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Tellius and its Postgame Migrations
I've mentioned this here and there, but it really deserves its own post by now, because more than just being a fun idea for a story, I feel like it's a pretty good theory.
Frankly, Fire Emblem is really romantic about country unification.
Starting from the very first world, you've got Marth's glorified unification of the continent.
Then Valencia's brought together in large after heirs Alm and Cellica hook up (with the exception of a bit of desert ruled by Jesse, who is apparently Stefan's spiritual ancestor).
By Jugdral it seems that they've figured that unifying the continent is probably pretty problematic (see: Alvis's Evil Empire), but still, nice strong rulers unify the bickering fractured states of Augustria, Grandbell, and Lenster.
Elibe throws back to Archanea, as usual, and promises you that Roy will one day unify the continent (then reneges on its promise to show us that and gives us a prequel).
Magvel is an intriguing outlier -- upon the fall of the evil dark god and ruler, it splits into several countries, which have been happy ever since, except newly formed annoying democratic brat Carcino. Grado is not taken as a Renaitian colony after the game, but by all appearances, maintains its political independence.
Tellius (which was developed alongside Magvel) at first seems similar. RD's all about Daein regaining its independence from the corrupt empire. And then...
... Then, in its epilogue, suddenly a bunch of laguz nations consolidate.
Edit: I realized belatedly that it is not specified where the Hatari folk migrate to in canon. Oops. But my objections remain for the birds, and the desert would still be a barrier to a mass migrations. Trade posts would be a much easier way to keep in touch.
Unlike previous entries, these consolidations are not geographically convenient. (Check this map if you need a refresher.) Their countries had been pretty well defined by things like seas, and being locked in by other countries, or like, being all the way across the continent.
What these consolidations do unify are... laguz races. Suddenly all the beasts are in one place and all the birds are in one place, just like the dragons.
Perhaps someone at IS found this clever or romantic. Personally it makes me bemoan how racism strikes again. I shall make that Tellius-and-race-and-racism post someday, but let's not linger on this topic for too long.
How about making this make actual sense?
There's fairly little political motivation for these changes. Throughout the game, Nailah at best displays a tourist's curiosity in seeing Gallia. And although Tibarn says (pre-massacre) that he'd like to join up with Kilvas again, the birds have a lot of problems to work out. So I don't think there is a motivation, before the end of the game, for these migrations to happen.
But what if there were a sudden motivation created by the end of the game?
Let me switch topics for a moment. This is relevant, I swear.
Can we all agree that Tellius's world is a spherical planet not terribly unlike the Earth? So that, magic aside, physics is more or less the same?
So, say, if the goddess buried a couple of continents under water, that water came from somewhere. And that "somewhere" now has less water.
And since those continents evidently are still submerged,1 that water has never come back to where it used to be, held by some goddess-force.
Oh, also, the goddesses vanish for at least a few hundred years2 after the end of RD.
So... now that the goddess-force disappears...
... what happens to all that water?
1 If not, between ships, birds, and knowledge of where those lands used to be, I really would have expected Tellians to be able to make contact with those lands. "But Hatari" you say! I actually think not knowing of Hatari's existence is further proof for my theory. Also, the recoil of that water when it gushes back would probably also devastate Tellius. Keep reading.
2 Depending on when you believe "About twelve hundred years" starts counting.
If we were to explore this with pure physics like some xkcd what-if feature, our conclusion would be simple, grim, and canon-contradictory: a sudden flash flood would drown all of Telliuslike dead Soren predicted and not even Ike would survive.1
Why? Think of a pendulum. If you raise a pendulum and let it go, on the first pass it'll swing over and rise nearly as high as you'd released it, but on the other side.
That water being held over the submerged continents has a tremendous amount of potential energy due to gravity, thanks to the goddesses. Now, if the goddesses let that go all of a sudden, it'll surge back, reaching maximum speed shortly before it flows back into where it was 800 years ago, before its momentum carries it all the way, way past these levels, and probably high enough to submerge most of Tellius.2 After the first flash flood, they'd fall back, swing across the sea again, and hit the old continents again. And in my very rough not-meterologist reckoning, I'd say there's probably still enough energy for them to swing back and flood Tellius. Again.
Meanwhile Grado watches with a sense of gleeful schadenfreude.
Life continues not-too-poorly on Tellius after Radiant Dawn, so obviously this isn't what happened.
1 Strictly speaking, some quick bird laguz may be able to escape the water, but their survival in its aftermath is still dubious.
2 The friction would be considerable and Tellius would not be hit as hard as the other continents had been, but I think the effect would still be strong enough to be extremely devastating. Just think about this: those tsunamis we had a few years back? They started because of a little earthquake out in the sea. NOT because of entire oceans being displaced suddenly rushing back.
Also note: This is based off the assumption that the majority of Tellius is at roughly the same elevation as the inhabited areas of the old continents had been, which seems fair to me.
Instead of suddenly disappearing, the goddesses must've done something to help ease the oceans back. Perhaps Yune did this after sprinkling lovedust over Tellius. In fact it probably was Yune -- she suggests that after Ashera's defeat she cannot help but also wane in power, but Yune evidently still has a little bit of strength before she's exhausted. So maybe, maybe having Tellius not be devastated by the most horrible flash flood since ol' Begnion Year -155 was kinda a priority.
Yune didn't just help ease it back in an hour or two and then leave immediately.
Why? Because think about what Tellius's continent must have looked like before the Great Flood. Like I said -- that water came from somewhere. The lowering of sea level must've exposed some land that we now take for granted as part of Tellius above water.
But if you ease the water back into place...
See how this ties back into the migrations?
I'm just gonna copy paste from my original crack theory post.
Suppose Phoenicis, Kilvas, and Hatari were previously submerged under pre-flood water levels. They were exposed post-flood, and now in Ashunera's absence, are slowly becoming submerged again.
The "slowly" takes for granted that Yune's doing it gradually enough so that people notice and get out of the way before all they know and love is buried under water. I like to think Yune is that considerate.
But look! If Phoenicis, Kilvas, and Hatari (among other lands) are being buried under the ocean, that's a pretty good reason to pack up all your shit and leave for the most viable other place to live. And indeed perhaps some appeals to kinship would be made here, and the beasts would move in with the beasts and birds would move in with the birds. I mean, judging by Vika's epilogue, Begnion's still a pretty unfriendly place. Not to mention the sheer fact that all three beorc countries have big postwar problems of their own. (FWIW, I suspect they'd have a lot of issues with the rising sea levels, too.) Comparatively speaking, Serenes was devastated but is on the upswing, and Gallia -- though it's spent resources and killed a lot of young laguz in the war -- was the offensive party, and the homeland itself is still pretty sound.
So, now that we have a viable reason for why these groups have to move, their destinations make a reasonable amount of sense.
Oh, and what about Hatari?
Well, no one thought to look for survivors there, because no one thought there was land there. (If it's engulfed by water post-RD, then it had been sea originally pre-Great Flood.) I figure Hatari was formed by a bunch of stragglers originating in some other area (perhaps like the Death Desert, or perhaps further east) which was more viable before global climates were dramatically upset, and then moved into newly-exposed Hatari, with its rich and fertile seabed soil. Yum!
ETA in 2014: I should also mention that the Kilvas and Phoenecian islands were originally settled long after Yune's sealing, in the year 360, which would be consistent with them being buried by ocean prior.
Frankly, Fire Emblem is really romantic about country unification.
... Then, in its epilogue, suddenly a bunch of laguz nations consolidate.
Edit: I realized belatedly that it is not specified where the Hatari folk migrate to in canon. Oops. But my objections remain for the birds, and the desert would still be a barrier to a mass migrations. Trade posts would be a much easier way to keep in touch.
Unlike previous entries, these consolidations are not geographically convenient. (Check this map if you need a refresher.) Their countries had been pretty well defined by things like seas, and being locked in by other countries, or like, being all the way across the continent.
What these consolidations do unify are... laguz races. Suddenly all the beasts are in one place and all the birds are in one place, just like the dragons.
Perhaps someone at IS found this clever or romantic. Personally it makes me bemoan how racism strikes again. I shall make that Tellius-and-race-and-racism post someday, but let's not linger on this topic for too long.
How about making this make actual sense?
There's fairly little political motivation for these changes. Throughout the game, Nailah at best displays a tourist's curiosity in seeing Gallia. And although Tibarn says (pre-massacre) that he'd like to join up with Kilvas again, the birds have a lot of problems to work out. So I don't think there is a motivation, before the end of the game, for these migrations to happen.
But what if there were a sudden motivation created by the end of the game?
Let me switch topics for a moment. This is relevant, I swear.
Can we all agree that Tellius's world is a spherical planet not terribly unlike the Earth? So that, magic aside, physics is more or less the same?
So, say, if the goddess buried a couple of continents under water, that water came from somewhere. And that "somewhere" now has less water.
And since those continents evidently are still submerged,1 that water has never come back to where it used to be, held by some goddess-force.
Oh, also, the goddesses vanish for at least a few hundred years2 after the end of RD.
So... now that the goddess-force disappears...
... what happens to all that water?
1 If not, between ships, birds, and knowledge of where those lands used to be, I really would have expected Tellians to be able to make contact with those lands. "But Hatari" you say! I actually think not knowing of Hatari's existence is further proof for my theory. Also, the recoil of that water when it gushes back would probably also devastate Tellius. Keep reading.
2 Depending on when you believe "About twelve hundred years" starts counting.
If we were to explore this with pure physics like some xkcd what-if feature, our conclusion would be simple, grim, and canon-contradictory: a sudden flash flood would drown all of Tellius
Why? Think of a pendulum. If you raise a pendulum and let it go, on the first pass it'll swing over and rise nearly as high as you'd released it, but on the other side.
That water being held over the submerged continents has a tremendous amount of potential energy due to gravity, thanks to the goddesses. Now, if the goddesses let that go all of a sudden, it'll surge back, reaching maximum speed shortly before it flows back into where it was 800 years ago, before its momentum carries it all the way, way past these levels, and probably high enough to submerge most of Tellius.2 After the first flash flood, they'd fall back, swing across the sea again, and hit the old continents again. And in my very rough not-meterologist reckoning, I'd say there's probably still enough energy for them to swing back and flood Tellius. Again.
Meanwhile Grado watches with a sense of gleeful schadenfreude.
Life continues not-too-poorly on Tellius after Radiant Dawn, so obviously this isn't what happened.
1 Strictly speaking, some quick bird laguz may be able to escape the water, but their survival in its aftermath is still dubious.
2 The friction would be considerable and Tellius would not be hit as hard as the other continents had been, but I think the effect would still be strong enough to be extremely devastating. Just think about this: those tsunamis we had a few years back? They started because of a little earthquake out in the sea. NOT because of entire oceans being displaced suddenly rushing back.
Also note: This is based off the assumption that the majority of Tellius is at roughly the same elevation as the inhabited areas of the old continents had been, which seems fair to me.
Instead of suddenly disappearing, the goddesses must've done something to help ease the oceans back. Perhaps Yune did this after sprinkling lovedust over Tellius. In fact it probably was Yune -- she suggests that after Ashera's defeat she cannot help but also wane in power, but Yune evidently still has a little bit of strength before she's exhausted. So maybe, maybe having Tellius not be devastated by the most horrible flash flood since ol' Begnion Year -155 was kinda a priority.
Yune didn't just help ease it back in an hour or two and then leave immediately.
Why? Because think about what Tellius's continent must have looked like before the Great Flood. Like I said -- that water came from somewhere. The lowering of sea level must've exposed some land that we now take for granted as part of Tellius above water.
But if you ease the water back into place...
See how this ties back into the migrations?
I'm just gonna copy paste from my original crack theory post.
Suppose Phoenicis, Kilvas, and Hatari were previously submerged under pre-flood water levels. They were exposed post-flood, and now in Ashunera's absence, are slowly becoming submerged again.
The "slowly" takes for granted that Yune's doing it gradually enough so that people notice and get out of the way before all they know and love is buried under water. I like to think Yune is that considerate.
But look! If Phoenicis, Kilvas, and Hatari (among other lands) are being buried under the ocean, that's a pretty good reason to pack up all your shit and leave for the most viable other place to live. And indeed perhaps some appeals to kinship would be made here, and the beasts would move in with the beasts and birds would move in with the birds. I mean, judging by Vika's epilogue, Begnion's still a pretty unfriendly place. Not to mention the sheer fact that all three beorc countries have big postwar problems of their own. (FWIW, I suspect they'd have a lot of issues with the rising sea levels, too.) Comparatively speaking, Serenes was devastated but is on the upswing, and Gallia -- though it's spent resources and killed a lot of young laguz in the war -- was the offensive party, and the homeland itself is still pretty sound.
So, now that we have a viable reason for why these groups have to move, their destinations make a reasonable amount of sense.
Oh, and what about Hatari?
Well, no one thought to look for survivors there, because no one thought there was land there. (If it's engulfed by water post-RD, then it had been sea originally pre-Great Flood.) I figure Hatari was formed by a bunch of stragglers originating in some other area (perhaps like the Death Desert, or perhaps further east) which was more viable before global climates were dramatically upset, and then moved into newly-exposed Hatari, with its rich and fertile seabed soil. Yum!
ETA in 2014: I should also mention that the Kilvas and Phoenecian islands were originally settled long after Yune's sealing, in the year 360, which would be consistent with them being buried by ocean prior.
no subject
This is only tangentially related, but when writing post-game fic about Begnion entering an age of exploration, I considered this - Tellius losing contact with the rest of the world, not finding Hatari, etc. - and wondered if maybe the state of politics/economy/culture at the time was focused on consolidating and conquering what was there, not in exploring or expanding. Why would a country like Begnion want to explore in any case, when there's a risk that any culture they find might undercut their song and dance about beorc being superior to laguz, and so forth? I figured it was also possible that money was being poured into other things, and searching for survivors wasn't a priority. Double if Ashera just told them straight up that nobody else survived. There was a war to recover from even before she went to sleep.
I also had a theory that the goddesses' sleep locked Tellius into its course for eight hundred years, but that's more esoteric and definitely not extensively thought out. There's a reason neither of these ever showed up in fic, though.
no subject
Yet at the time of the flood they had the knowledge that there were other continents at all, and that Tellius was unusual on escaping this fate. It sounds like they had the naval technology to journey to those other places at the time of the flood, and even if distant trade were not kept up, it seems to me the technology would be preserved for other purposes such as coastal transportation.
With the fragmentation of Begnion it seems very natural to me that these young new states would attempt to find their economic independence by seeking foreign ties. Trade with old survivors must have been a tantalizing idea.
Although they never found Hatari, we do know that travelers went that way. It's just that they came back saying nothing was there.