In the world of Abzahlung:
A few more world facts. These are the boring geekish ones. Unlike the spiffy energy one.
There are five major continents. Two huge ones, Two ice covered empty ones, and one smaller one that is effectively poisonous. The air there is almost impossible to breathe, the water feels slippery and can have incredibly nasty effects on you and the plant life is twisted and warped.
There are 6 known sentient species. These species have an unfortunate unspoken caste system.
Tier One:
The Drach - Treated with respect due to the fact that they are roughly 5 times larger than any other species, can fly without glyph help, and are equally intelligent. Big, sentient preditors that can design weapons with the best of them. The Drach alone occupy the top caste. They have lost wars......its just not often. They are the majority race in only one Nation. Territorial but not interested in conquest outside of their lands.
Tier Two:
The Dumail - Looks like an intelligent six legged sloth.
The Sylph - Frail light boned winged humanoids.
Tier Three:
The Wer - Best described as human.
The Felmian - Looks like a thin werewolf. Not that they change forms. Don't be silly.
The Giants - Extinct. Only known due to preserved skeletons found in burial chambers and ruins. Adults seem to have ranged from 8 meters to 10 meters tall. Their society seems to have been very advanced but none of the writing recovered has yielded to translation efforts and no glyph tech has been found.
The Tiers refer to how the Drach treat the races. Dumail and Sylphs are treated with respect like favored children. The others are treated like servants at best. The Drach have only one major nation and the highest tech. From archaeological research it is obvious that they at one point ruled the entire planet. Seven Millennium of written history only shows them controlling the lands they currently do.
First world nations: The Drach Empire, South Kressif(South Kressif has won the last two wars with the Drach...over a small series of islands to the NW of the Drach territories)
They have fully developed glyph tech, powered flight, instant communication between one spot and another(usually without gemlines), powered satellites etc. Think of our First world countries in the 21st century.
Second world Nations: powered flight, mobile communications, limited space access*, long range missiles.
Third world Nations: Long range communications, limited flight, short range missiles(think Iran).
Fourth world Nations: Most people think that we think that sticks are high tech. We don't even know what sticks are or how to use them.
Note: With the exception of the Drach empire most nations are extremely species diverse. There -are- issues with people hating one species or another but they are usually not a big enough issue to be noticed. National/ethnic issues are usually FAR FAR more violent. If you speak the wrong language you'll usually make more enemies than your bone structure. I'm not even touching the religion wars.
Note the third. The Drach do not share their religion with non-Drach. But they have one. And they are still willing to shed blood over it. South Krassif's major belief is Krenslitism. 40% of their population follows this.
There are also nations that promote and believe that religion is a dead end. A mental, quirk or some such. I do not know how they reconcile that belief with the very clear evidence that this world was obviously designed.
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The point of this article wasn't to nail out the particulars. I simply wanted to show that there where hundreds of nations, with hundreds of belief systems. That there were 5 living sentient species and of these one of them was much larger physically while being equally intelligent. I wanted to show that there were many many different languages and that in general the language/social/belief ties were stronger than the species ties. Minus the difference in HOW the tech works their world is at a very similar tech level.
A notable exception is Oceanic travel. Flight has been around longer for this world because two of the species have natural flight. Water travel is -still- extremely hazardous. The oceans of this world are 5-6 times larger than ours(the landmass scales about the same). In these oceans they have confirmed, proven videos of creatures that are up to 168 meters long. For comparison the titanic was 269 meters long. Early attempts at wooden ocean voyages often never came back. Later attempts ran into vessels being overturned and sunk by ocean creatures. River travel still is common though and long range flights now span most oceans.
A few more world facts. These are the boring geekish ones. Unlike the spiffy energy one.
There are five major continents. Two huge ones, Two ice covered empty ones, and one smaller one that is effectively poisonous. The air there is almost impossible to breathe, the water feels slippery and can have incredibly nasty effects on you and the plant life is twisted and warped.
There are 6 known sentient species. These species have an unfortunate unspoken caste system.
Tier One:
The Drach - Treated with respect due to the fact that they are roughly 5 times larger than any other species, can fly without glyph help, and are equally intelligent. Big, sentient preditors that can design weapons with the best of them. The Drach alone occupy the top caste. They have lost wars......its just not often. They are the majority race in only one Nation. Territorial but not interested in conquest outside of their lands.
Tier Two:
The Dumail - Looks like an intelligent six legged sloth.
The Sylph - Frail light boned winged humanoids.
Tier Three:
The Wer - Best described as human.
The Felmian - Looks like a thin werewolf. Not that they change forms. Don't be silly.
The Giants - Extinct. Only known due to preserved skeletons found in burial chambers and ruins. Adults seem to have ranged from 8 meters to 10 meters tall. Their society seems to have been very advanced but none of the writing recovered has yielded to translation efforts and no glyph tech has been found.
The Tiers refer to how the Drach treat the races. Dumail and Sylphs are treated with respect like favored children. The others are treated like servants at best. The Drach have only one major nation and the highest tech. From archaeological research it is obvious that they at one point ruled the entire planet. Seven Millennium of written history only shows them controlling the lands they currently do.
First world nations: The Drach Empire, South Kressif(South Kressif has won the last two wars with the Drach...over a small series of islands to the NW of the Drach territories)
They have fully developed glyph tech, powered flight, instant communication between one spot and another(usually without gemlines), powered satellites etc. Think of our First world countries in the 21st century.
Second world Nations: powered flight, mobile communications, limited space access*, long range missiles.
Third world Nations: Long range communications, limited flight, short range missiles(think Iran).
Fourth world Nations: Most people think that we think that sticks are high tech. We don't even know what sticks are or how to use them.
Note: With the exception of the Drach empire most nations are extremely species diverse. There -are- issues with people hating one species or another but they are usually not a big enough issue to be noticed. National/ethnic issues are usually FAR FAR more violent. If you speak the wrong language you'll usually make more enemies than your bone structure. I'm not even touching the religion wars.
Note the third. The Drach do not share their religion with non-Drach. But they have one. And they are still willing to shed blood over it. South Krassif's major belief is Krenslitism. 40% of their population follows this.
There are also nations that promote and believe that religion is a dead end. A mental, quirk or some such. I do not know how they reconcile that belief with the very clear evidence that this world was obviously designed.
=================================================================
The point of this article wasn't to nail out the particulars. I simply wanted to show that there where hundreds of nations, with hundreds of belief systems. That there were 5 living sentient species and of these one of them was much larger physically while being equally intelligent. I wanted to show that there were many many different languages and that in general the language/social/belief ties were stronger than the species ties. Minus the difference in HOW the tech works their world is at a very similar tech level.
A notable exception is Oceanic travel. Flight has been around longer for this world because two of the species have natural flight. Water travel is -still- extremely hazardous. The oceans of this world are 5-6 times larger than ours(the landmass scales about the same). In these oceans they have confirmed, proven videos of creatures that are up to 168 meters long. For comparison the titanic was 269 meters long. Early attempts at wooden ocean voyages often never came back. Later attempts ran into vessels being overturned and sunk by ocean creatures. River travel still is common though and long range flights now span most oceans.
Comments
so out of 5 continents, is it that 3 are uninhabitable? is the population very dense, or is low? far distant are the continents? if there are oceans as vast as there are, how long would it take to fly from one to another? only asking for possible realistic thoughts of conflict.
giants are 28-32 feet tall. so does that mean the drach are 140-160 feet.... that is nuts! how tall are the other species?
south kressif (or krassif, you got it spelled two different ways) is compiled of what species?
i could write more, but i better get back to work :)
Kressif is close to the following numbers:
1% Drach
15% Wer
25% Felmian
33% Dumail
26% Sylph
Three are un-livable. Two because of ice like anartica, one because of ... what for lack of a better word is radiation.
... more to come later life blew up.
The width varies from 14,000 kilometers to over 32,000 km.
The viscosity of the water is the same as ours btw. Moon had wondered if it changed any(as this would affect waves/storms in the oceans.
The small species are what you would consider standard human heighth. Although do to posture the Dumail don't really look it.
Weight varies considerably. Wer weight ranges are standard human. Slyph's in general weigh about 70% of human standard. Light muscles and bones. Felmians and Dumail weigh about 20% more than human standard(more muscle mass).
Recorded Top flight speed for a Military class Kressif speed barge is something upwards of 3,000 kph. Troop transports fly around 1,000kph. Ranges may be off by about 200kph.
The islands that Kressif and the Drach fought wars over are about 100-500 miles from the main continent, and coast of the Drach empire. This was of great aid to the Kressian forces as they had superior air power in both conflicts. Drach ground troops are crazy awesome. Something about being that much larger and hauling around rapid fire small arms that fire round that a large cannon would for the other races.
Population is hard to describe. It is both, varying by region/nation. Some nations are the india's and china's of the world. Other's are more like Russia. I mean we're talking aboud a grand total inhabitable landmass roughly 4.8 times the size of what we have. There is a LOT of empty land though. Their world isn't as fully explored as ours. The populous nations are clustered together more or less with a few shining counter examples. Something like Asia. A huge amount living on one corner with very few living on the opposite corner. A rough map may come later but I'm not promising anything.
World population is something close to 15 billion. Drach have the smallest population of any race. Per country their empire have a much more middle sized population.
Both Krassif* and Drach are on the same continent(the larger of the two).
Oh and since my first response didn't really clear it up. Drach hang around the 25' tall range. Although thats like a horse's height. They have four legs, two arms and two wings with a snake-like neck. Measurements are to the top of their front hips. All in all standing next to a Giant they LOOK the same heigth. Still 30' is huge. Thats about double the height of a freeway overpass. Their arms and front legs seem to come almost out of the same joint. Wings are further back in the middle of their spine. Hands have six fingers, four with two opposing.
*Both spellings are valid, mostly because I'm tired of flipping between the two. Kressif is the offical spelling.
I actually like the questions because it enables me to refine the world. Gimme more. The Drach look stupid, btw. But we look stupid to them.