Forward by the Translator: This has been an incredible look into how different Earths had similar perspectives before the Re-Alt. My home, the then Australia, has always been a place of irony. People, before and after penal colonization had made a great life here. Each with different perspectives on what it means to live.
I am Thra'kesh, descended from those who came from across the western waters in the time when our ancestors sought new vertical territories. My people belonged to the Maa'thuul Empire, a civilization that valued height—both literal and spiritual.
In our ancestral tongue, those who dwelt below the sacred cliffs were called "veth'kora"—the earth-bound, the spiritually descended. Our religious traditions taught that proximity to the sky brought one closer to enlightenment, while those who chose subterranean existence had turned away from the divine winds. This was not merely prejudice; it was woven into our very understanding of moral hierarchy.
The Maa'thuul Empire's population swelled as much as its ambition thanks to outward looking leaders. They found this land—vast, with ancient rock formations perfect as places of worship. But it was already inhabited by those who had made peace with the lowlands, who had built their lives in ways my ancestors could not comprehend or respect.
The Empire declared this territory a "keth'shaal"—a place of correction, where those who had committed crimes against the vertical order would be sent to contemplate their failures. Political dissidents, religious heretics, those who refused to maintain proper elevation in their daily lives—all were transported here, forced to build cliff cities as penance.
What my ancestors did not understand—what they refused to understand—was that height-based spiritual hierarchy was merely one way of organizing society. That those who lived differently were not fallen, but simply different. This ignorance shaped generations of conflict, generations of suffering.
I tell this story now not to excuse what was done, but to understand it. To trace how prejudice, wrapped in religious doctrine and cultural tradition, can transform a people into colonizers. My lineage carries this weight, and in carrying it, I hope to transform it into wisdom.
*Translator’s note: The Maa’thuul Empire existed in Central Asia, in some but not all the lands of the Mongol Empire.