Mul Mag
Mul Mag (StDe:"Eastern Island") is an island in the Eastern Ocean which, due to little-understood tidal mechanics, has an unnaturally high number of shipwrecks. It was discovered by the YBS Sarrhu on 23-8 42 PC, and all knowledge pertaining to the island is sourced from the accounts of this singular voyage.
| Mul Mag | |
|---|---|
| Ziaxhame-Imoore ("The Sea's Heart") | |
 a map of the island | |
| Location | Eastern Ocean |
| Highest Point | Mzun's Peak |
| Largest Settlement | Puusza |
| Population | 1,000~2,000 |
| Ethnic groups | Chifs, Mzun, Grgs |
History
It is unknown when the first humans, the ancestors of the Grgs, arrived on Mul Mag, as no archeological work has yet been done. The Chifs believe that the Grgs have lived on the island forever, though that they were at one point fully human rather semihominoid as they currently are. Whenever it was they arrived however, they lived on the island for untold generations, slowly devolving into feral creatures, with successive shipwrecks infrequent enough that they could diverge into a seperate species.
The ancestors of the first Mzun arrived on the island "Hundreds, if not thousands of years ago", according to a Chif wiseman. It is unknown how their society arose, but it is theorized that it began with a particularly large shipwrecked population, who were the first to make use of the Grgs as beasts of burden, and proceeded to either absorb or subjugate the rest of the humans on the island on the time, possibly forming the Chifs. If this event was not the genesis of the Chifs, it was with a future arrival of shipwrecked peoples, which split among those who joined the Mzun and those who did not.
On 17-3 16 PC, The Kelelemite passanger ship The Fortuitous dissapeared in the waters south of Ananela. According to the survivors, the ship had suffered some sort of mechanical error which forced it to drift into the Storm Wall and, after three days lost as sea, it crashed into the southern banks of Mul Mag. The survivors of the crash were welcomed by the Chifs, with whom they lived for the next 26 years.
On 23-8 42 PC, the YBS Sarrhu made what to date is the only known intentional landing on Mul Mag, and made contact with the Chifs, including the Kelelemites. They proceeded to stay on the island for several months, studying it and the people there, before departing, taking some of the Kelelemites back with them.
Peoples
Chifs
Genetic analysis supposedly showed the Chifs to be an indistinct mix of a number of ethnicities, only some of whom are of relation to those in the known world. According to their testimonies, they are descended from the survivors of the various wrecks which landed on the island, intermixxing over the years. They primarily live on the coasts small fishing-based communities, however some inhabit stone ruins of unknown origin found futher inland. The term "Chif" supposedly came from the Mzun, who refer to them as such. It is unknown what the term means in the Mzun language.
The Chifs have a sort of religion, wherein they believe Mul Mag to be not just a physical location but a spiritual world, the midpoint of the universe, existing outside of the cycle of time. They believe that their struggle to survive on the island is a supernatural conflict between the forces of good, represented by themselves, and the forces of evil, represented by the Mzun. They seemed to have idols dedicated to gods from across Attu, as well as some that the researchers did not recognize, implying that this island faith is not a unified force but a syncretism between numerous sources. They did however speak of a deity native to the island, an immortal man named Kalchuk, who has wandered it as its protector since the dawn of time, and who appears on rare occasions to provide wisdom.
Mzun
The Mzun (StDe: "The Black") live inland, and are also descended from the survivors of shipwrecks, but far more ancient ones, surviving through generations of inbreeding, and occasional Chif admixture. It is theorized that they may even interbreed with the Grgs, though this was presented as mere rumor. The Mzun are visually very pale and slightly deformed, with overly smooth skin, slightly enlarged craniums, miscolored eyes, and balding among both men and women. Mzun have univerisally been seen to dress in many-layed robed of black dyed hides, giving them the appearance of having large bat wings. Little is known of their culture, as the only interactions between them and the Sarruites were hostile, but according to the Chifs, they subsist off of the labor of enslaved Grgs, whom they use for purposes of hunting, livestock, sport, war, and possibly also agriculture. Every Mzun owns Grgs as property, from the moment of their birth, and their position with their society is dictated primarily upon the quality and quantity of slaves. As well as the Grgs, they regularly attack Chif settlements with the intention of taking them as slaves. Unlike the Grgs however, Chif slaves can rise in status, though they can never be considered equal to Mzun. It is not unknown for Chifs to willingly leave to join the Mzun. The Mzun population is unknown, but it is speculated that the majority of them live in the unknown settlement on Mzun's Peak.
The beliefs of the Mzun are not clear, as almost every account given by the Chifs varied dramatically and conflicted with the other accounts. Descriptions include all of the following:
- The Mzun worship a lord of darkness, buried with the island, who they seek to free so they can destroy the world.
- The Mzun are trapped on the island by Kalchuk, and wish to be free so they can enslave all of humanity.
- The Mzun know that the heart of the universe is located on the island, and wish to destroy it and unmake the world.
- The Mzun are just evil and have no intentions beyond terrorizing the Chifs.
- The Mzun believe there is a whole continent populated by Mzun and Grgs on the other side of the eastern ocean, larger than the whole of Attu, where darkness reigns supreme, and Mul Mag is merely the westernmost edge of their empire.
- The Mzun believe that Mul Mag is the afterlife, and that their existance is punishment for sin in a past life.
- The Mzun have a giant library which contains all the information of history, and they are awaiting the optimal point in the cycle to leave and return to whereever they came from.
- The Mzun follow Kalchuk's evil counterpart, who is their king, and who wants to destroy the island.
- They're just a bunch of freaky-ass weirdos and they just want to keep inbreeding and holding slave fights forever.
Grgs
The Grgs are semi-humanoid feral creatures found in large number throughout the island. There are two varieties of Grg: the Grg-Sl, who are small gremlin-like creatures that live in the wild, and the Grg-Mof, large hulking beasts owned and bred by the Mzun.The two varieties are not distinct species, and are able to freely reproduce with one another, which the Mzun often do to boost their number. The intellegence of the Grgs is similar to that of a gorilla. The Grg-Sl reproduce too rapidly for the island's flora to sustain, and as such their population rises and falls in cycles of famine. They are primarily herbivorous, though do eat small rodents and bugs when they can find them. The Term "Grg" is of unknown origin, as the Sarrhuites forgot whether they made it up or if it was what the Chifs already called them.
Geography
Mul Mag is mostly covered by tropical foliage, in the form of rainforests or flat plainsland. The central valley however is "blighted", being sparce of life, and what life there is is tainted in ways that the notes of the researchers struggled to explain. It was theorized that this "blight" is either the result of Grg overfeeding, or "a corruption by some form of dark magics due to the Mzun".
On the peak of the highest mountain lies something entitled Mzun's Peak. It is unknown what exactly the peak is, as it could only be observed from afar, but it did not appear to be natural. According to the Chifs, the site is a Mzun city, the center of their society.