Project:Realpolitik

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Realpolitik

Planned info update by 3/23.

• The overhaul your mother warned you about. Bigger, better and more ambitious than it rightfully should be, yet it is.

It's

coming.

I remember it all so clearly...

Like a nightmare I can't escape.

A time of celebration!

The diamond jubilee had come.

Whispers from the shore.

The birds brought with them a murmur.

Fear the sea.

It seeks thee.

Beware the...

Who givest wit to Whales, to Apes, to Owls,

And kindly speech, to fish, to flesh, to fowls,

And spirit to men in soul and body clean,

To mark and know what other creatures mean

Which hast given grace to Gregory, no Pope,

No King, no Lord, whose treasures are their hope

But sinly Priest, which like a Streamer waves

In ghostly good, despised of foolish knaves.

Which hast (I say) given grace to him to know

The course of things above and here below,

With skill so great in languages and tongues:

As never breathed from Mithridates lungs.

To whom the hunter of birds, of mice and rats:

Did speak as plain as Kate that thrunmeth hats,

By means of whom is openly bewrayed,

Such things as closely were both done and said.

To him grant Lord with healthy wealth and rest:

Long life to unload to us his learned breast.

With fame so great to overlive his grave:

As none I had erst, nor any after have.

(Im)permanence

What is canon is unchangeable. The First Civilization fell and so too did the Second Empire.

Skeletons were created (in the Floodlands?) and have no replacement for doing so. Tech has been lost, given up on or restricted in such a way that it does not re-enter broader society. Technological regression is a primary pillar to how Kenshi operates. The greatest advancements can be attributed as root cause for their collapse. Creating something which cannot be effectively controlled underlies this regressive pattern. It's not a question of why does the trend is leading to primitivism... this much is obvious, the foundational elements which contributed to that technological height have been swept away causing a freefall effect. Adaptation itself has warped around the inversion of expected technological progression. You may say "Why are there no boats?" The appropriate question is "Why is the Skeleton mentioning lost tech?"

The concept plays in a purposeful paradoxical fashion. The history of Kenshi colors the culture and modus operandi of interactions amongst the races. Skeletons have sight beyond sight, engaging in ways incomprehensible to anyone outside of those "in the know". This knowledge was once more widely shared and the tapestry of these relationships much clearer and easier to parse. No longer the case, for better or worse(?), that is both the question and answer.