The dwindling Surtina Flow Loop
Introductions and apologies.
Hello colleagues, my name is Dal Ogagmill, and before I welcome you to this lecture, I must offer apologies. I'm sorry, firstly, for being away for almost three times as long as I originally expected it to take, and secondly, for being so distracted from my original goal. I set out with a goal; to discover what happened to the original goblin weapon factories, and why most of them had shut down. But the journey I embarked on, along with the research I uncovered, have led to truths which have eluded us for almost a hundred years. While I will explain that mystery, what I will uncover first is the key to most of the issues of our goblin homeland.
So let us begin with our key to the door of mysteries; the Surtina river, or more accurately, its shrinkage. At some point in the 53rd century, a massive geological shift occurred which disconnected the flow responsible for feeding the river. This caused a massive ecological shift, the violent conversion of two one peaceful tribes, and as you may have guessed, the shut down of the goblin forges from our past.
To begin explaining the river’s cruciality, you must understand where it goes, and how it gets there. Let’s start with our capital city, Camilay, and the waters that run under and around it. As you probably know, the capital was originally built on top of the Gabmalei Chasm lake, which is fed by the tributary Gabami River, the same river that also fed the other six factories. The water for the river comes from deeper tunnels under Camiley, called veculets, that we’ll come back to later.
From the chasm, the Gabami flows out through a tunnel to the west that feeds a cluster of geyser chambers. The geysers boiled the water, and the steam burst to the surface when the pressure builds enough, those steam plumes were a major source of rain water for the Gabmalei Jungle, and the lake that was at its center. Lake Aresh, one many of you have most likely heard little about, was once a massive pool of water that fed eleven different streams, The largest of those being the Surtina river, which flowed down through the jungle to its edge, where it waterfalled into a Basin, continuing the river underground.
This is where older goblin explorers labeled the end of the Surtina river, and the beginning of a new river, the Velatic. Now, we label these as one and the same, since almost all of the water from the Surtina flows through this channel, which in the past, connected with the ocean deep under its surface, within Algatish bay. The interesting part comes now, when we look at the deep sea current charts, that show a very strong current used to run from the outlet in the bay, straight into the veculets that feed the Gabami river in the chasm of our capitol. The entire Path of the water is a continuous loop, one that connects the Goblin capitol, to the jungle above, and the caves to the south full of all kinds of creatures of the dark, all the way out to the depths of the ocean, and back to where we have arbitrarily chosen its beginning.
In such an instance, I would vouch for the change of the Gabami’s name to the Surtina, as I believe the entire loop would constitute one beautifully perfect water system. I would, if it weren't for the fact that this continuous loop has been destroyed. Everything I have mentioned to you now, has only been the set up for a sequence of events that tore the Surtina water loop apart, and led to the downfall of so many perfectly balanced systems. So, do you wish to know how this river was torn asunder? Well you are going to!
It started with a business,
And not even a goblin business. Well, not entirely a goblin business. Remember those factories that were originally built to function by siphoning materials from the water flowing around the capitol? Those damnable mechanical monsters were the start of it. They were built as part of a business transaction between the goblin king, (when we had kings centuries ago), and a mysterious human who brought the blueprints isn’t even documented anywhere in the paperwork for the deal. All that’s known is that his technology is responsible for siphoning toxins from the water, metals from the ground beneath the facility, and fusing them both to make metal ingots that permanently exude whatever toxin is infused. The ingots are exported to the forge masters for use, but the actual mechanical process is completely undocumented, and the buildings don't have any doors or windows! All leads around those factories had hit dead ends, but the important information is still present; those factories siphoning the toxins from the river was the start of the problems.
Angering the gods.
So why did removing chemicals harmful to life become an issue? Because of where those toxins were coming from. After the factories working and expanding for nearly two hundred years due to the increased demand from the rapidly growing goblin stealth forces, the Surtina flow was being almost completely drained of all materials besides the water. Aside from reducing the nutrients that would normally make their way into the soil of the jungle, taking out the toxins was seen as a direct attack by two gods that governed those chemicals and the tribes that put them into that river. These two gods were known as Ruwgish (the goddess of poisons and venoms) and Calwish (the goddess of acids), and they had been worshiped by the local goblin tribes in a fairly peaceful manor. Before the extraction of poisons reached its peak in the capital, Ruwgish and Calwish had their tribes competing for dominance through their creations, filling their shared cavern homes with temples and breeding grounds for Nuppep slimes and Hydarif slugs, which would attempt to consume each other to establish their god's dominance.
While the tunnels were considered treacherous, Few viewed their inhabitants as violent, or their creatures as threatening. The life of the cavern was as a peaceful as a chemically infused society could be... before they were forced to the surface. Yes, your ears aren't lying to you, the river, the tribes, and the creatures they were creating were brought up through the ground, revealing them to the light of day, and reshaping their entire way of life.
Both of the gods were enraged by the use of their toxins by the goblin capitol, but neither accepts the blame for the event. Instead, they push that blame to the other, stringing wild accusations together as to why one would lift the entire river out of it's geological home. No matter who is responsible, this raising of the Surtina out of the tunnels deep underground had immense consequences.
The venom valley.
The first and most direct of these consequences was the creation of the venom valley, A split mountain with the chemically tarnished Surtina flowing through its center, now much slower, with more time for the toxins, and the now mounting corpses of the animals that lived there before, to fester in it's waters. The now enraged gods took charge, and altered the creatures that were entering the valley, allowing them not only to survive the poisonous fumes and stinging acids, but shaping the creatures into weapons for their war. The tribes were gifted rights to harness any beast their god had touched, so that they might wipe out the transgressors.
The venom valley, within months of being created, was a war zone, with battles almost constantly being waged. The war did fade, to what could more accurately be described as a feud, but any time that the tribes cross paths or territories, bloodshed is all that follows.
The Surtina current, cut off.
But as I indicated, the venom valley was only the first link of this woeful chain of tragedies. With the river now removed from its home, the veculets that connected in to the deep ocean current were rendered empty and useless, And the current itself was broken. The toxic river began pooling into the Algatish bay, making it a complete dead zone for almost all life. The soils and solids that end up in the bay from the trickle of the Surtina have formed an island, an incredibly poisonous, terrible smelling island, where nothing can grow or live. More than that, the current, that was once used travel by the anphalbus, was now gone, slowing coastal trade to a crawl.
The loss of the current was replaced, but the new current is unusable for travel. It carries the toxins of the bay deep into a trench that runs the length of the coast, and the suction of the veculets near the goblin capitol create a new current that pulls the toxins out of the trench. Even the Anphalbus who have ventured into the deep ocean trench to track this new flow don't exactly know what forces are creating it, but several expeditions have been lost attempting to explore it. All that the goblins know is that the factories began malfunctioning, their permanently toxic metals no longer held their toxins forever, and the water of the Surtina slowed until less than a third of the flow was left.
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The jungle turned to madness.
As an aside, the reduction of water flowing through the capital, also reduced the water that the Gabmalei Jungle had access to. Normally this would have caused a massive reduction in the life of the jungle, but several forest gods stepped in. Their solution was to give the plants that fueled the jungle's ecosystem the ability to consume animals and insects in a myriad of ways, to fill in their missing nutrients. This led to the herbivores of the jungle becoming more aggressive, To hunt and fight their newly combative prey. Obviously, this meant that the carnivores of the jungle either had to fight twice as hard to earn their meals, or die. Essentially this boils down to the entire jungle being filled with predators, all of which are built to kill. A jungle, once known for being the best source of potion ingredients, was now too dangerous for anyone but the most well trained explorers to venture into.
To conclude.
So, due to the overuse of a natural resource, the goblins lost some of their greatest weapons, A jungle was turned into hellish deathtrap, two religious tribes were turned into murderous crusaders, and the trade flow that had been used by several seafaring cities was destroyed. But... now that we have this information, I propose we start using our discoveries to help correct these issues. Please tune in to the lecture next week so that we can begin working towards a solution to the issues that need fixing.
Type
River
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Entry for Rivers & Waterways
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Jun 5, 2022 21:40
Have to agree with Mikaro, those gods need to go. Shame how it went down as it seemed like a pretty cool place.
Feel free to check my new world Terra Occidentalis if you want to see what I am up to!
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Sheesh, those Gods could at least have recognised it wasn't deliberate and figure out a solution, rather than go berserk... Can I interest you in the anti-Divinity League? As an asides, I think you have some broken bb-code somewhere: The rest of the page below the article is misaligned
Too low they build who build beneath the stars - Edward Young
I think you're absolutely right about the gods reacting too hastily, and I'll definitely look for the broken code