[revision]
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"strain table" [ar. 1695709569]
* zilla - there is like no ▓▓▓▓▓▓▓ way to improve on 'gujira' that's godzilla if it was literally its name. there just isnt.
** other than like, make an Appealing thing that sits at the bottom of the ocean a la Lugia
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[cr. 1695812137]
gomora -> pillar of salt -> ...?
the Zagros sea is pretty actually. maybe it could be called Zagros and softly rainbow
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[cr. 1695861716]
Zagros is an old-style "rubber suit" type monster like on a kaiju show,
mostly bipedal but able to bend down into a quadrupedal stance a little like a bear but going the other way
it has an appearance vaguely but not strongly like a mineral crystal, like quartz or salt. maybe a bit more like those rougher pink salt crystals but not exactly. it makes you think of a rough rocky desert region
it has various segments or plates to its body, but something of a soft rainbow sheen to it
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[cr. 1695850682]
Zagros' lore —
a long time ago in the Zagros desert region (almost 100 centuries ago), humans discovered an old dried-up sea.
according to an old tale, this was a horrid and unholy place and if anybody looked into it they would be transformed into a pillar of salt. but now that some time had passed they were too curious not to investigate it.
some distance into the salt sea, they discovered a gigantic reptilian-looking being which had apparently "hatched" out of a towering salt crystal. to their surprise, this being spoke to them, introducing itself as Zagros.
Zagros offered to help the humans develop a great civilisation beyond anything most could imagine — however, it said, other civilisations must never find out about this, or else the results will be dire.
the ancient people were mesmerised by the shimmering "dread dragon", and quickly formed local religions around it, creating statues of Zagros which expanded through secret ceremony chambers to their ceiling. [*m]
the pantheon also grew to include a couple other discovered "companions" such as the rainbow bird Homa and the protective demon Zazaza.
however, a gigantic monster is hard to keep secret, and eventually other civilisations found out. jealous of the Zagros empire's superior technology, they declared that both the god-king Zagros and his empire would be destroyed.
Zagros wearily turned back to their royal court and advised the people to form alliances. if the Zagros kingdom could bridge itself to the distant lands of ally monsters fast enough to cut off the advance of the other kingdoms, they could have a chance to end the long age of wars. but if they did not succeed, everything would be lost.
the Zagros people proceeded with courage and trust, putting their entire hearts into stretching across the land to unite all the distant allies. they would bring in the era of love and peace, extending Homa's rainbow over the land. they fully believed in the combined strength of Zagros, the pantheon, and the people.
however, they were not fast enough. Zagros' early advice had been very serious — only by escaping detection by every potential enemy while accumulating as many allies as possible would they have any hope of succeeding now. over the years the people had been successful at putting a few extra allies in remote places, but it was hardly anywhere near enough.
as a result, the Zagros empire shattered under attacks by outside kingdoms. the region fell into chaos, with periods of war and conquest and each kingdom doing awful things to the others. one shard of the Zagros empire was turned into the slaves of another kingdom. another shard was forced to burn down other kingdoms with its monsters and technology. overall, there was a long period of violence and confusion. many small states grew to hate others, in almost all directions.
for over a millennium the region enjoyed a certain kind of uneasy "stability", with each small state developing separately. but eventually, the second period of empire began.
in an area called the Toxic Sea, a monster turned up which had no desire for love or peace, and only for accumulating power. this monster directed the people to simply use force to take down and subjugate the other states; if they could forcefully join the states together under hierarchical power, the age of wars could technically be ended that way.
the Toxic empire expanded itself to the size of several states, as much as all the other small states fiercely resisted its advance. eventually, this would culminate in national liberation movements that would restore or defensively create stronger small states, and birth new "defender" monsters like Jee-oo.
the period of national liberation had some of the fiercest wars ever seen. the Toxic empire was never fully destroyed, only slowly pushed back a bit at a time, and the people's distrust in each other grew many times. every state sat around in wait ready to thoroughly thrash the others at the moment they might do anything evil or aggressive to it.
from a red-orange scrub grass area called the Dawn Sea appeared Simurgh, a monster who believed that wisdom and dialogue could unite all the states of the land.
from a dark forest called the Dusk Sea appeared a monster called Asp who thought that only the immediate response of one party treaded on by another could possibly make anything better.
the followers of Asp fiercely resisted the followers of Simurgh in their quest to "encroach" onto other states with a message of peace and unity. small confederations formed together at times to try to retake control from a local scale.
these confederations adopted a technique first discovered in the time of the Toxic empire to change all their people into formidable monsters, and shared residents between the territories of their confederation.
the followers of Simurgh tried their best, learning from the past and their experiences.
there were several attempts to unify the land, but each time there was some kind of great mistake made that ultimately caused the Simurgh alliance to divide into competing pieces.
in the end the region would reach its "current" state of seemingly-permanent division into small states loosely bound into local alliances but refusing to empathise or cooperate.
specialists including Turnix and Memo would assemble past the Rainbow Bridge in the Foggy Sea, racking their brains about whether a region or a local state or a monster can be "permanent trash, too far gone for rebirth". they would try their best to piece together the fabled "dawn machine" which could restore the lost possibilities that it seemed had simultaneously never existed, but they knew they had to work in near total secrecy to possibly succeed. [*p,*t] this was the only way the nations could be led to believe tiny local events between a couple of states were the only thing happening, and not form a backlash to Simurgh's return before it was time. the story of Zagros and the original Zagros empire became an important parable for the specialists, who knew that there was a lot less hope now than in the ancient past, and they had better get it right.
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[cr. 1695851086]
Zazaza is almost certainly like, a local protector spirit that got super mad at large outside empires and presented itself to others as a "demon"
it was always something of a scary demon in appearance, but it was always understood as an ally that could protect people against other scary things. in later times it became misunderstood as an evil being because of its hostility to outside civilisations
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[*p] petscop.
[*t] _Tapers_.
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>> 1695811604 zagros
