In my first post I mocked the Evucks, karma has a way of evening out these things.
So gather around and listen to the Tale of the Glorious First Skylaxian Wall. You see, back in the founding of the city we had recently come up with cost effective disease control techniques and were ensured that our city would not be destroyed by the ravages of disease any longer. It may be weakened, but no longer would our people die in such numbers to blot out the sun. So we built. We built an idyllic land of wonder and delight. Filled with beautiful parks for our people, places for them to work, safety provided by our brave enforcers, and a solid industrial complex built far to the east. Our beautiful blue skies were the highlight of any sentient’s trip to Ivoria. However, one fateful day on Turn 92, while performing a routine pollution check, our technicians noted an abnormality. There was a strange coating of dust lining the homes of people in maintaining our western forest Solar Panel farms. Thinking this odd, but believing this to be a trivial problem, a report was filed and attentions shifted to other concerns. Perhaps it was an after effect of our new Spirian neighbors harvesting some poisonous vermin out of the plains or perhaps it was our new state of the art research institution. The technicians wrote up a report and requested a single hazmat installation to keep our air crystal clean. And so the turns progressed.
No one knew that this fateful day marked the beginning of the end of our peaceful life. A few turns later, another technician performed a routine scanning of the efficiency of our single hazmat facility in the Solar Panel farms. What he saw, chilled his hearts and would permanent alter the course of our people. What had started as a light dusting of soot, had turned into a raging black cloud of acid raid, ashes, and more ammonium based compounds of dubious nature than we could identify. Quickly an alarm was raised for teams to be sent to investigate. Their return caused greater alarm, what had been thought to be just a few hexes of moderate pollution, was rapidly revealed to be a wave of total redness with pollution levels into the 20s. And it was fast approaching our borders. With alarm our leaders responded by ceasing all expansion and expenditures across the empire and started the deployment of counter hazmat environmental clean up crews. Our first wave was 5 brave facilities, certainly thought to be sufficient to stop it, but they were not. They managed to thin the wave, but it was still coming. Another 5 hazmat facilities were deployed to the area in support. Our people rejoiced as the red waves of terror and death faded into the light yellow of minor annoyance. However, this relief was short lived, as the pollution sought another path, as if was guided by the hand of some sick devil. Draw by this evil hand, the pollution began to move, not directly toward us as it had been, but to curl around the sides of our line of 10 valiant environmental protection facilities. Once again we rose to oppose this menace by dropping another 5 hazmat facilities into the melee. Certainly, nothing on Ivoria would be producing a wave of pollution 15 hexes wide with a density that exceeds a removal strength of 500 pollution units per turn per hex.
And then, we were struck, not from the front, but from behind. Some of our people, upset at the smog and emboldened by the lack of security in the region, began the Great Riot of Turn 102. Thousands of us were suddenly struck dead by these rioters. Our people, disillusioned by this loss of life, deserted their posts to morn for the dead, hazmat facilities went off line, stock exchanges and banks were forced closed to honor the loss of life and prevent more such tragedy. It was then that the Southern Lake Cemetery, the Eastern Southern Lake Cemetery, and the More Eastern Southern Lake Cemetery were built as a final resting place for these brave Skylaxians. Even then, fate was not done playing its cruel tricks.
Our front line had been abandoned. Most of us had been lost in the riots, and still others too overcome by emotions and small bullet wounds to defend the city. With the lack of full employment our hazmat facilities were too weak to halt the oncoming wave of red death. Once again, the full funding and might of the city was brought to bear on the situation. Three police stations were immediately dropped to prevent further riots on the line of defense. Another three were placed scattered across the city to ensure that no opportunistic temptations would distract our people in our continuing war. And lastly, another Accelerated Birth Center was place to bolster our population growth to 100, a truly outrageous number of children to be had each turn.
However, this lack gave our foe the momentum in the conflict, and we again paid a fearful price. The arrival of the pollution into the heart of our Solar Panel Farms brought with it the Great Carmine Fever Plague of turns 110 to 117. Our people were suddenly struck down by the fearful blight. Our first knowledge of it was when all 5000 of us awoke with skin a sickly shade of scarlet. Our scientists after consulting the notes made about the temporary workaround of Diseases.xlsx, ensured us that we would recover in 1-2 turns, and we would lose possibly 500 people total. A terrible tragedy, but the Great Riot of Turn 102 had proven so much more deadly that were would be able to absorb the losses and reverse this course of this terrible war. Two turns passed and things were proceeding as expected, we were certain that the disease would be solved and life would return to normal, efforts were made to bolster our line of defense and to increase power supplies. With our Western Solar Farms being tainted by soot, we ordered the development of a new series of Solar Plants to the north, around the Bay of Absolutely Nothing of Interest.
The first two turns past with sadness, but patience. It would be over soon. A third turn passed, casualties were increasing and the great More Eastern Southern Lake Cemetery was rapidly filling. After hurried consultations our leader put forward a two-part plan. In the first, the Most Eastern Southern Lake Cemetery and More Most Eastern Southern Lake Cemetary were ordered into construction. In the second a series of 5 new Disease Control Facilities were added to the new lands of North of the bay of Absolutely Nothing of Interest. Four more turns of terror and death followed, with concerns ever increasing that the workaround was not working. Then, on the dawn of the seventh turn, we awoke, cured of the foul plague. We rejoiced even as we mourned our losses. While the disease had been deadly, our enhanced population production system had kept the line intact and operating. The pollution had been pushed back and the cloud was held at bay. There was even weakness showing in the distance (two hexes away).
It should be noted that fortunately a –360 planet approval rating did not trigger anything else during this period, it was our good fortune that our war against the grey dark cloud was a single fronted affair.
It was then that the true masters of this evil were revealed. It was then that the first of the Acutian Giga Lasers fell upon us. No one likes to recall the early days of the war. The Acutians in their soulless lust struck without honor, without mercy, and without the ability to talk with them. We lacked the 2300 linguistic points to even begin to understand them. Those were a dark day. Many buildings were started and many people were lost. Many investments were made into expensive defense buildings that were destroyed before the second of four turns could pass. In the end, our line with its 93k attack helipad interceptors were able to hold off the initial Acutians onslaught.
We survived.
The Wall survived.
As so we stand, here in its shade, a wall born of Hazmat facilities, Guard Posts, Barracks, and Helipads, supported by police stations. The blood of our people lies in its stones as do upwards of one million crowns.
The Wall endures; it stands against the Acutians and their evil servant, the infamous cloud of pollution. In time we will move beyond it, to strike against, not just the arms of the pollution cloud, but to its Spice Extracting Heart.
Until then, it shall shelter us, a bastion against all east drifting pollution clouds of less than 19 tiles wide along our latitude.
So when all is dark, when hope is nearing its end, remember the wall, remember its strength, and hold fast, for rescue is coming.
At least it will if this single random Boarine Barracks doesn’t continue to push up along the week side of the line, and isn’t followed by another horde of pig-elephant-weremonsters.
