that birth the ten rivers rise out of the grass, there is an ancient, isolated nation where they practice an ancient and terrible tradition called Making Use of an Empty Thing. They do not believe, or do not care, about the warnings and proscriptions applied by all civilized nations to necromancy. They had convinced themselves that as long as necromancy was practiced on beasts, and not on people, they were not doomed. As a servant of the Saint, it was Allix's duty to save them from themselves.

Allix had seen a military parade where the necromancers displayed their masterworks. Steppe crabs, killed with poison and then animated, riveted with steel plates and painted yellow-gold for the parade. They carried howdahs of black lacquered wood with tall banners and seats for two crab-knights, one armed with a pike, one with a long-barreled musket, and both in black chitin lamellar. 

Allix had fled the parade as fast as he could without attracting attention, and returned to the boarding house where he was staying, hurrying to his room and latching the door behind him. He felt for the burlap bundle beneath his bed and pulled it out, unwrapping it to check the contents. The larvae had almost finished off the pig carcass they had been living in, but it was no matter. Soon they would mature, and then the parasitic wasps they grew into would seek dead flesh, eating and growing and multiplying until no dead thing could last and every undead beast were devoured from the inside.

World of Grass

MONOGRAPH ON THE INHABITED WORLD GAMMA LEONIS 3
COMMONLY CALLED "THE WORLD OF GRASS"
PREPARED FOR THE VICEROYAL BY THE IMPERIAL ORDER OF SURVEYORS

Gamma Leonis 3 is an inhabited planet made habitable through terraforming. For reasons that will likely remain a mystery to us, as the relevant records have been lost, your ancestors, who terraformed it, introduced only grasses, and no other type of plant lives there. For this reason, it is called the World of Grass.

The biomes of the world are defined almost entirely by rain. The driest areas are like harsh deserts everywhere: sand and rock and no plants or animals.  Slightly more favorable deserts support poverty grasses. Rainier areas are grasslands, prairies, or steppes; the more rain, the higher the grass. Areas that receive the most rain become bamboo groves, with species as large as any tree. The planet is both colder and rainier than it should be, owing to the massive wildfires that regularly sweep the lands. Winters are unduly harsh.

The lack of any available wood forces its peoples into several limited ways of life, depending on biome. The people of the hills and mountains build homes and terraces of stone, reinforced with bamboo. The people of the river valleys irrigate large fields and build cities of clay. The people of the lakes and marshes weaves boats our of reeds and train birds to fish for them. The people of the seas and islands create ships of bamboo. The people of the steppes live by herding and hunting.

All of these peoples have but three domesticated animals. A species of elk, which was likely tampered with during the terraforming process, as it has many genes from horses and can be ridden like them, a species of bighorn sheep, and a species of guineafowl like great blue-black chickens. They have five domesticated plants, all grasses. They grow rice, wheat, barley, sugarcane, and a semi-domesticated strain of bamboo.

The people of the world of grass are almost certainly the descendants of an ancient colony. Like with most foundling colonies, the peoples of the world of grass are unusually culturally similar, even when great distance separates them. All of their religions are variants of ancestor worship and the worship of national heroes. All of their languages are derived from Anglish, presumably the language of the original colonists. Governments almost all contain technocratic or bureaucratic elements. All of their economies operate with an unusual degree of division of labor and specialization, with craftsmen expected to perfect one single part of their craft, and perform it as part of an assembly line.

You may find their morality puzzling at first, but its basis is simple. To them, all good is the same. They do not distinguish between being good at something and being a good person. They have one word for self-improvement, and one for the improvement of others. It's not charity, but something we don't have an exact word for it. It is tied up with concepts like stewardship and parenthood, a sort of earned superiority. Keep that in mind when you take the reigns of the planet.

The world of grass offers several prospects for exploitation. Its peoples are skilled sculptors and weavers, and their best works would be worth exporting. There are a few national epics and popular stories that would be worth translating and copywriting. Perhaps most valuable is biological information. The genetic templates of domesticated plants and animals always sell well, and the planet's unique ecology is of great interest to biologists, who would buy the templates of strange organisms like bloodgrass, saltgrass, and bamboo birds.

No derelicts have been detected in orbit, which raises the possibility that their colony ship landed on the planet's surface and never took off. Needless to say, its drive core would be the greatest possible treasure this planet could possibly hold. One clue as to its location may be the valley of faces, a narrow gorge the sides of which have been carved into massive statues, all dressed in garments that resemble spacesuits.

World of Mists

The world of mists is a terrarium, a cylinder carved out of an asteroid to contain a self-sustaining ecosystem. Spun for gravity, the interior of the cylinder has a surface area of almost 140km2. An odd effect of airflow through the spinning cylinder has led to permanent mist.

Approximately a third of the surface is covered in lakes and ponds, another third is marsh, and another third is forest. The constant mist has lead to massive amounts of lichens and mosses growing on every available surface. Moose wander the land eating lichen off branches, otters live along the shores of the lakes, and packs of wild dogs hunt through smell at night. The thick constant mist forces all animals to neglect their sight and depend on other senses. During the day you can hear moose bellowing to each other, and at night the dogs howl.

A village has been carved into the sheer cliff that forms one end of the cylinder.. The villagers tend to moist gardens and maintain necessary machines, living meditative lives of routine, including exercises that maximize their hearing. It is because of these exercises that they have become aware of the wanderer, a being that has never been seen. It may be able to see through the mist, for it has always been able to avoid even silent pursuers, but in quiet twilights one can hear the sound of its heavy steps as it roams.

The Fields of the Sky

Go south. As you pass the equator, you enter the fields of the sky.

Birds rule here. Terrorbirds hunt down flocks of Ostriches and Gamebirds through the grass. The only non-avians are the snakes, which swarm the rivers, and feral cats, introduced by travelers.

The people here carve citadel-manors out of the great pillars of red stone, and surround them with tall white dovecotes. The women keep themselves meticulously hairless, the men take pride in never shaving and being as hairy as apes. The people do not craft metal, but trade honey and eggs to passing merchants in exchange for metal tools and weapons. Their weapons are therefore of a great variety, each of a different type and from a different culture.

I have not seen this land, but this is what I have heard.

Moscow

The banks of the Moskva river have collapsed and flooded, creating new wetlands. Much of the subway system is also flooded, but some are known to have survived in sealed sections. In summer, Moscow swarms with the activity a new ecosystem, and dozens of species of stinging insects. In winter the river freezes, and the survivors emerge to scavenge and hunt hibernating beasts.

The USSR will not abandon its former capital without a fight. There have been numerous attempts at reclamation over the years, all of which have failed, and many of which have left behind pockets of soldiers. Most die, some are assimilated by bands of survivors, passing on their skills.

Manhattan

South of central park, all of Manhattan is enclosed in glass, a carefully maintained habitable environment, spring 365 days a year. A glass roof is supported by the tops of smaller buildings and fills the gaps between taller ones. Cars are forbidden with the enclosure, as air pollution has nowhere to go, and much of the subway system is flooded. There is an electric bus service, bicycling is encouraged, and many streets have been converted to pedestrian only walkways and "open-air" markets.

Outside of the enclosure, things are dicier. The giant squatter cities of Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx. Survivors focused on getting through the day, and preparing for increasingly difficult winters. Although they hate it, much of their economy is based on the Manhattan Enclosure, either in service positions or making hand-crafted goods to sell there on weekends.

London

An airtanker arrives, every day, to dump white powder over the city. The drops focus on Hyde Park, ground zero for the infection. 25 tons of powder per day adds up, blowing about the city and piling into drifts. When it rains the mixture foams and bubbles, and bleaches the stone as it drains towards the Thames. The river is as dead as the city, but with the population of Great Britain dead or evacuated, no one complains. Nature has grown strong enough and weird enough to look after itself anyway.

USA

There are many parallels between the USA and the USSR. The United States were forced to abandon the west coast as the Rocky Mountains turned into one of the world's largest red zones. The federal government will not give up on reunification, but their control is spotty west of the Mississippi, and nonexistent west of the Rockies, with California now all but independent.

Much of the Midwest is also approaching red zone status. A new dust bowl, firestorms, and a seven year cycle of locust swarms all compete to destroy vital farmland. Well-to-do settlements in these regions are built underground, protecting them from these many disasters. Most of these are typical bunker complexes, but the most distinctive are the silo towns, built in decommissioned nuclear silos.

Most major cities contain white zones in the form of domes or arcologies, the most well known of which are the Manhattan Enclosure, the National Mall, the Chicago Towers, and the Orland Stilts. Aside from the Rockies, the largest red zones are the Louisiana bayou, the Florida everglades, and many sections of the Appalachian mountains.

America refuses to be defensive. No established politician will publicly give up on reunification. The less able they are to guarantee internal security, the more aggressively they advocate it.

USSR

The lands west of the Urals and east of the Vistula are now some of the least habitable on Earth, approximately 60% yellow zones and 20% red. Western Russia is an autonomous zone, a patchwork of communes, city-states, and simple chaos. Moscow itself is a red zone, where human life only continues underground. East of the Urals, however, the USSR persists.

Vladivostok is the new capital of the new USSR. Government officials, along with vital civilians, live in a large bunker complex beneath the city. The only remnants of communism are aesthetic: emblems on uniforms and statues. The USSR is spartan, a military state, devoted to and dominated by a military hierarchy.

The cyclical plagues, allergen storms, and toxic rains that render so much of the Earth uninhabitable have largely spared Siberia and central Asia. Mutant animals, however, are more common, especially the giants: gigantic, unique monsters which range across the land. Although the USSR retains a greater ability to wage conventional war than most nations, much of its military is therefore focused on monster hunting and defense.

The USSR has a major technological advantage in the form of live, friendly elder things, retrieved from Antarctica and revived. Deep below the rest of the Vladivostok bunkers, the progenitors tutor their accidental children in the arts of hypnosis, applied neurology, and artificial intelligence. All USSR soldiers are hypnotically fortified, and more and more of their vehicles are assisted or automated by brain-chips, making for a psychologically sturdy military.

The Halls of the Mountain-Kings

The dwarfs had always been isolationists, and with the curse killing the human world they had a reason to indulge their most paranoid instincts. The gates of their great halls were sealed, but that was only a temporary solution. Once they had a reasonable semblance of security, they fell restarted all their old feuds. Now, however, the old arguments were framed by a larger concern: how to survive. The surface world would not be reconquered, that was agreed. They must reclaim their most ancient heritage and seek self-sufficiency underground. The dwarven kingdoms almost erupted in civil war over how this could best be done.

Eventually, it was decided that every hall should be allowed to take its own path. A single strategy would either fail or succeed, but out of one hundred strategies, surely at least one would succeed. They constructed great vaults, each with its own strategy for self-sufficiency, survival, and security.

Many vaults have been discovered by adventurers over the years. They are treasure troves of technology, magic, and lore, but the one thing they have in common is a lack of living dwarves. So far, no successful vault has been discovered. What has been discovered includes a vault shielded against all magic that developed sophisticated gearwork and explosive powder, a massive terrarium vault containing the last of the thunder lizards, and a populated vault, populated not by dwarves but by intelligent fungi that seem to have hijacked their bodies. There are surely many others.

The City of the Dead

The ancient people lovingly preserved the bodies of their honored dead, burying them in deep vaults.  At their side, statues of servants and animals to serve in the afterlife. The labor of millennia has expanded the vaults into a cavernous under-land. Deep beneath the desert, the dead have created their own paradise.

They have nothing but time, and endless practice has made them the greatest artisans of the world. The simple linens they were first wrapped in have been traded for fabrics of infinitesimally complex patterns. Every inch of their vaults and caverns are carved, from life-sized bas-relief to immaculate filigree. Their highest art, its origins stretching back to their beginnings, is the creation of living statues.

Their are no plants or animals in the land of the dead, but it does not seem so from a distance. The dead have refined the creation of living statues over long aeons, and having made enough servitors for many aeons more, have turned their efforts towards decoration. The caverns are filled with trees of stone and iron, in forms both realistic and fantastical. Animals move everywhere, playing at hunting and eating, while the whistling of glass birds fills the air. It seems alive.

The caverns are cold. The inhabitants ancient and desiccated, hiding themselves behind many layers of fabric. They have aged past boredom and passion. They have created their own afterlife, and surely, as they often tell themselves, tarnished gold is better than no gold at all.