Talk:Dreamland
Politics and government
Founding and early history
Dreamland was founded in 3373 by settlers from the islands of Laba who spoke various Lenian languages and had been completely isolated from the wars and politics of the mainland for thousands of years.[1] Dreamland was an explicitly political nation: rather than being founded on the basis of membership in a particular tribe or belief in a particular religion, people living in Dreamland were made to agree to certain political beliefs.[2]
The various tribes of typically blonde, blue-eyed Lenians merged to form a new nationality, Gãm, and invited people of all races and religions would live in harmony and cease all internal conflicts and wars. The Gãm leaders announced a new constitution prohibiting the use of the army except for defensive wars. The new society was named Dreamland and consisted of preexisting settlements along the north shore of the peninsula around Baeba Swamp.
After a few months in Dreamland, the Gãm leaders launched an all-out war against the Crystal tribes, whom they said were frustrating the Gãms' attempt to build a society of racial harmony. They declared that in order to achieve perfect racial unity in Dreamland, nobody of the dark-skinned Crystal race would be allowed to enter, and conversion would be forbidden. Since the Crystals' capital city, Baeba, lay only a few hundred miles away from Dreamland, the Dreamer military generals declared that Dreamland's proactive invasion was in fact a defensive war, and said that if the Dreamers did not invade and conquer Baeba Swamp, the Crystals might one day in the future be able to mount a counterattack against Dreamland.
Birth of the Matrixes
Animal attacks at sea
Off the north coast of Dreamland, humans are even more vulnerable, because they are preyed upon by sharks and other fish, as well as, to a lesser extent, by seals and other aquatic mammals. Firebirds are also known to travel miles out to sea, using their keen eyesight to spot humans on their watercraft from the distant shore. However, the ocean is also the primary food source for humans in Dreamland, even those living far inland, and therefore humans on boats are keenly aware of their predators and will put up a ferocious struggle to survive an attack by any of the aforementioned animals. Dreamers generally build themselves large boats with sheltered areas into which they can retreat should they be attacked by a firebird. Seals generally hunt by ramming their bodies through the lower deck of the humans' boats, to which the human response is to use their fishing spears to fight back against the seal.
Humans as prey of pack animals
Most of the predators of humans are solitary hunters, and will attack humans at their most vulnerable: when they are alone, and generally when they are unarmed. However, firebirds have been known to attack in flocks as well, in which dozens or even hundreds of firebirds will simultaneously descend on a human city and carry out the same types of attacks they use when they attack one-on-one. Generally, each bird will alternate between stages of actively attacking and resting on top of buildings, out of humans' reach. A mass firebird attack can last for an entire day. The birds on the buildings keep watch for the others, and will attack any humans attempting to flee. Because a human attempting to flee has a reduced ability to defend themselves, these people are the most vulnerable and the most likely to die in a mass attack. Humans who stick together have a better survival rate in these battles, even though they are likely to face multiple firebirds attacking them from all directions. Humans always cluster together in circles where each individual faces outward, meaning that firebirds can only attack them from the front, where they are stronger and better able to protect themselves. Here, sometimes two birds will attack the same human, usually with one biting off the arms or hands and the other attempting to break or otherwise disable their legs and feet. When this happens, the humans who are free for the moment will attempt to grab onto the wings of each bird and pull them off of the other human. Since this requires the use of both hands, this leaves the humans open to attack from behind from another bird, and in some cases chains of birds and humans biting and grasping each other will form long lines or even loops as each animal tries to get the better of the other.
