Peritelmic Industrial States

The peritelmic industrial states is a blanket term given to a cluster of loosely related countries that surround the foam fens. The industrial states were the first in the known world to harness electricity, and the second to achieve industrialization.

= History =

The fenside states are one of the few cultures in the known world to record history and time, usually by counting generations. As such, surprisingly much has been documented of their past.

Foam Exodus
The first records of the fenside culture describes a great exodus from the foam fens where they ancestrally called home. The exodus was caused by what is described as a 'great tempest' which raged for many generations, smothering the sunspire's light in a 'screen of clearwater'. The tales of the Foam Exodus are corroberated by folklore among the Flayfish Fenrirs and even Headriders, which respectively speak of 'thunderous watersprouts' and an age 'when water and not glass flowed the Dust Sea'.

The fenside brought with them traditions and domesticates from the foam fens. Electric catfish would teem in their aquacultures along with giant hibbertopterids. Accompanying them was the tradition of electric grafting, a painful coming-of-age ritual where part of the skin on the left arm was replaced with the electric organs of catfish. Notably, however, they brought no plants nor draft animals, for seemingly none had been domesticated by first fenrirs.

The Clearwater Famine
Just as the proto-fenrirs from which they descended, the first fenside people lived in loosely organized semi-democratic bands. These bands were half aquaculturalists and half hunter-gatherers, for the catfish and eurypterids they raised could not satisfy energetic demands alone. When they moved out of the fens, food production became an even greater problem. Not only were the surrounding lands inhospitable to their brackish domesticates, but the great tempest had diluted much of the foam fen's edges to render them near inarrable. Bands fleeing the great tempest brought no long-term food stores, but even if they had, they would have been depleted by hungry droves of refugees. A great famine struck the foam exodus, termed the Clearwater Famine by later peritelmic historians as it was caused by a flood of freshwater.

Few survived the Clearwater Famine, but those who did began a culture of food-hoarding and intensive aquaculture production bordering on paranoia. Electric catfish were eventually selected to be euryhaline, and partitioned into several different breeds. Some breeds were made for an ability to quickly put on lean meat, which was dried and stowed deep underground in insulating cellers. Others were selected for their deposits of fat, useful for illuminating bunker-stores. Though not yet apparent, one of the most significant breeds of catfish developed at this time were those with hypertrophied electric organs, at least ten times as efficient in discharging as the wild breed.

These catfish farms were supplemented by a new practice of mulchworming, where sums of food waste and collected leaves would be dumped into plots filled with snakeworms. Though not fit for human consumption, they were an excellent nutrient source for catfish plots.

The practice of mulchworming possibly inspired early agriculture among the fenside people, as sometimes the partitioned leaves would manage to grow into full plants in a worm pit in a primitive analogy to composting. Eventually, a zosterophyll species was domesticated for its nutrient dense spore capsules.

Moth Kingdoms
By this point, the fenside people had emerged a distinct culture from the fenrir, having discovered agriculture and significantly improved aquaculture. They no longer lived in roaming bands, but congregated around bunker-stores, around which cities grew and fields flowed. To plow the fields, the fenside employed newly domesticated mothbeasts, arguably the first draft animals of Adustia.

Mothbeasts became central to food production and the survival of the fenside, and so gained a similar cultural role. Mothbeasts of different settlements often took on radically different forms because of their astounding genetic variation. These beasts were venerated as manifestation of village spirits, and came to symbolize the settlements they were from. As village grew into cities, the fenside became increasingly centralised, hailing kings selected by councils of learned elders. These became the Moth Kingdoms.

The proto-fenrir largely involved themselves in nature cults, focusing on the foam fens. By the time the fenside had moved out of the fens, this idea had morphed instead into a cult surrounding the sunspire. Especially as the importance of agriculture eclipsed that of catfish farms, the sunspire was seen as increasingly instrumental to the calorific intake - and hence survival - of the fenside. Mythos from this era pointed to the sunspire as a benevolent deity who evaporated the clearwater plaguing the fenside and led them to a new promised land.

Though the sunspire took on an increasing significance, that of the mothbeast cult, catfish cult, and ancient grafting rituals did not fade. Instead, they were reinterpreted to match their newfound solar spirituality. The mothbeasts, radiant in their pelt, were seen to be agents of the sunspire. The different breeds among the different Moth Kingdoms represented the sunspire's split conciousness, each part favouring a different branch of the fenside, though all united in ensuring the survival of the fenside as a whole. Electric catfish were deified in a similar way, describing them as the most ancient of the sunspire's agents which helped the fenside even as they were deep in the mire of the ignorant foam fens. The grafting rituals were a way to partake in the sunspire's sacred power, and given even greater necessity.

The Flame Tempest
Eventually, the delicate balance of power ruptured. No records survive describing the onset of the Flame Tempest, but the results were harrowing. Chlorine bombs and worse consumed North Adustia, plunging it into 'eight generations of darkness'. The Nameless City was the only to survive the Flame Tempest, the rest reduced to bleached rubble. The apocalyptic event is described in the folklore of adjacent cultures. The Headriders termed it the Ash Deluge, the Flayfish Fenrir termed it the Second Tempest, the Nymphs of the Fluke termed it the Rising. Possible records extend as far as Fellstar's Seat, with the 37th Grand Acolyte commenting on darkened green skies beyond the fellstar bubble.

Not just the first industrial states were destroyed, but the vast majority of their technology would be as well. No walkers, batteries, nor power plants survived the Flame Tempest. Though there were survivors who knew how to make them, their knowledge went undocumented, and in the absence of industrial networks to construct these objects, died with them. The first industrial states set the continent back to the Solenoid Revolution.