this post was submitted on 06 Jun 2023
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Worldbuilding
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I have Vidiars, a dwindling civilization living inside a barren hellscape battered by small and not so small meteorites. Their tribal cities move from crater to crater to collect underground ressources brought up by the impact.
Frequent dust storms and meteor showers preclude any long term settlement, and as the water sources are mostly underground, access may change after big impacts, forcing or enticing them to move somewhere else.
The impossibility to sustain industry has limited their technological accomplishments, but they still have great access to minerals and metals, and have low scale but high quality workmanship.
Their distinctive cultural artefact is the (often heirloom) reinforced mechanical suits that help them survive the unforgiving environment, a piece of gear as complex and minute as clockwork but still made to last.
That's awesome! Have the meteorites always fallen or is that a new thing (haha)? What caused what I presume is the slow apocalypse?
They live on a megastructure ruin drifting in space (on the only part of it that still has life support active for its biomes). Their orbital path is littered by debris from the megastructure falling back on it regularly, mostly on the unshielded part that the Vidiars live in.
Since the megastructure has been broken for a very long time, to them the meteorites are a natural part of life, deeply rooted in their culture just like the weather or astronomy is.
They have been declining for a few different reasons, chief among them the encroachment of other cultures from protected areas that were easier to survive in. Those had considerably less ground ressources available and are now hit full blast by scarcity. As a result they are forced to go get these resources elsewhere.
Given that they also have industrial bases in their homelands, it's no fair match and the Vidiars are continually pushed back towards more dangerous areas.