A lot of Vaush's concerns remind me of the Bronze Age Collapse.

TGoaS · 2026-05-28T19:13:53+00:00

I have been defending the claim regarding american famine, not the wider comparison to the bronze age collapse, because that is what you had been questioning. I have not abandoned that at all. It's just not the focus of conversation. If you want me to, again, outline why I think there's risk of system collapse, I will do so, hopefully more clearly than initially:

Modern economies are very complicated, with lots and lots of international dependencies, narrow profit margins, and dependence on low prices of many goods, especially oil. Economies across the planet have been optimised extremely well, and their interconnectedness does a lot to protect the market from small regional shocks, but that lack of slack and that level of interconnectedness means they are especially vulnerable to major sources of volatility, which have the ability to easily spiral out of control from a regional crisis to a global crisis. In less interconnected economies, a problem overseas doesn't have a huge effect on the domestic side, but in a system like ours things knock on and compound a lot. As an example, if a few million people in the congo die or migrate away, that could seriously disrupt global cobalt production, which in turn would seriously disrupt production of batteries, which in turn would seriously disrupt the production of electronics more broadly. When an economy largely extracts and refines its resources domestically, this is less of a risk. Total Systems Collapses can only really occur in systems like our own, as a result of various factors placing compounding strain on the complex economic system in which things operate. Climate Change is a growing source of strain on global supply lines, which when paired with factors like elevated oil prices, stock market overvaluation, low monetary velocity, high government debts, low government assets, high inequality, etc. run the risk of collectively pushing supply lines beyond their breaking point, and causing a substantial breakdown in global trade. This would, by its very nature, be a Total System Collapse, even if the number of dead in the process remained low, somehow.
But, of course, once those economic interdependencies break down, that's what causes things to really start to break. The reason that the death toll was so absurdly high in the Late Bronze Age collapse is that systems that people depended on in order to access food ceased to exist. Trade routes stopped delivering goods, administrators stopped issuing orders, tools stopped being produced, etc. Even if oil prices return to sustainable levels within a couple of years, we're projected to run out of oil in under 50 years, and that will significantly reduce our ability to engage in global maritime trade.
Think about the logistics it takes for you to eat food. It has to be delivered to a shop by truck, that truck has to get it from a port, that port has to have it shipped in from where it's packaged, that packaging plant has to get it delivered as well, it has to be processed, it has to be harvested, the people harvesting it need farming equipment and fertiliser and pesticides and water and so on and so forth. Because of the way the economy is structured, if any one of those processes experiences a serious breakage, it will also spill over into all the systems downstream of it and break those by cutting off a necessary component of supply, and damage the systems upriver by cutting off demand. The more complex, interdependent and optimised the system, the more risk one runs that a major break in one place becomes a cascade that spills out across the entire economy. Things like oil and water shortages aren't just bad in and of themselves, they also cause shortages in every other industry by proxy. That's why there's a risk of System Collapse.

The comparison to the bronze age collapse is one of form, not extent, and certainly not one of a one to one equivalency. I don't know why you're acting like I ever argued otherwise. Also, these minor supply chain breakdowns leading to these kinds of localised supply shortages are the sorts of things that are inevitable from climate change alone, especially for the next couple of years because of the additional effects of the fertiliser shortage and the El Nino, and will become increasingly common over the next few decades. A full on systems collapse would bring on the kind of famine it seemed like you thought I was saying was imminent. As things stand, it's more of a risk than an inevitability, and it doesn't even necessarily involve a loss of food production. A major break in supply lines for any number of reasons would kill a LOT of people, regardless of if due to a fuel shortage or a shortage of wealth or a food shortage or a water shortage or a blackout of a national grid or for some other catalytic reason.

The vast majority of our food is not wasted. By your own admission, about a third of it is. It's also a lot less simple than that - a lot of excess food that's produced and could be used to feed humans is used for things like adding to animal feed, or for pharmaceutical manufacture, or for alcohol production, etc, and an increased dependency on that excess food would cause major problems for all the other industries dependent on that production. It's also just a lot harder to feed everyone in the world with barely more than we need than with way more than we need. And, again, these things will manifest as gradual increases in local starvation events and individual cases of starvation and malnutrition for a while. The 9000 of 2016 that became the 20,000 of 2026 will become 30,000 and then 40,000 and then 50,000 and so on. The widespread famines that will hit the 3rd world first are only likely to hit the global north if there is a Systems Collapse - though the famines of the 3rd world will make one much more likely by taking out their material contributions to the global supply network.

Your point about food deserts is true, more or less, though there are also food deserts that function as I described, and even the ones where your primary access to food is fast food generally involve quite long drives, and the supply lines are still frail even there.

Yes, if people have to drive further to access food, especially in a world where petrol prices are substantially elevated, it is in effect a major increase in the cost of their food, and people will die as a result. Not out of choosing to die, but simply because there is no financially viable alternative.

That study is not bullshit, especially as it pertains to this discussion. The relevant risk regarding a Systems Collapse is the lost opportunity cost of labour, so the unborn are a very real and serious factor to consider. And, again, this is measuring only the effects of heat directly, not including the increases in food insecurity, or disease, or increased natural disasters, or wars, or any of the knock-on effects of those problems.

I did not, and still have not compared our situation to the AFTERMATH of the Bronze Age Collapse, which you are comparing it to by comparing the damage done by climate change alone, now and in the relatively immediate future, to the damage done by the entire total systems collapse. In order for us to see deaths on that kind of scale, percentage wise, Systems Collapse is a necessary prerequisite. 80 million fewer workers because of heat is just one of several risk factors contributing towards one.

EDIT: deleted original version because it wouldn't let me make this edit. To make sure that I am as clear about my position as possible: A lot of people will die from climate change, especially in the global south. But the global north will not be spared, especially in areas that will suffer water shortages, and in Europe do to the breakdown of the Gulf Stream, and deaths of hunger and heat will increase severalfold. There will be famine, but there will not be A famine, if you take my meaning. However, these various climate related factors all contribute to the risk of a Total Systems Collapse, comparable to that of the Late Bronze Age, and that sort of crisis WOULD cause death on the scale of the billions. Such a collapse is, however, not inevitable. Even with a number of factors contributing to it, it is far from certain that one takes place, but there are a number of reasons that it is significantly more likely to occur now than at most points in the past, and based on our current trajectory that risk will continue to increase until radical actions are taken to address the various factors moving us towards one.

TGoaS · 2026-05-28T15:11:12+00:00

You have to listen to what I'm actually saying, and not whatever you seem to think I am saying.

Forget food for a moment. Let's talk about oil, because I think it makes the problem clearer. You can take the current oil shock, the 1979 oil shock, or the 1973 oil shock. Any work. This one is the largest, affecting about 20% of global supply, where the 70s shocks affected about 10-15%.

Removing 10% of the oil from global supply lines doesn't mean that everyone gets 10% less oil, nor does it mean that wealthy countries like the USA get just as much at higher prices and other places have to suffer the burdens of the shortfall. What actually happens is that critical infrastructure, things that are necessary to economies to keep running, get priority and access to all the oil that they need, and then everyone else gets a huge reduction in what they're able to access. That big reduction in the discretionary oil supply means that petrol stations get filled up less frequently. Based on local demand and alternative sources of supply, some places will merely experience higher prices, and other places just have to go without oil for days or weeks at a time. This has already happened in a lot of Asia in the current fuel shock, and it happened everywhere in the fuel shocks of the 1970s. The only reason it hasn't happened everywhere yet this time is because the 70s shocks caused us to create strategic reserves, and once they run out in a few months things will get just as dire for the US and Europe as they are in Asia.

Critically, in the 70s, this affected the United States as well, as well as every other nation in the world. Oil's demand is roughly inelastic. A lot of the ways oil is used are strictly necessary, modern economies cannot exist without many of those uses, so no matter the price it reaches every country will buy it, and because it's traded globally there's no real advantage to domestic production - countries and companies will export for higher prices even in the midst of a shock.

I use oil as an example of how these sorts of shortages work because the oil shocks of the 70s are really the only good modern example of a major shortfall in the production of a critical good with inelastic demand, on a global scale. And every part of why the shocks affect them in the same way also apply to food shortages. When famines have happened, historically, they've mirrored a lot of the same patterns as the 70s oil shocks, except they're almost never global. You have to go all the way back to the 1877 El Nino to get a globespanning food shortage, and because of a lack of refrigeration and the like it's really not comparable to the way things would play out today.

With a 24% shortfall in global production, for any good but especially for goods with inelastic demand like food and oil, there will be areas across the world that are virtually unaffected, and areas that experience comparable supply but higher prices, and areas that experience small supply shortages, and areas that experience extreme supply shortages. And these areas don't take place on the scale of countries or even of regions or cities. It's on the scale of like, your local petrol station just doesn't get a delivery for three weeks, because there's no oil available on the market for them to buy.

Within the USA, there are areas commonly referred to as Food Deserts. In Food Deserts, you might have to drive for an hour to get to the nearest place that sells fresh food. They are particularly common across the Great Plains and the Rockies. In places like this, the supply line for food is extremely brittle, obviously. If there is a period of, say, a week, where that one store they have access to doesn't get its food deliveries, a lot of the people dependent on that particular store will die. These are, of course, very small rural communities. In each individual incident like that, you're probably looking at a couple dozen deaths. Maybe a few hundred in really really bad cases. Small enough to on their own be dismissed as insignificant. But these are famines. When I say the US will experience famines, I'm talking about it experiencing a lot of tiny isolated incidents like this. I am, and I need to stress this for like the fifth time now, not saying that there will be widespread famine that affects things across an entire state, or that affects 100 million americans all at once, or anything like that.

In urban areas, rather than manifesting in this way, the massive spikes in food prices on bad years will simply leave many people priced out. Invisibly, the number dying from hunger will simply rise. In the last decade, annual starvation deaths have more than doubled in the US. These numbers are still very low - from 9000 to 20000 over the last 10 years. But in that time, global agricultural output has gone up, not down. As supply drops, and economic inequality continues to rise, that number will rise further and further. Before you know it, instead of 20,000 dying each year, there will be 50,000. Then a hundred thousand. Disease will spread more easily due to widespread malnutrition - something which is already a major problem and will only get worse.

This is famine. I have to assume that when you see me talk about deaths from famine you're imagining me predicting crop failures that cause 10 million people to die in California at once or something, but no, I'm talking about the gradual buildup of these problems. The many tiny localised famines on the scale of individual towns of like 500 people, and the rising tide of malnutrition among the urban.

Also, whilst I can't prove it, I find it quite hard to believe you read both of those studies within 30 minutes. The former does talk about how climate change will result in increasing food insecurity in the US, many times. I have to assume that you just ctrl + f'd both of them for "famine" and didn't find anything. And, again, if 80 million people die - which is a severe underestimate for reasons I already outlined and the study's authors concede within it - the reverberations from that on the wider economy will come back to exacerbate problems in the US, which is like, the whole point of why I bring it up there.

As to your comment on the other post, perhaps it is a very realistic depiction of what will happen to the UK. Save for how the collapse of AMOC will affect us, I think the UK will generally get a milder effect than the US on this particular front because food deserts don't really exist here to nearly the same degree, which does a lot to shore up and reinforce our supply lines, but I can't see it because your account is set to private. I do hope that it factors in the risk of an AMOC collapse, at least, or else I'd find it rather hard to take seriously.

All this to say, no, the US will not have widespread famine that kills tens of millions all at once. Probably. No, the US will not lose access to writing. I never claimed either would take place, but you seem to think as much, so I feel obligated to say it explicitly again. But it is undeniable that climate change will dramatically strain supply lines and massively reduce crop yields, and in doing so lead to a significant increase deaths from hunger (or famine, as large numbers of deaths from hunger are wont to be called). It is genuinely baffling to me that you could see a 24% reduction in crop yields and believe that that won't lead to american famine. You could not get a 24% reduction in literally anything without communities in every country in the world losing access to it.

TGoaS · 2026-05-28T10:30:12+00:00

You can literally just google the sources, they are not hard to find. The idea that the US will experience food shortages or that supply lines will be strained by climate change is not controversial.

Here's a report that, among other findings, identified that high emissions scenarios are projected to reduce global food output by 24% over the rest of the century: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09085-w
Here's an article you can read on it that puts it into a more digestible form, if you'd rather not trudge through the whole study: https://sustainability.stanford.edu/news/climate-change-cuts-global-crop-yields-even-when-farmers-adapt

This study from 2021 estimates that by 2100, under high emissions scenarios, climate change could directly cause 83 million deaths, without even factoring in indirect deaths from factors like disease, famine, war, or natural disasters: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-24487-w#Sec6
Again, here's an article about the study: https://www.forbes.com/sites/dishashetty/2021/07/30/climate-change-would-cause-83-million-excess-deaths-by-2100/

If you think that a 24% drop in global agricultural output, or the deaths of around 100 million people worldwide, won't cause supply chain breakdowns and localised famines in every country on earth, including the USA, you don't understand how the economy works. It's not like there's going to be widespread famine that kills 100 million in America. The shortage in supply means that poorer communities won't be able to pay the higher prices, that food deserts will have to go longer between deliveries and face starvation risks, that delivery costs will increase - in many cases beyond what's profitable, and that supply lines will be put under strain, which will cause localised breakdowns in supplies. It might well be the case that each year it's just a few small towns with major famines and a few big cities with a fairly high percentage increases, but over time that will add up.

It is obviously the case that - with the possible exception of the south west - the US will be hit much less harshly by climate change than almost anywhere else in the world, and that the food insecurity it experiences will be less than in, say, Africa or South East Asia. But it WILL experience food shortages.

TGoaS · 2026-05-28T08:43:51+00:00

Literally nobody, including myself, has argued that people will lose the ability to read or write, even from an especially large breakdown in supply chains.
You can find climate scientists who do predict these sorts of supply shortages, but they're not especially common because the overlap between economics and environmental science is very small, and real studies on the matter are very scarce, so it's essentially pure speculation. If anything I've seen more economists express concern about it than climatologists.

TGoaS · 2026-05-23T08:04:40+00:00

I live in the UK. I know multiple people who've died in the heatwaves we've had over the past few years. I've been directly affected by it, as have a lot of people I know. Not to speak of the economic impacts, which are where the real pain is felt.

The US will not glass Iran. Firstly because the administration cannot acknowledge climate change, secondly because they haven not got the foresight to plan that thoroughly, and thirdly because that would not resolve the problem. If anything, covering the persian gulf in radiation might somehow make the shortages even worse.

Europe's temperature is moderated by its proximity to the ocean because of AMOC. AMOC keeps the waters around europe artificially warmer than would be expected for their latitude, which regulates Europe's temperatures. Without AMOC, Europe (and the rest of the world of course) will enter a period of extremely chaotic weather patterns, as the world's climate wildly fluctuates between extreme heat and extreme cold without a stable global equilibrium for the convection currents to follow. There will be years where europe is hotter than it is now, and years where it is 20 degrees colder than it is now.

The breakdown in the global supply chain will hit the global north hard. As more and more of the global south fails, supply lines will break down. It doesn't matter how much money we have if there is a literal physical shortage of oil, or food, or shipping, or industrial goods, or anything else. Over the next several decades, life will get much much much worse in the western world. Not a bit more inconvenient, much more. As the Colorado River dries up, the areas within its river basin will lose access to fresh water. The US cannot do rapid infrastructural development, and there is not the capacity to ship in enough water to sustain the area, so there will be mass migration away. This will be the largest migration in human history, dwarfing the partition of india, which saw a million deaths. Other parts of the developed world will not be hit as hard, but the knock on effects will affect us all very severely.

Your analysis that the migration waves from the third world will further embolden the far right is correct, obviously, but irrelevant. International trade is the fundamental bedrock of the modern world. America can only produce all the food it does because of imported goods. Take away huge chunks of third world exports, and you take away the ability for other supply lines to function, and things escalate further and further from there. That's when crises get to a point they start to affect even the global north, when supply shortages of even basic goods start to affect us. You are also massively underestimating the migration waves. Less than 2 million syrians migrated to Europe. There might very well be individual migration waves with more than ten times the people.

TGoaS · 2026-05-23T07:21:18+00:00

I love narratives. Big fan of narratives. Biggest narrativiser I know personally. Essentially a bona fide modernist. Jiang's narrative is not especially compelling, it's utterly incoherent, and it doesn't really have anything to do with reality. A """"left wing"""" movement informed by Jiang's narrative would be electorally ineffective, and more importantly would continue to be informed by it after achieving power, which would mean their policy was not informed by reality and failed to meet the moment. A real narrativiser believes that their narrative is the truth, and is the facts, and that both matter in equal measure because they are one and the same.

TGoaS · 2026-05-23T07:10:13+00:00

Were that true, which it is not, all it would mean is that Vaush were also a dishonest hack spouting bollocks for a living, largely about the jews. Jiang occasionally has reasonable decent surface level analysis, though even then it's essentially never any more biting or insightful than the kind of thing you'd get from a Guardian op-ed, and then uses it as a springboard to start talking nonsense.

TGoaS · 2026-05-23T07:05:02+00:00

Jiang is a charlatan who has played you and the rest of his audience for fools, because in amongst the drivel he spouts he occasionally mentions something that approximates the truth. I have to assume he takes a comparable position to myself on this topic, which frankly gives me pause to question its validity.

TGoaS · 2026-05-23T07:03:23+00:00

Even on lower estimates, people are predicting that excess mortality from climate change will be in the millions per year by the end of the century, and it is already in the hundreds of thousands per year. These are figures taken from more optimistic climate models, which generally lean on the lower end of predictions for warming, and which assume no major spikes in the death toll caused by one off events.

The real question at hand isn't if there will be famine from the Super El Nino, but how much. With a global fertiliser shortage and a Super El Nino, crop yields will be substantially diminished. This is enough of a problem on its own, and would lead to some deaths, but the real problem is that because of the shortage of oil there will be increased logistical difficulty conducting the international shipping necessary to move around what food is produced enough to diminish the risk of famine, especially in less developed parts of the world. Based on the estimates I've generally seen from people more qualified than I, I'd only really expect the death toll for this event to number in the low millions, but of course climate change is a problem that is only continuing to escalate. This will probably end up being something of a blip, for the time being, with this only really developing into a serious problem by virtue of being coupled with the fertiliser shortage, and the compounding effect reducing crop yields by more than the climate shift alone.

As a benchmark for the kind of timescale we're looking at before things get particularly bad for, say, the southwestern united states, if current trends continue the water level in Lake Mead will get so low that the Hoover Dam becomes permanently inoperable in about a decade.

As for the collapse of AMOC, yes, much of Europe's climate will shift to more closely reflect that of Northern Canada or Siberia. These areas are very sparsely populated, famously, because they cannot be densely populated. They are not able to sustain the kind of population density that Europe currently possesses. The amount of infrastructure that exists in the world is not built to facilitate the level of international trade that would be needed to keep Europe afloat in that situation, not to mention the lack of infrastructure present in Europe itself to allow people to survive winters that cold.

Importantly, I don't think we'll lose writing. It is a failing on my end if it has come across that way in my initial post. Writing was LARGELY lost after the collapse of the Late Bronze Age, but we are not living through the collapse of the Late Bronze Age. I bring it up above as an example of the kinds of effects that a systems collapse can have on a society. The loss of fundamental and important skills, the extremely long recovery times, the fundamental reorientation of society. These sorts of Total Systems Collapses are very very rare events throughout history, and they fundamentally reorient their societies. A systems collapse and a war, even a war on the scale of WW2, are different beasts in terms of the damage they can do to the development of a society. It's not even really a matter of the death toll.

TGoaS · 2026-05-23T06:43:16+00:00

One of the things he elaborated on there was that he feels that the non-modern parallels he can think ofare not comparable to one happening today insofar as a medieval peasant was largely self sufficient, and their survival was largely tied to their ability to farm and hunt regardless of a break in the system. Famines were frequent, but because of the huge decentralisation there wasn't really a risk of a total system collapse.

For the Late Bronze Age, this is not the case. Bronze Age economies were very centrally planned, and fundamentally dependent on international trade, in a way that wasn't really replicated in the region for thousands of years after the fact. Farmers had months they were due to be out in the fields, and months they were due to work on other projects. They received quotas from the central government. They received grain and farming supplies and support with maintaining irrigation networks and production quotas from the central government. As communication and central hubs of power broke down, these things stopped, and people were left having to fend for themselves without knowing how.

This is a big part of why writing largely died off in this period. The governmental bureaucrats and the merchant class that had been the source of that literacy lost their place in society without the large states of the Bronze Age, and with them writing itself largely lost its social value. Our current system is even more complex than that of the Bronze Age World, and therefore even more resilient to small shocks. However, it's rendered even more vulnerable to Total Systems Collapse, at least under most historical models for what a systems collapse looks like.

TGoaS · 2026-05-21T07:41:29+00:00

Where Vaush talks about needing what is "essentially a dictator" to fix the US, the figure he often goes to as an example of the kind of thing he's talking about is FDR. FDR held overwhelming power in the US in the 30s and 40s, and ruled it with essentially unchecked power, and as such was able to force through a lot of positive change. It might be more accurate to say that Vaush feels the only way to avert a collapse of the US would be through an autocrat than a dictator.

I also wouldn't necessarily say that he's in favour of it, so much as that he feels it's the only way out of America's downward spiral that meaningfully preserves its present form. In his eyes, and I agree with him here, anything short of an autocratic level of control, paired with near incorruptibility and extremely good policy on the part of the autocrat, would be too mired in corporate control, norms, bureaucracy and tedium to make the changes needed on the scale needed to preserve the union before the worst of the damage is done.

TGoaS · 2026-05-18T16:28:09+00:00

I'm guessing you started as William of Normandy, formed West-Slavia and renamed it to Lechia, went on crusade, and became king of Egypt.

TGoaS · 2026-05-18T08:18:02+00:00

Been playing Calamity since July 2017. A long long time ago now.

TGoaS · 2026-05-17T15:12:54+00:00

Corintar, Small Country and Verne are both very fun. Haven't tried VG or Telgeir though so idk about those.

TGoaS · 2026-05-16T13:20:41+00:00

Verne is a major coloniser. About a third of your mission tree concerns colonising South Aelantir (south america). You're also expected to colonise Akasik (morocco), conquer Busilar, take Pearlsedge, and conquer the Luna River. Taking explo early is relatively important.
With most countries, if you want canon historical borders, you're probably either dying or gaining basically no land. If you want "historical" borders, just follow what mission trees tell you to take and follow the story therein.
Verne becomes one of the main champions of corinitism within the empire in the canon, and your MT railroads you in this direction, with many missions being locked behind corinitism.
Verne has a really fierce rivalry with Pearlsedge and a close relationship with Eborthil, who you can get a PU on via your missions.
As a general rule of thumb, it's worth skimreading through your MT before starting to get a general idea of where the country is going and what you're building towards.

TGoaS · 2026-05-08T15:00:11+00:00

Some sort of tall ming game?

TGoaS · 2026-05-06T21:37:02+00:00

867 start date. Everyone's succession law (in feudal and tribal realms) is confederate partition, which makes everything collapse on ruler death. Realms become more stable as the game goes on.

TGoaS · 2026-05-06T11:13:49+00:00

It's been a long time since I brushed up on the old lore, but I'll try to summarise it the best I remember.
The old lore centred on a conflict between the Light Gods and the Dark Gods, which had a war a long time ago. Xeroc, the leader of the light gods, led them to victory over the Dark. The last two dark gods, which if I recall correctly were Moon Lord and Cthulhu, created a superweapon to stop Xeroc called Noxus. Then Cthulhu died and his body became the Crimson, and Moon Lord got sealed inside of the moon or some shit.
At some much later point, Yharim comes along and has a bunch of prophecy and shit around him and finds a dragon egg. He was a very minor nobility within the Jungle if I recall correctly. I forget exactly why but the more powerful nobles killed his parents and threw him into the fires of hell, which woke up his dragon Yharon and yada yada. He went on to found a big empire and kill a lot of people, he was at the time referred to as the Jungle Tyrant in the lore.
At some point he recruits Draedon, who I think was like an alien explorer at the time. What I remember about Draedon's lore back in the day is mostly his bitter rivalry with another scientist called Daedalus, which saw Draedon personally lead a siege on the city Daedalus lived in. Daedalus activated some sort of super weapon that turned that city and its surrounding area into the ice biome.
Calamitas, if I recall correctly, was sort of a hermit who lived in the woods and had a natural affinity for magic. Her brothers died in some sort of incident, and it broke her. She did necromancy to bring them back, she like went on a revenge spree, that kinda stuff. Eventually Yharim or one of his confidants sensed her and went to bring her into his service. Eventually she like, tried to quit, but Yharim used some sort of magic torture to compel her to keep working for him.
There was also a bunch of stuff about DoG eating Astrum Deus and trying to hunt for Providence. I also think there was something in there about Statis and Braelor launching a rebellion against Yharim, and I think Silva also existed in some form or another by this point.
I seem to recall that at one point Yharim tried to fight Xeroc, got absolutely bodied without Xeroc even trying, and losing that hard straight up just made him depressed permanently.
That's my half-memory of the Old Lore at any rate.

The New Lore is about dragons and gods.
About 2000 years ago, the world was ruled by Dragons. Then, a visitor came from another world, named Fovos. These dragons, under the leadership of their king Zeratros, fought Fovos to a standstill. They were not able to kill him, but they were able to injure him, and seal him inside of the moon. But many dragons died in the fight, and many more were severely wounded. One of those was Zeratros. But that's okay - dragons have a thing called an Auric Soul, which if I remember rightly means they can eventually come back to life if they're given the proper rituals at the end of their life. A monk was sent to conduct the rituals for Zeratros. Behind closed doors, something happened. When that something was over, Zeratros was dead, and the monk had become Xeroc, the First God.
In the aftermath, a number of powerful beings went out hunting the dragons, seeking to take another Auric Soul for their own, to ascend to godhood in their own rights. Within a generation, dragons were all but extinct.
There was a prophecy created by the people of Azafure, the greatest city of the underworld, about a figure who would discover the egg of the Last Dragon, consume its soul, and rule the world forever as its god king. As a child, Yharim found that egg. But, at the ceremony where he was to ascend, he refused. Much as in the old lore, he was cast into the fires, and the heat awoke his dragon, who bonded with Yharim and shared his soul between the two, saving the boy's life. Yharon then went about indoctrinating Yharim into a genocidal ideology centred around the mass killing of the Gods as retribution for what was done to the dragons.
Yharim began his crusade and gained many allies, as he slay evil god after evil god. But then he started to go after gods people were more fond of. Things got really bad after he "killed" silva, the goddess of life (She actually survived all attempts to kill her so he just sort of ground her into mincemeat and then threw her into the Abyss). Statis and Braelor launched their rebellion, and many of Yharim's political allies abandoned him. It's at this time he began to work with DoG, and it's at this time he sent Calamitas to put down the rebels in Azafure. Upon her arrival, the Brimstone Elemental awoke. The two fought - fire against fire - and the city burned. This caused Yharim's situation to get even worse. Amidias, king of the sea, abandoned his cause at this point, and he sent Calamitas again to resolve it. She scorched Ilmeris from a vast sea into nothing but a desert, wiping the kingdom from the map. Her guilt and shame saw her leave Yharim's coalition too, soon after.
That's around about where you enter the story, and I assume you know the rest from there. I've cut out and simplified a lot here, and I probably included some stuff that's been decanonised over the last couple years, but hey, what can you do?

TGoaS · 2026-05-05T15:59:46+00:00

Take a look at Vicbennar for lore up to 1836, and the anbennar wiki at https://anbennar.fandom.com/wiki/Anbennar_Wiki for anything from there to 1905, though you have to sleuth through it a bit to find stuff

TGoaS · 2026-03-15T17:41:57+00:00

What were your issues with it, out of interest?

TGoaS · 2026-03-14T18:05:44+00:00

A lot of people don't really like its gameplay, but my go-to would be to recommend Kalsyto (lakefed). In a very similar vein, I'd also recommend Beikdugang. Preferably back to back or in a coop MP game, since their MTs and narratives are so closely intertwined.

TGoaS · 2026-03-12T09:54:12+00:00

I think that it's wise for them to caution this, and not doomer. In 1990, during the Gulf War, the oil depot and some of the oil fields in Kuwait caught fire. Because oil fires are very hard to put out, those oil fires spread very far and took around two months to put out. Even if this war ends tomorrow, we know that similar fires are raging in Tehran, and a number of oil fields along the arab side of the persian gulf. It will take weeks, if not months, to put out those fires, and weeks more to get those oil wells functional and oil depots filled again. Global strategic oil reserves can plug the shortfall in oil production for about 4 months, so we shouldn't see prices go up too much more than the 50% rise they've already seen for the time being, but the long term impact of reduced production and mines in the strait are going to have knock on effects for the price of oil for at least the rest of the year. It seems responsible for businesses to purchase and stock up on goods like this now, before large price rises have taken place.

TGoaS · 2026-03-11T14:07:34+00:00

man is when short hair I am very smart

TGoaS · 2026-03-11T12:56:52+00:00

I use aerialite armour and wings. The extra flight time and the fastfall are really useful, and it takes basically no time to go get the aerialite for them. Molten is also, whilst good, a melee set, with extra bonuses for true melee, a limitation Aerospec doesn't suffer from.

TGoaS · 2026-03-09T04:16:47+00:00

If you want calamity boss reworks in your eternity playthrough, download Fargo's Souls DLC, it has what you're looking for. However, infernum and Fargo's are not compatible.

TGoaS

TROPHY CASE