NationStates Jolt Archive

A Guidebook to Eluneyasa

Note of international importance: There are three versions of this book (two in print, one electronic). Please read on before filing any complaints over which version you received.

The first print version, and indeed first edition of this book, featured a cover made out of lead, pages made out of steel, and came packaged in a bundle of heatshielding. It is also missing the note of international importance, which is a feature of the second edition onwards. The entire design was around the philosophy that new races would be introduced to us by this version being dropped from orbit into their population centers. Note no provision for the deceleration was included within the design. If you were a recipient of this version, we humbly apologize, as it was manufactured and launched by the druid Serah Gey without government approval. Please forward any damages to us so that we may properly bill Serah Gey for it. If you happen to wish to toss her into a deep, dark cell where she will never see another living person again, please notify our government. Most of our population would gladly escort her in and toss her into the cell for you.

The second print version features a leather cover, embossed with our national flag, and specially-preserved vellum pages. These are all second-edition printings and are given to worlds we encounter when we are unsure if we can properly transmit the electronic version to them or in the rare case that they lack the capacity for it.

The electronic version is merely the second print version, only as an electronic document. It is typically preferred over the print version for transmission to new races.

We once again apologize to anyone who received the first print version.

Geography

Eluneyasa currently is limited to two worlds, Azeroth and the ruined remnants of Draenor, with only Azeroth being considered public information. Any information about Draenor will only be disclosed under special conditions.

Azeroth is currently split into three continents, with only two considered publically accessible. Northrend dominates the nation's northern pole, while the western continent of Kalimdor acts as the hub of civilization for the world. The eastern continent, formerly known alternatively as Azeroth or the Eastern Kingdoms, is today referred to as the Ruinlands. Only one nation of those who make up Eluneyasa calls the continent home, though at one time it was home to many.

Northrend is an icy continent, dominated by frozen mountains and hills, with tundras to the southwest and a fjord to the southeast. The ruins of a number of civilizations can be seen on it, and even today vast floating fortresses and massive military bases can be seen dotting its landscape, all empty and apparently so for centuries. Ruined ships dot the southern coastlines, with some seen much farther north. Vast sections of the continent feature trees that are long dead and ground that appears to be covered with some kind of horrible blight.

Kalimdor is a divided continent, with three distinct regions. The northern third of the continent is dominated by forests, which climb the large mountain (Mount Hyjal) until a giant tree, topping the mountain, is found. The mountain's northeastern area is entirely snow-covered, while the rest of the area is dominated by forests. To the northwest of the continent lies another giant tree, growing up out of the ocean, which is the center of the Darnassian civilization and of Eluneyasa. West of the northern section lies a small series of islands, which have a mixture of forests and open areas and are the home of the Exodaran civilization. The middle of Kalimdor is divided between a desert to the east, which is the nation of Durotar, and the plains to the west, which is the nation of Mulgor. The southern third of the continent is primarily mountainous with canyons, with the southern edge having a number of large and small craters.

The Ruinlands are primarily forested, with a mountain range cutting the continent in half. The northern two-thirds of the continent, including the mountain range but excluding a small section to the northeast, is entirely covered in blight, with the trees long dead and the few animals seen being hideously mutated. Occasionally, the ruins of one of several long-dead nations can be seen through the trees. The southern third is primarily forested plain, with the southwestern section being tropical forest. Ruins of a past civilization can be seen here, though currently it is under the control of the civilization of Quel'Thalas.

Sitting out in the middle of the ocean is a giant whirlpool. This whirlpool, named the Maelstrom, is offlimits to explorers, due to the extreme danger it poses to ships and the constant possibility of getting sucked inside.

It should be noted that Northrend and the plagued areas of the Ruinlands are off limits to visitors. Northrend is currently set aside as the Tuskarr Preserve, to help that native people continue to survive in their chosen way of life, while the Ruinlands are the home of a devastating plague that swept the world centuries ago.

OOC note: Rest of this section preserved for a description of Draenor, should I ever get to describing it. Also, this will be revised later, to include weather and such.

History

Realistically, Azeroth has never truly been a peaceful world. Ancient myths speak of a race of titans, who crossed the distances between the stars with an unheard-of ease, populating planet after planet with their power. Those myths speak of an ancient war, a battle between the Titans and Elemental Lords, or Old Gods, of Azeroth in the time before life. It was after this that they seeded life upon the planet, leaving behind the enchanted Moon Well as a gift to the natives.

Many early civilizations rose and fell in those early days. It was not until the Kaldorei came to be, settling around the Moon Well and drawing upon its energies for religious beliefs, that events which would truly shape the world's future came into play. The Night Elves grew greedy for magic, drawing deeper and deeper from the Moon Well's energies, though some of their race saw this as dangerous and left the group. The Night Elves eventually began to open a portal within the Moon Well, allowing the entry of a malicious group of races known as the Burning Legion and causing their own nation to descend into civil war as the splinter group tried to stop the ceremony. The war ended with the portal forcibly closed, only for it to shatter what had been one continent into pieces.

All was not well for the Night Elves in this new world... The shattered Moon Well, now the Maelstrom, had not been truly destroyed. A Night Elf named Illidan had preserved part of its waters, using three of the seven vials from his stock to create a new Moon Well on top of Mount Hyjal. Illidan was imprisoned for his actions, with the Moon Well eventually having a giant tree grown out of it to prevent its magic from corrupting people again. A later group got banished from the Night Elf communities for attempting to reproduce the magic that had existed before the civil war, with that group becoming the High Elves.

The High Elves, using stolen water from the Moon Well, quickly founded the nation of Quel'Thalas. Though many wars were waged over the years, it would be thousands of years later, once human kingdoms had risen on the continent of Azeroth, that a true world war would happen again. The human Medivh, corrupted by the power of the now-deceased leader of the Burning Legion, opened a portal to the planet Draenor.

The Orc Hordes, upon arriving on the planet, immediately began taking out the locals. The nation of Stormwind fell to the orc horde, with their might stretching well up into Lordaeron. With the help of the High Elves and a few others, humans pushed the orcs back to the portal. Once repelled, the portal was closed, thought now for good. Unfortunately, the portal opened again several times, the orcs raiding for magical items before, finally, causing a human taskforce to pursue them to their homeworld, where a battle raged across the planet before, due to several portals opening at once and the resulting stress, the planet exploded. All were presumed lost.

The surviving orcs on Azeroth were put into internment camps, where they would remain for years. It was with the rise of a young orc named Thrall, who would eventually become Warchief of the orcs, that they found freedom, eventually sailing for the distant lands of Kalimdor. At the same time a new plague began to spread throughout Lordaeron, eventually prompting an investigation into the plague by a paladin named Arthas. This investigation discovered the plague turned people into the undead and Arthas, his mind beginning to snap under the pressures caused by watching his people become the walking dead, purged a city of innocents before pursuing the plague to Northrend. There, after betraying his own men to keep them fighting for him instead of fleeing home, Arthas fell fully under the power of a being known as the Lich King, who was controlling the plague. It was under this power that he smashed Lordaeron into pieces, invaded Quel'Thalas and perverted the High Elves' Sunwell, and then assaulted Dalaran before summoning a leader of the Burning Legion.

The Undead, mixed with members of the Scourge, then headed to Kalimdor. By this point survivors of Lordaeron had already arrived and found themselves in conflict with the local orcs, only to team up to survive in the new land. They quickly came into conflict with the Night Elves, only for the three groups to be forced to work together when the Undead invaded, eventually culminating in a combined defensive force around the World Tree. The Undead eventually broke through, only to have their forces scattered after their Burning Legion commander was killed while trying to draw power from the World Tree, leaving the Night Elves mortal in the process.

In the aftermath, another problem emerged. Illidan, having been freed by Tyrande, was being pursued by his captors. He eventually met up with the Naga, survivors of night elves thrust to the sea floor when the Well of Eternity exploded, who wanted revenge on their surface cousins. Illidan headed to the islands around the Maelstrom, where he grabbed a powerful artifact of the Burning Legion before trying to kill his pursuers. Reinforcements from Darnassus forced Illidan and his forces to flee to the ruined lands of Lordaeron, where he made his way through the undead hordes to the ruined city of Dalaran. His pursuers followed still, joining up with the Blood Elves, High Elves who had restyled themselves in memory of their homeland, and fought their way through the undead. When it was discovered that Tyrande had become endangered during this and Illidan's plan was stopped, Illidan joined forces with the Night Elves to rescue Tyrande. After that, Illidan fled to the ruins of Draenor, pursued by a small force of night elves determined to put him back in prison.

The Blood Elves, reuniting with the remnants of Lordaeron forces in the recaptured Dalaran, found themselves left behind to defend the city, despite being underpowered and having their forces stripped of units at one point. After being forced to team up with the Naga twice by circumstances, the Blood Elves were betrayed by Lordaeron forces and their commanders imprisoned. They escaped with the help of the Naga, joining Illidan's forces in Draenor and eventually helping him assault rogue Burning Legion forces and take control over a major fortress there. Then, cornered by the remaining leader of the Burning Legion, Illidan began an assault upon Northrend, intending to destroy the Lich King. Arthas, who was consolidating power in Lordaeron, was forced to pick up his forces and flee to defend the Lich King. During this a banshee named Sylvanis managed to break from the Lich King's control, eventually establishing the Undead group known as the Forsaken as the ruling power of the former lands of Lordaeron and destroying resisting Legion-led undead and remnant Lordaeron forces. Arthas, meanwhile, successfully stopped Illidan and merged with the Lich King, freeing the latter from imprisonment.

In the aftermath, another human nation arrived in Kalimdor, eventually setting up a base and attacking Durotar. The Orcs successfully chased off the human intruders, but in the process had to attack the city of their human allies and ultimately lost their alliance with the humans and night elves. Soon two sides emerged, with the human-controlled city of Stormwind leading an alliance of humans, night elves, dwarves, and gnomes. Orgrimmar became the capital of the other faction, which had orcs, trolls, tauren, and the Forsaken. The two sides clashed in minor skirmishes, never with their main armies, before the portal to Draenor was opened yet again. Soon, with the humans joined by a group of Draenei who crashed the Exodar into islands off of Kalimdor and the orcs joined by the Blood Elves that had remained in Quel'Thalas, the two sides went through the portal and into the floating ruins of the once-beautiful world.

OOC: Still under construction on this section.

Population

Eluneyasa is, itself, a mixed-species alliance, consisting of representatives from most of the surviving sentient species of its world. As of the writing of the second edition of this booklet, the world's population is only 7 million, broken down as follows:

Kaldorei: 2.5 million
Sin'dorei: 2 million
Orc: 1 million
Tauren: 1 million
Draenai: 500,000

At current, the military contributions of each race:

Kaldorei: 30,000
Sin'dorei: 10,000
Orc: 20,000
Tauren: 1,000
Draenai: 9,000

At current, all space exploration vessels are staffed with Kaldorei, who have contributed the highest number of soldiers to the military.

Military

Legally, Eluneyasa has a combined military force equal to the entirety of the adult population of the member governments. Upon reaching the age of majority for their particular nation, a citizen is required to sign up for military reserve status. Realistically, Eluneyasa only maintains an active military force of one percent of the population, which comes to 70,000 people.

The nation's military forces themselves utilize a diverse set of equipment and military training, as those are currently provided by the member governments due to Eluneyasa itself lacking the facilities. Efforts at integration of the commonwealth's armed forces into a true singular entity have been repeatedly stalled by the lack of perceived need for such an action to take place.

At current, an actual equipment list for the military forces is unavailable, due to the above issue with full integration.

OOC:

Nicely done thus far, though the Tamaranean government might want to take you up on locking Serah away if a copy of her book landed on Tamaran and caused material damages. ;) Really, the lady should be more careful.

Lady Serrah¹ Moonsilver lightly brushed her fingers across the surface of the flexible steel pages. She was a collector of all things related to Kaldorei and this was something that had only recently come to her. She was, of course, quite familiar with the language, though it had the dialectal changes of being produced by another culture.

The window she sat reading at was one of the highest peaks of Fëanor palace; she had no idea that the document’s writer almost shared her surname, or that this Serah had once been little more than a stone’s throw in galactic terms, from her, in orbit of Earth itself.

But it interested her greatly, nonetheless. There was no heat damage – they’d at least done the packing right – and analysis of sub-micrometeroid damage suggested it had not been in space long, at all. Clearly whatever culture had (foolishly) aimed it at the distant outpost it had come to, a few weeks back, still existed.

The man who walked into her room was familiar to her – and would be recognized by many hundreds of billions of people – as Ranisath, “Elenaran of the C’tan.” In an all concealing robe of glimmering metal cloth, he walked up to her, lightly resting ringed hands on her shoulders, kissing the back of her dark-blue haired head as he did so. He spoke Darnassian, of course. He seemed to know every language.

“This is the book?” he said, speaking that language as he absorbed it, he saw it in many dimensions, able to discern writing on inner pages even when it was closed in its lead covers.

“Yes Ranah,” she said, leaning back a little, unconsciously to give him a better view.

“Very interesting,” he said, “its instructions for finding this Azeroth are quite simple, I suppose we can spare the time…”

“Ranah,” she asked, the term was necrontyr, translating roughly as ‘My Lord’ “May I?” It was quite a request, as the usual protocols for such expeditions were different.

He tilted his head to the side, “On this occasion, I suppose it can be permitted,” he said.

___

¹ No, that’s not me stealing the name! She’s been mentioned before, originally from a friend’s nation (he still plays, but a different one) she’s now a community leader of the (very small number of) Night Elves, and one of the various mistresses of my leader. This is little more than a 'tag' - see the 'mentor' thread for some more!

Economy

Northrend

Northrend is, by Eluneyasan law, offlimits for economic actions involving all member races. An internal economy has evolved over time, between five races who call the land home. The Tuskarr grow crops and raise penguins and other animals for food while hunting whales and fishing, excess products from which they trade with the other races for materials they need. Nerubians, currently busy rebuilding their once-grand civilization, trade excess materials mined from the ground with the other races. The Wulvar, in between faux wars with murloc and gorloc tribes, trade the results of hunting and arms they manufacture. The the murlocs and gorlocs trade items they discover within the sea, whether it be types of fish or leftovers from a shipwreck. A fifth faction, known only as the Frozen Eye, is known to trade with the Nerubians for supplies, though not much is known of them.

Kalimdor

The Night Elves, in addition to holding a monopoly on wood supplies and wood products, also trades several wines, cheezes, fruits, vegetables, cloths, some medicines, and services related to land maintenance. The Night Elf-allied race of dryads has taken to trading a number of creatures as pets, including faerie dragons, and are the only known source for a rare species of nightsaber. Orcs trade raw metals mined from the ground, refined metal items, a number of meats from hunting, a number of different edible fungi, and all known antivenoms. Tauren trade a farm crops, hides, medical supplies, herbs, and guns. Draenei trade raw crystals and metals, refined jewelry, some medicines, and computers. The naga trade primarily in sea-related goods, including a lot of fishes, though they suffer from continued distrust by the other races. The Owlkin and Furbolgs trade fungi and other foodstuffs, though the Owlkin are protected by Darnassus as religious icons and the Furbolgs are limited to local areas.

The remnants of the qiraji, as well as the surviving quillboar tribes and groups of harpies, and the goblin pirate groups currently enjoy no trading status with the other races.

Ruinlands

The primary trading group of the Ruinlands are the Blood Elves, who trade cloths, jewelry, raw metals, farm goods, cheeses, alcohols, some medical supplies, and tailored items. The Forsaken have limited trade with the rest of the world, offering their medical knowledge, medical supplies, and some fungi to the other races. Gnolls trade their military might, specifically in targetting goblin pirate groups, in exchange for the various supplies they need.

Open Seas

The majority of trade on the open seas is with the Murloc nation of Silverflipper, which controls two major islands and several minor ones around the Maelstrom. The nation trades a number of sea goods, including items from shipwrecks, with Eluneyasa and Forsaken forces stationed on the other islands. Limited trade also exists with ships from Pandara and with Bunny Island, with the former trading alcohols and the second being a source of a number of magical eggs used for pranks.

OOC: This will get expanded when Draenor is added to the factbook.