Dzzitian

The New Dzeerazza Empire
Government	Single-Party Dzeerazza State
Capital	Dzundettus, Chalth
Head Of State	Dzoeren Dzearnach
Past Heads Of State	None
Ruling Party	Dzeerazza Party
Religion	None
Allies	Ala-Ik, Protinianaca, Kungoz, Kuturpu, Others
Enemies	Tunto, Others
Duration	~100 Years

The Dzzitians are an ancient race of appearance and physique similar to that of spiders that, against all odds, have survived to this day and become influential across the known universe.

Being of a race that has originated 50 million years BU, they have defied all odds by resurfacing 50 million years after their destruction, then another 50 million years after that.  Throughout this time, they have been an integral part of several spacefaring empires, four of which they have been at the head of, and another four that have benefitted of their enduring legacy.

History

The Dzzitians have a rich history, both on and off of their homeworld.  Their legacy takes them from the refuge of silicon-based life that is their homeworld, Chalth, to the Demoid homeworld of Demius, and to reaches as far away as the planet Ecrathar.

The Ancient Rise

Before Reaching Space

Racial Origins

It is commonly accepted that the Dzzitians were first evolved from an unknown species of spider, presumably of Earthly origin, somehow ending up on the planet Chalth and adapting to it's silicon-based environment.  The accepted theory as to how this happened is that the so-called proto-Dzzitians were able to survive because of the oxygen emissions of certain algae-like micobes living, along with other lakes and rivers across the planet, in the waters of Lake Churr, the lake where the earliest specimens of proto-Dzzitian lifeforms were found close to.  It is assumed that from drinking the water and trying desperately to eat the native flora, these ancestors quickly developed a symbiotic relation with the microbes first allowing them to eat silicon-based plants, then allowing them to breathe the otherwise toxic air of the outside world.  This, it is believed, would ensure their survival, and the development of the proto-Dzzitian species would continue from there onwards on the shores of Lake Churr, the cradle of the Dzzitian race and civilisation.

The Foundation Of Chaldism

The proto-Dzzitians became closer to the modern Dzzitian race fourteens of thousands of years after their arrival to Chalth, by which time they had grown considerably in size due to a lack of competition and predators.  However, other new species began to develop from the proto-Dzzitians as well, diversifying into various species analoguous to primates.  Some species began to eat the eggs of other species, including Dzzitian eggs, forcing a parental behavior of protecting the eggs to emerge.  The laying of eggs at the banks of the lakes and rivers, a recurring habit among all of the species, even those that eat eggs, would be viewed as an important cycle of life by the early Dzzitians of Lake Churr, who were beginning to figure out the planting of some of the more edible silicon plants around this time.

The belief had it that all life originated from the lake's supposed mystical significance, and that their lives, and indeed the lives of all lifeforms of which they knew, were traced back to the source of the lake's waters, an entity, traditionally considered to be genderless and formless, referred to as Chald, who was content with nothing more than watching it's creation unfold, and in return, the various species, both Dzzitian and non-Dzzitian, presented their spawn to the lake, so that Chald may give life to them through the lake.  Additionally, species that eat eggs and corpses have been said to be pardoned by Chald, for it knows that they only want to eat, just as any other species would.

This religion became the foundation of Dzzitian society, alongside which the farming of edible silicon plants was perfected.  As the religion spread to other Dzzitian communities that had developed along the shores of other lakes and rivers with similar populations of microbes, it became known to them that Chald was in all of Chalth's waterways, and gave life across the world's bodies of fresh water.  Complex social structures emerged, and ambitious Dzzitians spearheaded projects aiming to plant new fields of crops in the wake of the death of the tall, silicon-based tree-like spires that grow in large forests of many different kinds of them.  These farms permitted the Dzzitian populations to grow in number and spread across the continent, forming several small kingdoms centering primarily on bodies of water, with kings rising to power under the idea of being an ambassador to Chald.  Under these various kingdoms, there were enough resources for every Dzzitian community, and a lasting peace formed in Chald's name on the continent for an estimated quarter-millennium.

The Chaldist Kingdoms

With increasing knowledge of how to grow food and how to build shelter, small farming communities soon became big cities, and adopting a new interpretation of the concept of Chald's forgiveness, the silicon-based forests were being cleared to provide farmland and get raw materials.  With the expansion of the territories of the kingdoms, there also came the development of new languages from the Dzzitian mother tongue, the birth of folklore and the development of national identities, in turn leading to nationalist pride.  These sentiments were the ones that ignited the first recorded war in Dzzitian history, between the larger kingdom of Zeire and the small, nearby community of Sarakh.

Directly before the war, there had been conflict over the expansion of Zeire's land development in lands that the people of Sarakh believed belonged to them, which they decided not to develop due to a deeper respect of Chald.  Weaponry had not been fully developed at this point by any kingdom, and neither were the very concept of an army, and so, the battles of this early war had to be fought with nothing more than brute strength between the people of these kingdoms, each side believing that their cause is justified by the will of their people, their king, and Chalth itself.  When the outside world got word of this, the other kingdoms were left in shock, with many fearing that this would upset Chalth, but among the patriots of many of the larger kingdoms, they felt these wars to be, much like in the opinion of the people of Zeire, justified by Chald's acceptance of predators killing and eating prey and eggs.

Not long after Zeire killed the king of Sarakh and declared their lands to be part of the bigger kingdom, the people of various other kingdoms began to discover that sticks, certain kinds of seeds and many other types of heavy objects were useful in attacking, and could be used as extensions of their own bodies in combat.  One particular kingdom, Tshora, invented the club by putting a stick into a certain kind of gourd-like fruit.  These early clubs would quickly become popular across the continent, with several uses as hammer-like tools, and in the southern regions, they were often spun around by the wielding Dzzitian before releasing and letting them fall onto unsuspecting victims.  The Dzzitians also began to use their passive ability to change the color of a few small parts of their body at this time, doing so in accordance to their national affiliation to know who to hit.  These times were littered with small-scale wars fought between various Dzzitian nations vying for the supremacy of their king and country, often without the approval or even awareness of their own kings, many of whom were more conservative and religious.

Not only did the Dzzitian kings fear that all of this war would upset Chald, but they also feared for their lives, as they were now in danger of being suddenly assassinated by small warbands.  Kings from seven kingdoms, big and small, including Tshora, agreed to meet with one another in secret at the shores of Lake Churr to discuss these growing problems, an event which would become known in Dzzitian history as the inagural meeting of the Churr Conventions.  They came to the conclusion that kings should take full responsibility for all wars, and should select warriors for battle by their own authority, restricting combat to those chosen, and giving them the primary task of protecting the king.  Upon their return, the kings implemented these reforms to their respective kingdoms, and were soon copied by a number of Dzzitian kingdoms, all but restoring peace to the nations once more.

A few decades later, Sava Rezhim, one of the sons of the king of Zeire, now having brought himself to power and hoping to avenge the death of his father at the hands of a band of patriots from the kingdom of Jariz, which was to the north of Zeire and was a land of roughly Zeire's size by now, officially declared war upon Jariz, even though raids on their lands were becoming more common as soon as Sava's father died, not stopping during the reforms of the other kingdoms, as Sava's father disagreed with those policies, especially because of the victory against Sarakh.  Sava did adopt the idea of choosing warriors to defend him, however, which helped greatly in stopping a would-be assassination attempt during said war.  Many Dzzitians from Zeire stormed the home of the king of Jariz near the end of the war, but they were ultimately unsuccessful in killing the enemy king, although one of them did manage to break his right arm before getting clubbed by a warrior from Jariz.  The king did manage to survive, and his troops successfully defended his realm from the invaders from Zeire, but Jariz was forced to cede the outer portion of their lands to Zeire at the end of this war.

This war also recieved negative attention from the other kings, who decided to meet once again at Lake Churr.  This time, almost every king aside from Sava and at least two others attended this gathering, along with their armies.  They knew that war was a problem, but they had to find a way to stop them from occurring before Zeire became too powerful.  It was suggested then that wars don't have to be solely between the invader and the invaded, but could also be declared to intervene in such a war.  It was then decided that the kingdoms attending the meeting would join together in an official alliance, the first of it's kind among Dzzitians, and would help one another prosper through the help of one another's armed forces and the exchange of plants and technologies.  This meeting became known as the second meeting of the Churr Conventions, the one in which said alliance became a reality.

This alliance, aside from creating international pressure against Zeire, also marked the Dzzitian invention of trade, which was then limited to being between nations, and preceded the invention of currency.  It also helped popularise the sport of Oroto across the continent, which originated in the east as an invention of a powerful king there to turn attention away from battling other kingdoms and to instead engage in combat within the nation.  Zeire did not take the Churr Conventions well, however, and Sava made a push within his realm to increase the population as much as possible and grow an army hopefully capable of taking on that of every other nation.  As a part of this, he also formally adopted the concept of the army, but invented mandatory conscription in it for all Dzzitian men.  Sava's hope was to take the rest of Jariz, and especially to kill their king, just as their people killed Sava's father.  This had become his ultimate objective, his obsession, to make his father proud.

Roughly a decade later, Zeire declared war on Jariz again, and in the following weeks, the kingdoms of the Churr Conventions declared war on Zeire in return, sending their own armies one by one to try to halt their advance in Jariz, but to little avail.  The victim kingdom did know of the tentative policies that their foes set up a decade earlier, and tried to defend themselves by fortifying their lands with some of the larger plants, a technique shared to them via trade, but it did little to stop the advance of the giant army of Zeire, which resorted to climbing over the fortifications with their own bodies.  However, what did prove to become their undoing was a new weapon brought forth by the incoming armies of Jariz's allies: Sharpened sticks designed to be thrown long distances away.  The first Dzzitian javelins ravaged Sava's army from afar before closing in on them.

Before long, Zeire's troops were forced to retreat home and fend off the advances of their enemies.  Fortunately, they had learned to copy the javelins and fortifications by now, and propagated the technologies along the borders of the heartland of Zeire, but to no avail, as the former lands of Sarakh were being occupied by the allied troops, and Jariz got the whole of it's territory back with the help of it's allies, notably including Tshora.  The war continued year after year, but in a stalemate from there.  Few gains were made by either side, and Sava went into hiding to avoid potential assassination.  A few months following his departure, the members of the Churr Conventions declared a victory, and chose from among the Chaldist faithfuls of Zeire and Sarakh new kings who would be more peaceful.  Soon after, there began an effort to hunt down Sava, which would be unsuccessful for five years before he was found dead in the wilderness of Jariz, killed by bite marks from an undefinitively identified local species of predator.  This marked peace across the continent for nearly 600 years, during which numerous technological advances were made in many fields, notably including the development of the unusually-designed Dzzitian bow and arrow, the discovery of ironwork, the invention of the first Dzzitian currency, the Shuzuk, and perhaps most importantly, the development of Dzzitian boats, then used primarily to harvest algae-like plants with net-like sheets of fabric, and of maritime navigation skills.

The Intellectual Revolution

During the latter half of this era of peace, there came new advances in Dzzitian education.  Previously taught by their parents and keeping to the farms and cities of their birth, the concept of collective education was pioneered by one of the kings of the west by letting a handful of some of the more knowledgeable Dzzitians teach the children of an area, improving the standards of these new gnerations and increasing the level of literacy and the potential for aspiring young pupils to develop new insights and advancements to improve and facilitate the quality of life.  With this influx of knowledgable people, there came a push for the standardisation of the script used universally for all Dzzitian languages, and heralded the introduction of scrolls, by which written ideas could be more conveniently read and shared.  With the improvement of Dzzitian knowledge and literacy, there also came the development of a vast number of schools of thought for the discussion and speculation of various things, from questioning the origin and purpose of various phenomena like the rain, their sun and their stars, to debating on the meaning of existence and other ideas.  Amidst this intellectual revolution which soon had reached all corners of the world, there also came the questioning of Chaldism.  Towards the end of this time of peace, there would be a great many Dzzitian thinkers, like Tsakri Dainu, a native of Tshora who would challenge the Chaldist superstitions and institutions over the supposed gift of life.

Tsakri in particular argued that the many plants started as seeds and grew over time, even becoming tall spires in some, qualifying them as forms of life.  He further reasoned that although they were arguably living things, they were not bound to bodies of water, and rather had spread across the known world in defiance of the location of water.  This movement was a big shock to the Dzzitian populace, and as many philosophers arose to defend Chald.  At the end of this period of peace, there had formed a clear social divide between those who believed in Chald and those who believed, for diverse reasons, that Chald did not exist and did not provide them life, assuming that something else, a more rational explanation, was the reason that dependence upon water is nessecary for Dzzitian life.

Then came a catalyst.  To the south of the continent, there occurred a great earthquake, the first known to Dzzitian history.  The three kingdoms affected by it were greatly ravaged, and many hundreds of thousands of Dzzitians were killed during the tragic event.  Much aid was sent to the kingdoms in it's range, to reconstruct what was destroyed, but what had occurred would leave more permanent scars on the public.  There immediately came a great explosion of animosity between the Chaldists and the disbelievers, with the former declaring it the will of Chald, as it's ultimate wrath upon those who have abandoned it, unleashing the full extent of it's nature, while those who disbelieved, although quickly dropping in number due to a great event such as that disproving the impossibility of Chald, continued to staunchly disapprove of this opinion.  Tsakri, his remaining fellow thinkers and those who still followed him were now being heavily persecuted, so they fled from Tshora to the south, where the devastation meant less persecutors and more freedom, as well as a chance to study what had happened and hopefully find evidence of something that can disprove Chald's existence.

After settling in a remote abandoned region that was once farmland, Tsakri and his band of disbelievers began investigating.  Using long strings of web, they sent a few among them into the ravine created by the earthquake in search of anything that may provide an answer.  The small team travelled for what has been recorded as four days at the bottom of the ravine that the earthquake had created, but to no avail, until they noticed that a waterfall was flowing into it.  Upon returning to their group, they explained this unusual detail in particular, and set off for higher ground at that part of the ravine.  Upon reaching the area, they noticed that a river had been cut off by the earthquake's destructive effect, and was draining it into the ravine.  Although it didn't prove anything to them, it did show that if Chald did cause the earthquake, it was removing a body of water, which could be interpreted as it's departure from the world, and could use this to show that Chald was abandoning it's people, and that if it was doing so, yet the people could still live, it would mean that Chald does not exist.

Tsakri's group went to the closest of the rebuilding cities from their location, and began to preach their findings regarding the river at the community hub of the city.  At first, the people were hostile and skeptic, but they soon came to agree that Chald had at least become angered and vengeful towards the Dzzitians.  When the local king learned of this, he dispatched his army to drive away Tsakri and his fellow intellectuals, fearing that they would cause Chald to invoke it's wrath again.  When Tsakri, his followers and the people encountered the king's troops, they refused to forgive Chald, for the people now believed that it was abandoning them, prompting the army to massacre as many of the disbelievers as they could the next day, on the king's orders.  Along with Tsakri and a good number of those who came with him, many of the few thousand survivors of the earthquake in the area perished in that event, a bloodbath that immediately became symbolic of the oppression of the Chaldist rulers to all of the disbelievers and even to some of the common folk of many kingdoms.

A philosopher named Dzerlik Dzimpokh, a disbeliever from the kingdom of Dzirazza who was also known for his ideas on a hypothetical society where the people would have influence on political matters, heard of this event, and went to the south a week later to share his ideas with the infuriated people of the kingdoms there.  The people agreed that they would rather have a voice among their nations, and decided to unite together in a war against their kings and armies, and chose Dzerlik as their new leader.  Two weeks later, after arming themselves with swords and bows, they marched to the palace of one of the kings and swarmed it, killing any soldiers in their way until they reached the king, cut off his abdomen, and tossed him from the window.  They proceeded to the next cities and palaces, liberating them from their kings one by one in the following week with slightly decreased amounts of opposition each time.

Following the so-called Wars Against Chald, Dzerlik declared that the people of each of the three free kingdoms would choose a new leader from among the most respected of themselves for each former kingdom, and that he would help guide the three nations and implement the idea of democratic leadership, effectively founding what is known today as the United Dzzitian Federation, also known as the Tripartite Federation, the first Dzzitian state to not be a kingdom.  This would begin a legacy of hundreds of years of Dzzitian democratic tradition, and would spearhead the Dzzitian value of liberty and the pursuit of one's own life.  In the kingdoms, however, these revolutions were a tremendous insult to the authority of the kings, and the twenty-third Churr Convention was called to try and address the growing unrest of the disbelieving circles, which began to grow in number in the wake of the Chaldist massacre and the Wars Against Chald.  Even at the Churr Convention, the kings were fiercely divided as to what to do.  Some proposed to give Chaldists and disbelievers equal amounts of respect, and some suggested to loosen their authority, but they were drowned out by the concerns of the conservative majority that feared any further devastation from Chald's wrath.  Ultimately, they resolved to give the Chaldists legal benefits and to enforce Chaldist values in schools, but not every nation accepted those decisions, with a few kings even having been alienated by the outcome.

The Foundation Of Dzeerazza

Among the kings displeased with the deliberation of the Churr Convention was Dzorkum Dzarr, the king of Dzirazza.  Raised during a time of philosophical debate, he had learned to question the Chaldist values that held the balance of power for centuries.  However, he would continue to uphold them with reluctance during his time as king until the Wars Against Chald, when he had heard enough to be certain of the wrongs of religion.  A few days after the Churr Convention, Dzorkum gathered the top unbelieving figures of Dzirazza to discuss the secularisation of the kingdom, and to accept suggestions as to how to improve the conditions of life in his kingdom and people.  After this so-called Dzirazza Convention, later remembered as the Founding Of Dzeerazza, Dzorkum began writing a new constitution for his kingdom, to be published under the name A Description Of The New, Anti-Chaldist Government Of The Kingdom Of Dzirazza, which would become popularly known later on as The Dzeerazza Constitution during the days of the Dzeerazza Empire, and The Dzeerazza Manifesto in the present day.

The scroll, more often published today as a proper book, describes what would become the ideology of Dzeerazza, which first addresses and stresses the lack of religion, which is referred to as being "the source of all oppression and injustice among Dzzitians", then elaborates upon this in a critical overview of Dzzitian history.  It also mentions, among various other topics of importance, the necessity of erasing inequalities between social classes, the need for the distribution of power and responsibility among skilled members of the upper class, (The typical Dzzitian kingdom at the time had the king as the only authority and holding unlimited power over his domain, without any form of position for ministers, governors or even generals.) the treatment of all Dzzitian ethnicities as equals regardless of animosity between nations, the formation of an organisation for laborers and builders structured like the military, and the equal distribution of resources for those who require them.

While writing,  Dzorkum faced heavy political pressure from the Chaldist kings, who imposed trade embargoes upon his kingdom and the Tripartite Federation, and threatened to go to war against Dzirazza if he didn't accept the Churr Convention's decisions.  However, the Federation supported Dzirazza's refusal to acknowledge the Churr Convention's authority, until the scroll, which was secret until then, was published around two years later, after which even the Federation decried some of Dzirazza's policies for, according to their socio-political opinions, forcing the people to rely upon the leadership's authority, and the collectivisation of the social classes, pitting the Dzzitian world against him.  Mere weeks after the scroll's publishing, the Chaldist kingdoms declared war upon Dzirazza for Dzorkum's open promotion of disbelief in Chald, forcing him to think quickly to prevent his kingdom's destruction.  By the advice of his newly-selected general, the first in Dzzitian history, it was decided to send the equally new workforce of Dzirazza to build many traps in the forested areas of Dzirazza.  With these in place and a newly reorganised army, Dzirazza was well-defended in the first few months of the war, long enough to institute a breeding program like that of Zeire from long ago, for more potential soldiers to be readied for the battlefield.  The war's first year ended with a stalemate and the construction of a long, deep and wide moat-like trench by the Dzirazza workforce around the third of Dzirazza's borders.  From there, the kingdom, although primarily focusing on keeping a defensive superiority, would make minor gains in the neighboring Chaldist kingdoms, which were also being fortified by the Chaldist allies, who had also begun violently suppressing unbelieving Dzzitians in their own kingdoms under the justification of them being potential sympathisers with Dzirazza.

The war would continue for roughly a decade, during which time the Federation declared independent participation in the war against Dzirazza.  No side made any particular gains during this period, until Dzirazza's navy successfully defended itself from what was intended to be a major ice-breaking offensive by the fleets of many of the Chaldist allies.  Following this dramatic defeat, which proved to be patriotic for Dzirazza, Dzorkum ordered the beginning of their own offensive campaign to conquer the nearby Chaldist kingdoms, hoping to force an offer of peace from their enemies.  The next three years would start with a slow expansion of Dzirazza's territory into some of the smaller kingdoms, and quickly come to witness a successful campaign across the lands of the enemy after adopting a groundbreaking strategy of quickly fortifying any new gains with on-site workers and defensive construction materials stored nearby.  Peace was negotiated soon after during the twenty-ninth Churr Convention, the first to which Dzirazza's king was allowed to attend since the war began.  Dzorkum agreed to return his territorial gains made during the war to the kingdoms to which they belonged before the war started, and would not be sanctioned or pressured by the other nations or the Churr Conventions in return.  This agreement furthered the decline of the influence of the Churr Conventions, reducing it to little more than a forum for the Dzzitian nations.

The Industrial Revolution

There was an uneasy peace following the end of the Dzirazza War which would last roughly 150 years, during which a cold war had formed between the Chaldist kingdoms, the Federation and Dzirazza.  The innovation of the police force by the king of Jariz spread among the Chaldist kingdoms to provide a more reliable means of suppressing disbelief, which only strengthened the validity of the cause of the unbeliever communities, now forced to become underground dissident movements.  The second half of this period of peace was marked by the factions fervently working to defend themselves from one another, and all sides focusing on the research and development of new military technologies, most notably including the development of arrows that can be lit with gunpowder and fired without the need to stretch back the web wire used in coventional Dzzitian bows.  This early precursor to the gun was rapidly copied across the continent, with numerous new improvements made to them throughout the following decades as the principal focus of an arms race.  Also during the latter half of this peace, nationalist sentiment arose among the populace of the major powers, and even the soldiers guarding the walls and fortifications awaited the declaration of war with excitement.  There have been several minor border conflicts, and at least one confirmed report of spontaneous full-scale local combat, at the border between the Federation and a minor Chaldist kingdom, without the direct approval of either of their heads of state, which were a hassle to sort out, but even then, among the only things keeping the skirmish from expanding into all-out war was the threat of the combined might of all of the Chaldist kingdoms, and the possibility of an unbelieving fifth column assisting the Federation.

This peace, more fragile than that between most cold wars, even in the known history of the universe, managed to keep itself together against all odds until the discovery of the potential of vapor, until then used as a weapon of torture as part of a device functioning like a primitive flamethrower, for other means.  While the cap used to keep water in these weapons is only removed when the water is hot enough to fire, the cap is often kept on as a second projectile, which was the inspiration for a Federation team of engineers to experiment with water vapor.  After months of testing, they had developed multiple prototypes for, along with designs for a vapor-based rifle-like weapon, some new designs as well.  In particular, they discovered that steam power can push wheels at a faster and steadier rate than a Dzzitian can, and created a very basic prototype that is regarded as having been the first Dzzitian vehicle.  It was a small, rectangular platform placed on top of an early steam engine that, using a kind of combustible plant fiber also used in vapor guns, boiled water in a central chamber at the back of the engine, from which the resulting vapor pushed two axels connecting two small wheels each before recondensing and draining to the boiling chamber once again.  Although this discovery was at first considered largely unimportant by the public when it was released, it would prove to become an important force in Dzzitian politics and warfare soon.  A few years later, a larger, sturdier model was made by them specifically to withstand and carry about four Dzzitians, their arrow guns, and their ammunition in an armored booth above the engine and wheels.  The team working on it also believed it possible to distribute resources more quickly across vast distances using their improvement.  The idea of a mobile shooting bunker and a transport was well-recieved by the Federation's president, and following some additional testing, it was suggested to make special tracks to prevent the vehicle from damaging infrastructure, heralding the Dzzitian invention of the railroad.  These defences were soon implemented around the circumference of the front lines of the Federation, allowing the other nations to get a glimpse of this new innovation.

While all of the major powers would go on to build railroad systems in the coming decades, Dzirazza in particular was eager to develop such technology for themselves, and their king aspired to develop a means to fully automate a network of steam-powered carts able to carry and fire several gunpowder arrows, and go where they're needed as needed.  While his ambition failed to completely come to light, a railway system was built across the borders of Dzirazza and used both to carry soldiers and resources, and directly to attack using specialised vehicles staffed with a few Dzzitians to keep the engine hot and to provide maintenance.  Two types of these improved armored carts were made: one firing multiple arrows at once to lay siege on the enemy, the other emulating a recent arrow gun development allowing for the extremely rapid fire of arrows one after another without having to refill, as with a machine gun.  In both cases, they were heavily clad in a hollow iron casing often shaped in ornamental ways, both to armor their creation, to intimidate the enemy and to conceal it's inner workings, preventing outsiders from copying the model.  Compared to the Federation, which still only transported their own archers on their railroad system by then, and the Chaldist kingdoms, who were focusing on linking one another to the same network of rails to further trade and defense inoffensively, Dzirazza held a technological and tactical advantage, especially after the standardisation of a constant rotation of attack and transport vehicles across the rails around the kingdom.  As such, the urge for war was further pushed by the people, ecstatic at the thought of their new military weapons bringing their nation justice and glory, and pushing the other sides of the cold war to develop counters.

These factors led to the Federation's research on many particularities employed in Dzirazza's improved steam carts, but they eventually devoted more time and resources towards the development of a more powerful and efficient steam engine.  A design was concieved and tested within the span of five years, then determined suitable for military application.  The test design was so powerful, in fact, that it was found that it could carry what was noted as being fourteen times it's own vehicle's weight, which inspired the attachment of multiple additional carts to the back of them, used for the transport of resources and allowing for more room at the front to be able to fully house the improvements to the steam engine.  With these additions, the Federation was able to house entire armies in what would be the first true Dzzitian trains.  Shocked by the discovery of multiple carts pulled at once with what appears from a distance to be a modification of the original steam-powered machine, both the Chaldist kingdoms and Dzirazza began heavy research into steam power.  Not only did this yield a multitude of concepts for more powerful steam engines, and some new innovations being made to the railways themselves, but there also came to the attention of every nation the theory of the implementation of steam technology in cities to facilitate and automate a variety of menial tasks.

In but a short decade, in addition to the nationalism that has already developed and continued to increase with the development of new technologies, numerous social changes had taken place in the midst of society.  People had less of a need to expend energy to work as long as they could get access to new devices that made life easier for them all.  With less of a need for tending to their land, the peasants of the fields of the Federation and the Chaldist kingdoms could go to the cities to sell part of their crops and raise their quality of life with the purchase of new tools to increase the rate of survival.  With a higher demand for these new advancements and other goods, the merchants of these nations developed a new strategy: They would offer to pay a salary to those who were still poor in return for their manual skill in the workshops where products were made.  This strategy quickly evolved into the formation of primitive assembly lines, and the workshops would begin to function more like conventional factories.

The kingdom of Dzirazza developed much differently.  Due to the policies of their constitution, by now popularly described under the umbrella term Dzirazza, which would later evolve into the name Dzeerazza, the peasants and the upper classes already shared a good standard of living, and all citizens were able to obtain the modern innovations that the onset of steam made possible.  While the other nations would feel minor tensions between social classes overshadowed by patriotic and religious fervor, the latter being only in the kingdoms where Chald was still being worshipped, Dzirazza enjoyed an orderly society with equal treatment, respect and prosperity for all.  Many of the lower-class people of the other nations, especially the unbelievers, noticed this, and soon came to agree that Dzirazza's ideology was more benevolent than that of any other Dzzitian nation, and that if their nations are to improve, they should undergo the same reforms that Dzirazza did over 150 years prior.  Underground pro-Dzirazza movements were formed across the continent, several of which made liaisons with Dzirazza itself, giving them a makeshift covert network spanning the whole of the Dzzitian political landscape.  With this new, unprecedented advantage over the other nations, the king of Dzirazza began serious plans to finally start a war at last.

And then, the day came.  A surprise attack was launched on all nations bordering Dzirazza simultaneously.  Their workforce followed the lines of soldiers spreading outward in every direction, building railways as part of a strange new military tactic, in the direction of the nearest cities, surely falling quickly from the combined efforts of an enlarged and enhanced Dzirazza army and an extensive group of dissidents seeking a better life.  This war is known to this day as the Revolutionary War, as it internationally proved Dzirazza's ideology to be effective and dominant in every known sense, and as it would mark Dzirazza as the strongest power.  Despite the many preparations and fortifications put in place by it's many rivals, the armies and revolutionaries would go on to unite the continent, especially with the workers connecting the enemy's railway system with their own, allowing for access by Dzirazza's attack trains across the battlefield to provide support for the armies, and to also block the path of enemy reinforcements where possible.  The Revolutionary War at first provoked a resounding excitement among the whole of the populace, but the higher classes would soon see the bitter end of it all.  With Dzirazza's troops annhilating all those in their way, their nation's trains vying for supremacy of the rails against enemy trains, and the fairly recent invention of the ironclad steamboat being used by all sides in a smaller-scale fight for naval superiority, not to mention rebels from the other nations fighting a guerilla war against their own kings, it would become a triumphant victory for Dzirazza, but not without an intense stalemate against the Federation that would last for 3 years with few local gains on either side before ultimately resulting in their defeat, and along with it, the complete eradication of all non-Dzirazza nations on the continent and the establishment of the crown of Dzirazza as the sovereign of what was believed to be the entire world.

However, the Federation's leadership was aware of it's impending defeat, and secretly organised a small fleet of ironclads to be boarded by the more loyal citizens of the nation, and equipped with enough supplies to ensure the long-term survival of the entire Dzzitian population on the ocean, including small farms of crops and other nessecary plants, fishing sheets for the harvest of algae-like life from the sea, and the on-board installation of some steam-powered luxuries.  The fleet's aim was to escape the siege of their homeland and to travel the ocean, then believed to be continuous when they first left, but they discovered that this was not the case.  Despite traveling far from the continent and from Dzirazza, they soon discovered land, and believing that they would be discovered by their enemies if they did land, it was decided to turn around and go elsewhere, but when they realised that there were no other boats, nor any signs of civilisation, they realised that they found an island that had not been discovered by anyone else until then.  After carefully sending a search party to the shore, which reported nothing more than miles of forest in every direction, the decision was made to reach the shore and unboard everyone.  They assumed that they had found a large island, but they failed to realise that they had discovered an entire continent, one that future generations would further explore and colonise, and discover to be completely devoid of Dzzitian-related life despite the presence of lakes and rivers, further proving the non-existence of Chalth and creating a sentiment of national pride for having discovered definitive evidence of it, not to mention that they were at last safe from all of their enemies.

The Two Continental Nations

There then followed close to a millennium and a half of peace on both continents, with further technological advancement being made independently in the two remaining nations.  While Dzirazza experimented further and on steam technology and machinery, soon perfecting and mastering complex engineering and achieving a golden age reminiscent of the steampunk concept first developed on Earth, the reformed and rebuilt Federation discovered electricity and a basic means of harvesting it via Dzzitian webs somewhere three hundred years following the discovery of their new home, and would go on to improve upon this method and experiment with electricity as a source of power, quickly discovering the conductivity of metals and steadily advancing into a modernised and interconnected society.  Furthermore, both continent-spanning nations would soon come to see the cultures that they span merged into one defining the whole of their people, along with their languages.  However, the biggest difference was that while Dzirazza would remain oblivious to the continued existence of the Federation, the latter still knew of Dzirazza, and had gone to great lengths to ensure that for all of these centuries, their old foe would never know about their continent, primarily by sinking any and all of their ships that get too close.  This led to the development of the belief that if one ventures too far into the ocean, still believed by Dzirazza to be infinite in all directions past their continent, those doing so would never be seen or heard of again for unknown reasons.  This eventually lowered the amount of possible intruders in Federation territory by a large margin, and put an end to any possibility of Dzirazza discovering the new continent or it's inhabitants.

While Dzirazza eventually stagnated in it's advancement, the Federation continued to advance, eventually including the creation of a space program.  Dzirazza's furthest reaches into air travel was the invention of zeppelins and many derivative aircraft, whilst the Federation had made several advances in aerodynamics, had begun launching probes and shuttles, and had even made a small base of operations on their homeworld's moon.  On the day that commemorated the departure of the fleet that first left a future conquest of Dzirazza centuries earlier, by the orders of president Kardi Zaderen, one of the Federation's orbital laser probes usually used to target and destroy nearby asteroids and the remains of defunct satellites was instead moved directly above the capital of Dzirazza, then fired.  The city was devastated, and the people wondered with fear of what that strange weapon was, until another probe arrived with a screen displaying president Kardi live from his office, announcing the Federation's responsibility for the attack, and the demand for the immediate surrender of Dzirazza, lest they bring more probes above the continent and destroy all of Dzirazza's major cities.  Although the king refused at first, then ordered the military to ensure to the best of their ability that no such attack can occur again, the threat was genuine, and the probes, too high to be hit by Dzirazza's best weaponry, fired again, forcing them to surrender.

On that day, the planet was united by military force under Dzzitian democracy.  Once these actions were revealed to them, the overwhelming majority of the people of the original reformed Federation rejoiced, the voices of concern over the deaths of several Dzzitians and the promptness and brutality of the so-called One-Day War drowned out by the patriots of a nation once at the brink of being destroyed, increasing Kardi's reputation and cementing his place as one of the great heroes of democratic Dzzitian history.  The following decades would see the cultural assimilation of the former Dzirazza and the pacification of it's terrorised populace and it's occasional, but increasingly rare resistance movements.  Now that they no longer had to fear Dzirazza, the technological direction taken by the crushed nation and the innovations that resulted of it were all but forgotten, with little being kept for use in this united world, at least without being improved with the Federation's discoveries.  The latter's concepts and advancements, including the idea of exploring space, became prevalent even on the original continent when close to slightly above fifty years passed under the assimilation policies.  Almost two hundred years following the surrender of Dzirazza, standard interplanetary travel is considered to have begun with the launch of the Dzzitian race's first manned expedition to every other celestial body in their home star system, a successful trip that lasted a few months.  Especially following the reaching of this bold new horizon, research into space travel would continue to increase, and space technology would improve steadily ever since.

After Reaching Space

The Stellar Federation

The Federation's progresses into space technology and interstellar colonisation started with small vessels carrying several colonists in suspended animation, followed closely by one or two unmanned cargo ships carrying colonisation resources remotely operated from the manned ship by it's small crew of still-active Dzzitians.  In this way, they managed to establish outposts on some of the outermost planets of their native star system, and on planets in neighboring systems.  The definitive discovery and encounter of life on other planets was inevitable from there, occurring some hundred years after the initial wave of colonisation, but in a shocking discovery, it was found that not only was this life carbon-based, much like the Dzzitians themselves and related species, contrarily to the then-commonly-held theory that silicon-based life was predominant in the universe due to it's simple biology, but also that unlike predicted models for hypothetical carbon-based atmospheres, Dzzitians could actually live and breathe in one, and even eat and drink from the local resources, even despite their bacterial symbiosis.  Aside from giving a potential answer to the question of the Dzzitians' carbon-based biochemistry in a predominantly silicon-based ecosystem, opening new insights on their history and legacy, this also obviously meant that they could greatly expand their presence on worlds capable of supporting life, and thus could establish healthy populations and fruitful industries without a reliance on Chalth for resources.

Following this discovery, within the Federation, by now known as the Dzzitian Stellar Federation, interest in interstellar expansion exploded, but despite steady progress in making their interstellar transports faster, there still came no known way to make travel between colonies faster than trips lasting about a year at best.  Settlements could still make contact with one another and with the homeworld using transmissions, but due to the distances separating themselves from one another, it was important to have some degree of self-sufficiency.  On the other hand, the discovery that Dzzitians are essentially alien on their own homeworld made it certain to them that their origins might be from a planet bearing carbon-based life, and perhaps even that their early ancestors were transplanted there by other spacefaring sapient beings.  At the extreme of these opinions was a small Chaldist revivalist movement, considering that maybe the spirit of Lake Churr was some form of alien presence giving life to the Dzzitians and their biological relatives, having had the nessecary advancements to be able to engineer them in an otherwise unforgiving world, but while this was quickly dismissed by the overwhelming majority of the population, atheism still a major part of their nationalist pride, a small and decidated movement formed among the Federation's scientific and science-fiction communities that would go on to set out on their own to found their own colony at the edge of Dzzitian space at the time, and hopefully find out more about their supposed creators, but with absolutely no indication as to where to go, their only hope was to develop more sophisticated communications sending and intercepting systems.  In return for funding, materials and consultations from Dzzitian technological and engineering specialists when needed, the fledgling Estranged Children movement provided the rest of the Federation with their breakthroughs in the field of communications, and enjoyed relative de facto independence from the Federation.

First Contact

These advances were how the Dzzitians discovered the first sign that there were sapient lifeforms with interstellar capabilities aside from them.  Although in those days, carbon-based life was somewhat abundant as a result of universe-wide events that had taken place about 20 million years earlier, there was still little sapient life.  To put this into perspective, the Milky Way Galaxy during the time of the Alliance Of Order had tens of thousands of different sapient races with their own sovereign states, but there existed only a few dozen such species in the galaxy during the time of the Dzzitians, and there were also roughly a few hundred tribe-states and planet states in the Milky Way at the time as well, but the Federation's presence was close to none of these, and so, their first contact with another such race was when they managed to listen in to the transmissions of another spacefaring civilisation.

Surviving records as to the details of this race were lost, damaged or altered during the rule of the later Dzeerazza Empire, but it is known that they were referred to at least by the Empire as the Shamans, and that they had an empire called the Shaman Kingdom.  They had predated the Dzzitians' rise to space by tens of thousands of years, and were expanding across the Milky Way Galaxy and apparently also the Andromeda Galaxy and the latter two's satellite galaxies, spreading with them their religion of Shamanism and uplifting less advanced races to their level, offering them their own territories surrounding their homeworlds as they did.  The Estranged Children were the ones who had at last intercepted one of their internal communications, and who had sent a transmission of their own shortly afterwards.  Barely three years later, even despite the Shaman Kingdom not having been the origin of Chald, the Estranged Children had fully converted to Shamanism, then joined the Kingdom and acquired the rights to planets now beyond the Federation's reach, which, deciding to stay on their initial planet of Zandri, they would never come to occupy, allowing the Shamans to move in to them instead during the course of the next thousand or so years.

Following this, the atheistic Federation cut all ties to their former colony and scrambled to achieve levels of advancement at least equal to that of the Shamans, especially in the fields of space travel and weaponry, as they knew that in their current state, they couldn't possibly fend off potential attempts to lay claim to their space.  Fortunately for them, however, the Shamans proved to have peaceful intentions, but the nationalist sentiments of the Federation's progresses led them to fear worst-case scenarioes nevertheless.  It did help them in the end, however, as the next two hundred years became characterised by rapid advancements made by observing Shaman designs in action, reverse-engineering anything that the Shamans couldn't recover, and perhaps less well-known and more shamefully, from some Dzzitians illegally trading with the Estranged Children and the Shaman Kingdom as a whole, despite a self-imposed embargo against them by the Federation.  At the same time, an active effort was made to keep Dzzitians from converting to Shamanism or from defecting to the Estranged Children or the Shaman Kingdom, with the first Dzzitian propaganda campaigns ever to have been made citing that despite their peaceful and virtuous exterior, the Shaman Kingdom is no better than the Chaldists who massacred thousands of disbeleivers so long ago, perpetuating a fear that the Shamans would eventually force them to convert to Shamanism, or else conquer them.

The Fall Of The Federation

Furthermore, and perhaps most importantly, under the leadership of president Marrloph Prundett, in opposition to many supporters of atheistic and democratic Dzzitian values, a police force was founded in secret to suppress anyone found to be a radical, enthusiastic and unchangeable Shamanist.  Although it was declared that it would be used little, it quickly became a massive controversy among many of the Federation's politicians, especially since the Chaldists themselves used police forces in this way, and that allowing this would mean that the Federation would become no better than those against which it had formed.  However, no one in the government dared speak out against Marrloph, nor gave any more than subtle hints to confirm the existence of this police force, for fear of being considered a Shamanic sympathiser and imprisoned for treason.

Left unopposed by fear, Marrloph began to quietly fill the upper levels of the government with his own supporters, whom, much like himself, felt that the democratic system of the Federation was just as passive as the Shamans' peaceful ways, and that the Dzzitians would have to take on a more aggressive stance if they were to truly distinguish themselves from their potential foes.  More specifically, just as the Estranged Children looked to the Chaldist faith of the past for answers, these supporters had been dabbling in the long-forgotten ideology of Dzeerazza, and Marrloph hoped to make a peaceful transition towards it, so that he could initiate reforms to strengthen the Dzzitians' political standing and capabilities in the face of the Shaman threat.  However, just as the Estranged Children instead would go on to convert to Shamanism, Marrloph's envisionment of Dzeerazza was considerably more left-wing and socialistic, and even considered totalitarian in some circles, hence the term Prundettism, used in the present day to describe Dzeerazza states that do not follow Dzeerazza as it was originally intended, instead making use of an often more left-wing version.

Surely enough, a vote was passed one day to decide on the acceptance of a proposed "Dzzitian Civil Defense Reform" that vaguely promised to "make alterations in the interests of national security and readiness against a possible Shaman ultimatum" to, among other fields, the military, research, education, the labor industry, and virtually every economic institution, as well as cracking down on potential Shaman supporters in the higher levels of government.  Despite drawing criticism because of it's lack of specificness and some fears of reforms, the vote was won in favor of the reforms by a slim thread, as voted by the people, and the fearful few turned out to be right, witnessing the Stellar Federation's transformation into the Dzeerazza Empire.  Once the reforms were completely put into place, the people realised what had transpired, with a mixed reaction.  Much of the military in particular, however, was against the alterations to the ruling structure, and the situation would have devolved into a civil war if the Shaman threat weren't there to make one an unthinkable act of vulnerability towards the Shaman Kingdom.

As promised, however, the reforms did greatly strengthen research, education, and the economy, at the occasional cost of personal freedom and freedom of speech in the name of identifying and apprehending pro-Shaman suspects, and soon enough, all but the most radical supporters of Dzzitian democracy came to accept the new government, with those still disagreeing with what had transpired having fled to an unknown location presumably outside of the Dzeerazza Empire's borders.  However, those borders began to grow at a rapid pace, including into the territories that were at first left to the Estranged Children by the Shaman Kingdom, yet not directly inhabited by their people.  The pro-Federation dissidents had formed an underground movement to incite continued resistance against the Dzeerazza regime, but after just over twenty years of attempted raids against key Dzeerazza locations, the planet on which was located their main base of operations was eventually discovered near the end of the galactic arm, and used as the testing site of the Dzeerazza Empire's latest weapon, the Bomb Of The Dzarrs, essentially a precursor to the Planet Busters sometimes used during the earlier days of the Alliance Of Order.

The military had also been reorganised during this time to match Dzeerazza standards from the past kingdom of Dzirazza, although with a power structure designed by Marrloph Prundett to ensure that he alone has complete authority over any military action taken, and he did the same for a workforce that was established during the initial reforms.  Technological advancement was directed so as to distinguish the Dzzitians from technology that was otherwise derived from the devices and techniques that the Shaman Kingdom had already discovered, in the hopes of being able to get rid of the technological dependence that had existed until then, and along with it, any chance of the Shamans being able to use their own vulnerabilities against them.  In fact, even the Federation rebels stole and made use of some of the technological discoveries that were made by the Dzzitians under the Dzeerazza Empire, notably using them to make escape pods resembling meteorites and being virtually indistinguishable from them with even the best Dzzitian scanners.  Unknowingly to them, one of these would later save the species from being forgotten by history.

The War Against The Shamans

Even surviving ancient Dzzitian sources today are unclear on what happened next, but archaeological evidence and heavily fragmented records indicate that following Marrloph Prundett's death, his son, Khartben, inherited leadership of the Empire and declared war on the Shamans, which brought about the end of Dzzitian soverignty in the span of approximately 100 years.  It has been indicated that Dzeerazza troops had largely been successful at first, but this is uncertain due to the possibility of wartime propaganda efforts.  However, it is clear that despite this, they had become gradually destroyed by the Shamans, but apparently not without a fierce resistance.  Whether the Dzzitian race survived or not is unknown, but based on the known international customs of the time, it is believed that those which did not honestly convert to Shamanism were systematically exterminated.  Dzzitian fossils known to have followed the war are mostly concentrated on the planet Zandri, which seems to indicate either that the Estranged Children or at least the Shamanic population there had survived in some amount during the course of the war, or that it was used as a relocation site for converted Dzzitians, either as a result of the greatly lowered racial population or simply as a punishment or condition of surrender.  There still remain many unanswered questions regarding this part of Dzzitian history.

Anatomy

Silicon-Based Symbiosis

Dzzitians have only barely survived the conditions on their homeworld of Chalth due to a symbiotic relation with a few separate species of silicon-based microbial lifeforms, with a smaller amount having even contributed to a limited number of bodily attributes.  Among the most important of these allow the respiration of Chalth's toxic air by drawing it in through the bacteria, which draws sustenance from it and releases oxygen and nitrogen, depending on the species, as byproducts.  Just as important are a number of species existing in the Dzzitian's digestive system that decompose silicon-based organic matter and similarly convert it to multiple carbon-based organic compounds.

There also exist a few species in a Dzzitian's spinnerets that sustain themselves on the compounds used in the bodily production of webs, growing on Dzzitian-made webs and in turn giving them, by means that have not yet been fully explained by most of mainstream science, electrical conductivity, but at the cost of being less sticky than the webs of other arachnoid species.  Nevertheless, this silk was instrumental in the Dzzitian discovery of electricity and in the invention of electrical currents and circuits, until the discovery of more reliable conductive materials.

However, most of these species can only be acquired by drinking from the fresh waters of Chalth from a young age, which has since become an important element of the ancient Chaldist religion and of Dzzitian culture as a whole.  This not only means that if a newly-hatched Dzzitian on the homeworld doesn't drink water soon enough after birth, it will die of asphyxiation, but it also means that Dzzitians that are born off-world without getting a drink will grow up like any normal carbon-based lifeform, and will lack the ability to subside in a silicon-based environment like that on Chalth.

Culture

Language

The letters and an explanation of the script that the Dzzitians have used since the dawn of their civilisations.