The Silent Wastes

I have no life 8D


THE SILENT WASTES


The Silent Wastes is a icy desert, dominated by rugged 'hills' of frozen ice and steep valleys. Some parts of the Silent Wastes are dominated by fierce winds which swallow all voices, while other parts are innervingly quiet, so quiet not even the snow makes noise. Borrowing a strange world's sky, the Silent Wastes have five 'cycles' worth of constant daylight, and seven cycles of night.

The Silent Wastes have a gigantic circular lake called the Still Lake. The Still Lake is odd, as that for two miles, it is consistantly thirty feet deep. Nothing lives it in, anymore atleast, given that fish and mermaid skeletons have been found, although these skeletons have become partially stone like. The water itself is clear and, of course, still, and it is some of the cleanest and sweetest water to ever grace one's lips. In the sands are broken statues, an arm here, a leg there, a nose, maybe a partial face, and not all of the statues look humanoid. Once you get past two miles, the lake takes such a plummet, no one has ever reached the bottom. It's like something cut a hole in the middle of the lake and took it out, leaving behind a unknown abyss.

The Abyssal Center is what locals call it. They believe a god lives in it's unknown waters. Of course, the water is so deep, no one has been able to prove anything lives in it.


FLORA
Only one plant is able to live in this wasteland, that being the krikirk, a odd knotty extremely bitter plant that resembles a mess of roots. They feed on corpses, and so with the mus's habits, gigantic patches eight miles wide can appear if mating went well. They have seeds all over their root like structure, so it's impossible to touch them without getting a few hundred on you.

FAUNA;

Mus are long ferret like creatures, roughly the size of a man's leg, with a thick coat of white fur, that feed exclusively on the krikirk, or on meat if there is no large krikirk fields. They are not very intelligent and are prolific breeders, traveling in . They have a bizarre mating practice. A mus female can only mate with one male, and so battles to the death are so common, large swaths of corpses are often created, letting the krikirk sprout and grow over them. Once a male has exclusive access to a female, they mate and the female will have litters of up to a hundred and five over a gestation period of a month, and be able to breed again three days later. Often, more then three fourths of the litters will die.
Matings occur when the moon is at it's fullest for some reason.

Kirqua are bizarre birds, often the size of a young man, who have a fused beak and travel in packs of eight. They are odd birds who hunt anything with a circulation. They have holes on their beak, which it is said they can make whistling noises with, as well as obtaining sustence from them. When a pack spots prey, they will dive down and spear their prey with their beaks, before flying upwards are dramatic speeds, funnling the blood into the holes in their beak.
Kirqua mate for life, and have nests of four on average. Nests are made from corpses and krikirk, and kirqua are fiercly protective of the nests. They also appear to be able to tell difference between packs, 'pack wars' happening occasionally for territory.

Tonue are herds of four legged thick creatures, often no bigger then a pony. They have a thick hide and can retain fat for years. They resemble dogs with bizarre half hooves/paws. Their tails are short usually seven inches with a tuft of fur. They, like the mus, will eat almost anything, so long as it's either dead or krikirk. Locals use the tonue for labor, and they have a rather docile nature. Their herds can be anything from three, to a few dozen. They mate infrequently and with no set date, and only give birth to one calf.


Jugazi are extremely rare. They live hidden, and only come out to feed during nearly blinding snowstorms. What little is known about them is that they are much bigger then a full grown man, have 'arms' ending in six clawed 'hands', six legs, make absolutely no sound, and movable sharp teeth. They have been known to wipe out entire tribes in a single fifty minute snowstorm.



The People

The People of the Silent Wastes are humans and nekos who are under various tribe names, but united they call themselves Deine. All have brown skin and black hair, and are in different tribes. These tribes vary wildly, and often avoid each other, although once every ten years there is the Zexchito, a great meeting takes place at the Still Lakes where they trade and exchange news. They are in relatively 'larger' numbers then other places, having no giant predators like nagas or dridders to deal with due to the extremly inhospital land. They also have some knowledge of the other lands, but little concern to them because of the aforementioned reasons and that they are more concerned with survival then pondering the reproductive systems of centuars.

They have a written language, often using slabs of ice as tablets, and a detailed form of art of ice carving. Depending on the tribe, the home is either made from snow or skins. Usually tribes consist of ten to fifteen families (assuming a basic family unit is four). Everything they need to live is made from bones, skins, or roots.

From what is known, most tribes believe in a pantheon of deities, first and foremost being the First One, the one who they believe gave his blood to bring life to the icey plains, and is often represented by a man with a mus head.

Other known gods are;
Fenchia/Xoca, sister goddess of life and birth, always protrayed with clubs, and mus string bows, legend has them in eternal war with Una.
Gouix, a god of the hunt often carved into ice with the wings of a kirqua and a face in careful concentration.
Belaz, the goddess of beauty and vanity. She always has a broad, round face, long hair with a tonue bone comb in it, a slightly squashed in nose, and wide eyes. All girls try their best to emulate her.
Toxchite, a goddess of cooking and midwifery
Una, the god of death, represented by the Jugazi claws. It is believed that on the Final Day, Una will defeat the sister goddesses of life and birth and kill them, from their bodies shall spring forth Yuxia, who will lead the Deine into the Malkit.

They believe the Malkit to be a new land, and that these battles happened before, and will keep happening in cycles.

Some tribes who live near the Still Lake either believe that Una lives there, or Eyate, the God of Nothing, lives there.

Really well thought-out, I love the landscape and animals the most. Very different from most run-of-the-mill stuff that gets posted here.

Very, very well thought out. I really like how bleak many parts of the land seem. Makes for a very nice change of pace^^ Lot of detail put into the wildlife and culture too. I especially like the still lake^^

Indeed, this is very well thought out. Mind if I add it to the flash wiki?
Now for some critique:
Most of the fauna here seems to eat anything dead. So I assume they don't mind the fact that it would probably be frozen too?

As for the people, I would have thought that they would have white skin, since they have more day than night and darker skin usually has lower vitamin D production. White skin would be required for them to be able to survive.
(by contrast, darker skin should be much more common in tropical parts of Felarya, I don't know if the main part depicted on the map is tropical, but I imagine it is.)

Anime-Junkie wrote:

Indeed, this is very well thought out. Mind if I add it to the flash wiki?
Now for some critique:
Most of the fauna here seems to eat anything dead. So I assume they don't mind the fact that it would probably be frozen too?

As for the people, I would have thought that they would have white skin, since they have more day than night and darker skin usually has lower vitamin D production. White skin would be required for them to be able to survive.
(by contrast, darker skin should be much more common in tropical parts of Felarya, I don't know if the main part depicted on the map is tropical, but I imagine it is.)

Of course I don't mind.
Yeah, they don't mind frozen things. It's a vicious land, you eat what you can.

No, they get about five months of pure daylight, and then seven months of darkness. We can also assume since their diet is high in krikirk plants, that those heavily supplement the missing daylight. They're like the Inuit people, who are also dark skinned.

And the people in the tropical area are all Caucasian. In fact, almost everyone in Felara appear to be Caucasians with tans or painted blue/purple/whathaveyou.
I know, it's a poor excuse, but some diversity would be nice, yah?

L'Ryn wrote:

Of course I don't mind.
Yeah, they don't mind frozen things. It's a vicious land, you eat what you can.

No, they get about five months of pure daylight, and then seven months of darkness. We can also assume since their diet is high in krikirk plants, that those heavily supplement the missing daylight. They're like the Inuit people, who are also dark skinned.

And the people in the tropical area are all Caucasian. In fact, almost everyone in Felarya appear to be Caucasians with tans or painted blue/purple/whathaveyou.

Thanks for clarifying that.

L'Ryn wrote:

I know, it's a poor excuse, but some diversity would be nice, yah?

Indeed

Great work. I like all the meaningful details, which help make it feel 'real'. And I particularly like the way you've made everything fit in together - a logical ecosystem, in which each form of life plays a part.

The one thing I'm a bit uncertain about is the mus' highly wasteful reproductive and breeding cycle, in which the vast majority of mus die young or are killed fighting for a mate. One the other hand, it does make sense in relation to feeding the kirkirk.

An environment in which most living things are (at least partly) necrophagous is interesting in Felarya; it makes it stand out with a nice twist of irony.

The relative friendship between humans and nekos is also logical in this environment, and is something we don't see all that often. Their having a shared religion and way of life is a good touch. I'm not surprised their legends foresee their being taken to a new land, given their inhospitable environment. It's intriguing that the goddess of life has to die for this to happen.

... Wow, I like it...

But now it seems that if I post my idea for a "snow tiny" like I was gonna in the cold zones part, it'll seem like a total ripoff of the marmot things... darn...

Awwww, Ryn. You named an entire section of a Felarya after me. How sweet.

And it's a good section too, not one of those slummy sections like the great marshes. I approve.

Indeed it's a nice zone. There is some great idea here.
I especially loved the ideas of rare and deadly creatures going out during snow storms ^^

you know this area could be permanently cold as well, felarya could be immune to seasons if it's rotational axis is even. (you know because earth's axis is tilted, which is why we have seasons). That could provide more drastic environmental zones, or explain why said zones are already drastic.

Archmage_Bael wrote:

you know this area could be permanently cold as well, felarya could be immune to seasons if it's rotational axis is even. (you know because earth's axis is tilted, which is why we have seasons). That could provide more drastic environmental zones, or explain why said zones are already drastic.

..It IS permantly cold.

actually i was trying to say that if felarya's "axis" or lacktherof was balanced and not tilted then it would provide everlasting environments, or to make things more interesting you COULD have a tilted plane/world/whatever. just trying to spark ideas here.

I think this is the wrong thread to talk about it though. This is a thread about the Silent Wastes, not for discussion on a possible axis for a plane which borrows it's sky from other worlds and likely has no such axis to speak of. BUT, this is not a thread to talk about it, so please don't. 8D

well i mentioned it cus it could effect the silent wastes.

but fine whatever...