Survey: Effects of Plains Living

Information

Class: Report
Wc: 819

Publishing

Aut: Hoyut dul Elshirl
Dt: 619 A.T.
Ogn: Visage

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• Poria

Compiled from available sources, this survey was made to examine the effects on our culture, production, and to the surrounding environment following the decision to move away from residence directly attached to volcanoes. This survey was commissioned after the decision to move to grid-based city-organization was made, in order to better understand the impact of such a decision.

Following the official decision by the Hanullzis and ratified across Parallelium in 296 A.T. the cities were developed haphazardly, with little to no attention paid to what is now recognized as central planning. No inherent organizational structure was adopted, and cities were either rebuilt on the plains as recreations to the best of our abilities of their former selves, or organically based on need and immediacy. These decisions had consequences.

Foremost, the move away from volcanoes created a shortage in the supply of immediately available or otherwise “fresh” molten material. This shortage led to the creation of at first private ventures due to the lack of foresight on this issue from several levels of governments. Private businesses have always been an oddity in Parallelium since the adoption of the current form of government due to the lack of widespread capital for private spending.

In many regions a bartering system was adopted, and in other places the supply of lava from these private enterprises was free to citizens, but those who undertook the labour were awarded larger supplies. Within a century of the move to the plains, the Hanullzis had a proposal ratified to provide this necessary material as one of its functions to pori across Parallelium. After a few decades of various retrieval points, a design was settled on that functioned in a similar way for pori as their previous intake system did, traveling to a point within the city that molten material would be available at, supplying a sense of normalcy to a civilization still getting used to a new environment.

In the years between the move and the implementation of this system, pori attempted various cultural oddities. One example is the consumption of airlrhil. These vent-dwelling creatures were relatively new to our culture and were found around our newly developing cities on the plains significantly more frequently than they had been known inside the volcanoes. In an effort to fend off the slow-death of eating mineral deficient rocks that in some cases spend more energy to melt than they provide, many pori took to catching these creatures to harvest their pouches. The creatures are somehow adept at converting the steam from geothermal vents into a liquid similar to molten material. In any event, it is more nutritious than the aforementioned rocks, though still significantly less so than actual molten material. After the development of the retrieval system airlrhil pouches became a delicacy across many parts of Parallelium.

It is noted that in moving our cities to the plains we have taken land that was once inhabited only by the fauna. Most notably, the skittish aganeihat have moved further from our lands than they were before. While records are sparse in this regard, it is believed that there was one species or breed of aganeihat as few as 200 years ago. However, our presence in the plains has driven the animal from the plains further away to the flat-cliffs and towards the volcanoes where we once resided. These variants seem to be entirely superficial, in that the calderic aganeihat have a thinner coat—likely due to increased heat of their environment—and significantly darker legs while the grassland aganeihat are lighter and a more even brown, though the latter will eat more vegetation and are notably more skittish. It is theorized that the “original” species could still exist on uninhabited planet-stars.

Analysis of the past can indicate possible or probable trends for the future, and provides the possibility of understanding past mistakes. Though we pori have agreed to grid-based organizational structure the finer details have not yet been agreed upon, and this report provides an opportunity to examine consequences of some options. Unlike cities across other parts of Omneutta there are no wild or partially-domesticated fauna that roam the streets that we must anticipate the adverse affects towards, nor will we repeat our disturbance of species such as aganeihat and inadvertently produce new sub-species.

However, we can make distinct sections of our cities more reliably on a grid, whether they are residential, labour, or government. We can mix these sections, and perhaps should, though the effects of resting away from the noises and disturbances of a work environment should be examined. Though the issue of molten material retrieval has been solved to a degree, the demolition and rebuilding of entire cities might provide an opportunity to centralize these distribution points, or construct a multiple-point network. This city format should also have plans for different varieties of growth and usage.