The Children of Babylon

The Procession

Babylon is a large, warm, dry world, filled with deserts and scrubland that cover most of its three continents. And yet it has produced one of the most remarkable arrays of sapient diversity in the Crayfish Nebula, with no fewer than twenty-five intelligent species occupying the planet at one time.

Of course, this was not totally the result of the world's own capabilities.

The Yali are also referred to as the "progenitors" in the legends and archaeological parlance of the Planetary Council. Another name for them is best translated as "demon", or possibly "demiurge". The tusked, feline Yalis expanded across the planet surprisingly quickly, usurping the near-sapient species along the way and turning them to domestication or extinction. Mineral resources were common in the deserts, true, but livestock was far more important. Even before what we might call their Modern Era the Yali had a fondness for creating extravagant new species, some completely ersatz and unable to survive outside very specific conditions. By the modern era, their understanding of biology allowed them to create no fewer than twenty different intelligent species for various purposes. Examples are listed below.

1. The namazu were a species similar to catfish, bottom-feeders with prehensile tentacles at the front of their face to aid in that feeding. The Yali made them larger, stronger, more intelligent...then set them to work clearing out the River Tigris and towing boats for a more "ecologically friendly" industrial complex. Living on other aquatic animals, on garbage, and on the spawned young of their kind when they had nothing else, the namazu were prone to rebellion by attacking the wooden foundations of the cities they trawled between, causing "waterquakes". Instigators were not treated kindly.

2. The karkadann was descended from a gentle giant, a browser in the temperate rainforests on the polar coast of the antarctic continent. The Yali took their ancestors, made them larger, gave them more fearsome horns, expanded the dexterity of their prehensile tongue...then set them fighting one another for sport.

3. The ammut were desert runners, pack animals with a mentality (and head shape) similar to dogs. The Yali didn't change them very much, besides the uplift, and some of their "lesser" cousins persisted while the ammut became bodyguards and loyal companions to their creators. They were also involved in security details against the other Subjects, taking out rebellions where they could find them.

4. The peris were one of the few major flying species on Babylon, with a five-metre wingspan and an almost human head. Very little needed to be done to make them more intelligent; the difficulty was in getting them to stop talking once they had been made better able to do so...peris served a similar function to parrots, remembering and repeating statements and conversations, as well as acting as living gliders for the Yalis.

5. The lamias were semi-aquatic quasi-serpentine beings with incredibly long tails, longer than the rest of their bodies, and four "arms" used to manipulate their environment. They were used mainly as luxury transport across the archipelago kingdom which birthed them, but also were used in harbours as underwater mechanics.

6. The mayura were descendants of a species of snail-like, anemone-bodied creature known to inhabit and even build reefs in the warm tropical seas. The Yali expanded their brains, made them capable of surviving without water for months at a time...and set them to work as living watchers and pest control in their homes, intelligent enough to understand what was happening but unable to do much about it.

The Carnival

The word "carnival" in English has multiple meanings. A period of public revelry. A travelling circus. A festival prior to the advent of Lent, where meat is not to be eaten—thus carnelevarium, "putting away meat". It has connotations, too, with Camille Saint-Saëns' composition, "Carnival of the Animals", where old pieces were put to new instruments and the paragon of nature itself was turned into a music-hall joke. A good one, to be sure, but a joke nonetheless.

It is unlikely that any except the lamias, known for their particularly morbid sense of humour, would see that joke in The Carnival as it happened on Babylon. But the name translates almost exactly—an ironic title for one of the bloodiest, if not the bloodiest, period in the planet's history.

It is uncertain which of the thirty major countries dotting the planet at the time was responsible for the first attack. The lamias claim it came from the Consulate of Diyarbekir, a small but highly reckless state in the Western Hemisphere made anxious during a time of famine. Peri oral history records that the Polygloture of Indraprastha, conquered by a rival dynasty, called upon international allies to regain its lost territory. The ammuts, who never lost the ability to read, believe their own home-country, Amarna, was the first to push the button to release the chemical missiles. Regardless, the war began, quickly overtaking every Yali settlement—and for that matter every one of the pets the yalis had made for themselves, either forced into the war effort, or rebelling against their masters and taking them to death by their side. Sometimes both.

There is a reason, out of the two dozen sapient species which lived on the planet before, that the lamias, peris, and ammuts are the only ones whose records are retained. The rest are gone, scattered to history. Some survived, for a time, in isolated pockets, but even they faded away. And the talks themselves…those who remained after the slaughter they had wreaked on the world grew terribly, terribly afraid of their creations. Of course, they still maintained the dominant power for a while, but they were fractured in a way that the members of their successor species could never be. The last yali on Babylon died four hundred years ago, weeping in shame for her kind.

Government

The Planetary Council is the supreme authority on Babylon, comprising the major representatives and leaders from the ammuts, the lamias, and the peris. It started as the result of a peace treaty between the nations of Knossos and Amarna six hundred years prior, the primary holdouts of the lamias and the ammuts respectively. It later grew to contain some 75% of the lamia states, all ammut clans (which are not quite states but close), and the entire horizon-spanning network of peri Schools. (Peris, which have taken to the higher parts of the world, are not so big on territory but place a lot of emphasis on ideological identification, and the various philosophical Schools are the modern mutation of this meme.)

The rules behind the Planetary Council are simple. The species-specific organizations are free to govern themselves, as well as territory the others cannot reasonably claim (the mountain highlands, the deep desert, the underwater crevices). The "middle areas"—fertile lands, forests, the tiny and resource-packed yet curiously inhospitable tundra—are monitored by the Council, in matters from land use to population governance. This also applies to the interplanetary and (with a bit of luck) interstellar colonies, which have their own representatives.

There is no single "president". Instead, the roles are filled by each species' "most worthy" candidates.

1. The leader of the lamias is the oldest matriarch, advised by a council of her peers. (The current incumbent, whose name is Unpronounceable, is 450 Standard Years old and still sharp as a tack.) The position is, naturally, for life.

2. The leader of the ammuts is the most distinguished member of the Habiu clan, which made the initial deal with the lamias on behalf of Amarna. Who this most worthy person may be and how they're chosen depends on what the Path of the Sun says at this time, but generally it's through a combination of political, economic, and/or military achievements, rather like a cursus honorum. The position is not for life, but is instead set at periods of six local years; one can be chosen for the position again, but it is unlikely.

3. The leader of the peris is a philosopher-king, in other words a peri who can gain a following from most of the major schools as the least-disliked philospher. Often this leads to dullards, but never to true idiots; someone who can play the system and become Philosopher-King is unlikely to be that stupid. Lots of Vetinaris and Washingtons, as it were…and a few Reagans, because even the peris (contrary to their assertions) aren't perfect.