Outcasts

Warmongers are a culture of whalers which have a shared ancestry with the pelagans but split apart from them five thousand years ago on the basis of ideological disagreement. Their predecessors were a particularly large and rebellious clan that rose against the communist political structure over disputes about distributing food resources with other clans. Favoring a system based on every family for itself, they attacked their neighbors and sought to claim their own territory. But with their rivals backed up by their neighbors, the insurrectionists were defeated and the survivors were outcast. So they lingered on the far periphery of the open sea to the far south where icebergs dot the sea’s surface - a difficult to navigate environment for such large animals and so where most daydreamers avoided. But here some prey did exist, mostly the seal-like molodonts, and the small band survived and grew, learning to tip the ice and push resting prey into the water where they ambushed it before it could escape, and so compensating for their lack of agility with both brains and brawn. They fought among themselves often for this limited food and territory however, and to reduce conflicts a hierarchical system developed - a pecking order, at the top being a monarchical ruler. Younger individuals could rise through ranks to a lower level leadership position, but the monarchy at this time was based on bloodline. They still looked like the pelagans and so when they came across them there was an expectation of mutual reciprocation as is normal for their culture. But the early warmongers didn’t reciprocate. They predated upon these outlying clans, first by pirating their food and later by killing them as they approached territorial boundaries. And they realized that even as prey became scarce, there remained one source of big game to hunt… the other daydreamers.

All the while, the warmongers sought to differentiate themselves from their predecessors to whom they now felt no ties. Their starting population was small and as a result of the founder effect, a few centuries of breeding only among themselves had resulted in a significant percentage of individuals lacking yellow pigment on their necks, their bodies colored monochrome black, grey and white. This distinctive pattern was eventually favored, particularly in the last 500 years, and those without it would now be unable to rise through the social ranks. Stark black and white patterns were considered beautiful and distinct from their enemies, and the normalized infanticide began to apply more to those born without it than those who looked the preferred way. A new derogatory term for the phenotype appeared, translating to “bile-bathers” as their bodies looked dirty and stained with stomach contents. As inequality of social power increased with the rise of the hierarchical social structure, influential leaders began to dictate who was and was not worthy of life, and the previously voluntary exile of the old to make way for the new became orchestrated executions. Virtually all of those killed, however, were yellow. Populations of the preferred pattern grew until very few yellow were any longer born. And as the warmongers' numbers rose, their aggressive and cannibalistic behavior toward the outlying pelagans expanded their territory and pushed back that of their rivals bit by bit over the generations.

Even by removing their old, however, the warmongers' populations began to exceed the carrying capacity of even this larger territory, and they began expanding more aggressively within just the last one hundred years. With better numbers and an extremely homogeneous populace under central leadership they formed an army that decimated entire clans of the pelagans, cannibalizing them as they went. They employed a frighteningly savage front to the war, and their animalistic behavior was incredibly unnerving to the relatively gentle and philosophical pelagans. Success at displacing their rivals seemed likely at first, as the warmongers enjoyed years of prosperity in the southern reaches of the territory, but they were ultimately outnumbered. The threat of the warmongers led the pelagans toward an even more cohesive civilization at a wider scale and the formation of their own dedicated defensive armies. By numbers alone, the pelagans successfully rose up and drove the warmongers not only from the open oceans but also their previously occupied southern territory about twenty years before the fishers first contacted the gravediggers.

Today the warmongers, having lost their homeland and much of their numbers, are outcasts without a home. They lack the numbers to invade the open seas again and take on their ancient rivals once more. A wise but aging leader with a number of lower-ranked generals and an army battered but still thousands strong, they shared a common goal in establishing themselves a new empire. So they moved on, toward the shallows, the only direction that the pelagans didn’t control. And so they discovered the pastoralists and the fishers, both of them notably smaller, weaker, and much less organized than themselves. These daydreamers were pathetic to them, like children playing in little gangs without any manner of higher organization. They would be very easy prey - and if they couldn’t even try to defend themselves, then they deserved what they got. The singular descendants of God didn’t claim their place at the top of the chain of life by sitting down after all. They were fighters. They were strong. They earned what they deserved. And they deserved to be treated as gods once again.

But kicked out from the open oceans by their rivals, the warmongers secretly felt the sting of defeat. Could gods really lose a war? So they were determined to rebuild their numbers and take back what they had lost, and then some, until the sea was theirs as it rightfully should be. So they began moving into the shallows of the icebox seaway and began hunting their own kind. These ones were easier prey, and with each kill their egotistical ideology was inflated. This would be their easiest conquest of all, they were certain, like catching lost babies. Could you even call it war? It isn’t war when a big fish eats a smaller one. It’s hunting, feeding, growing. And here the warmongers would grow themselves up until they were so big they could eat all the other predators of the sea, and so take total control of the world intended to be theirs by the creator itself.

But there was a wrench in the gears of that plan. The further into the shallows they ventured, they start seeing weird things… uncomfortable things. These daydreamers weren’t alone - and it wasn’t just their food, the porplets, that they played with like infants too young to know better. They had company, a mysterious animal from above the water that could speak like people and create unnatural things, things they didn’t understand but definitely didn’t trust.

The second counterpart from the old stories they rejected might not have been a fairy tale - and if it had come not to them, but to the lowly lesser ones they viewed as their prey, what could this mean? If their soldiers realized, it would sow disorder in their shared worldview for any of their army to wonder if their version of the story could actually… be wrong. And for a culture that valued homogeneity and shared beliefs, such dissent could be catastrophic to their goals.

Their enemies knew that… and their leader knew it too. But she would do anything to prevent it…

...they would just have to eat the appetizers before the main course, and not give them the chance to speak.