Re: Tales of the Rune-Tech Sage

Chapter 908: Pangea’s Ecological Compendium

CH0908 Pangea’s Ecological Compendium

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Perhaps due to being a Primary Plane, Pangea is noted for having a very rich and diverse distribution of flora and fauna.

For centuries, Pangea’s ever-growing academia has debated the reason for the Plane’s greater racial and species diversity.

The most obvious agents believed to be behind this were, without a doubt, evolution… and, surprisingly, Interplanar Expedition.

Amongst the known recorded Planes, Pangea ranks highly among those with the most diverse terrain and ecology, and from this, biologists and evolutionists find the foundation for their theories on the possible reason for the Plane’s diverse racial and species distribution.

Never mind the massive, diverse geography of the Arun Continent; even the smaller Terra and Cryonis Continents were known for their massive ecological diversity.

In fact, Terra alone is believed to be home to more diverse species of anthropogenic creatures than most Planes have fauna species.

As for Cryonis, records from the few Legends and above who have graced the grounds of the Continent claim it to have a rich diversity of ice-based races and species rivalling that of a small—likely Class 3 and below—Plane.

In their own unique ways, both Terra and Cryonis were incredibly xenophobic and hostile environments. Every race or species that found a home on either Continent was in a constant, prolonged battle for survival.

For any species to survive, they must constantly strengthen their advantages while giving up all that was useless. They must adapt to equally ever-adapting threats. From this prolonged adaptation eventually came mutations. And from continuous mutations came the final evolution of multiple species.

In an ecology where even the environment mutates and evolves to kill you, it doesn’t take much imagination to understand how much the species that survive here also have to constantly mutate and evolve to survive.

Here, speedy evolution wasn’t a luxury; it was survival.

Then, when one looked at the Arun Continent—the Continent with the most studied ecology of the three—the rich racial and species diversity of the Plane, born from long-term mutations of existing races and species, became abundantly clear for all to see.

However, aside from evolution, an equally popular, yet albeit weaker, theory stems from Interplanar Expedition.

Proponents of this branch believe that, in addition to the undeniable influence of nature in the form of forced or consequential evolution, many of the diverse races and species existing on Pangea in the modern day, or that have existed in ancient times, were likely brought over from other Planes.

These Outer beings—both flora and fauna—either adapted to the Plane, evolved alongside the Plane’s ecology, or combined with existing species and races on the Plane, gaining the traits needed to survive on it.

Proponents of this branch of reasoning point to the existence of half-breeds and many unexplainable bloodline traits now existing on the Plane today.

Within the major races, especially when one turns to genetically mutable ones like the human race, one would find inexplicable bloodlines within them—bloodlines from races that didn’t seem to exist on the Plane originally.

Humans with Titan, Behemoth, or even Phoenix bloodlines are just a few of the go-to examples.

If these species are confirmed not to be native to Pangea, then the only explanation is that the bloodline was introduced into Pangea’s racial gene pool by Outer beings brought to the Plane.

If it is identifiable in the major races, one can imagine what exists in the understudied minor races.

For the most part, the arguments of the proponents of this branch of reasoning seemed logical and understandable, especially since clear mutations in racial and species populations can be seen in the living offspring of native Pangeans who mate with Outer beings.

At the very least, if this branch doesn’t hold water now, it would do so in the distant future.

However, proponents of this branch of reasoning went a bit further.

Rather than accept that their theory would come to hold true at some distant point in time, they argued that their theory already existed today.

The implication of this belief is that, for this claim to be true, it would also mean that Interplanar travel was already in existence at some distant time in the past on the Plane.

At the very least, a millennium or so before Emperor Commodus Ludevicus led the first Interplanar Expedition into the Infernal Realm.

While most of academia denies this claim, as even long-lived species have no record of such a time on the Plane, the claim has not yet been completely disproved or debunked.

The proponents of the line of reasoning who proposed this claim were also themselves part of academia. They were not fools who would make such claims without having some shred of evidence to back them up.

And in this situation, the proof for this claim came in the form of multiple ancient texts, the most recent of which was the diary of one Lyssara Merath, the famous Archmage of Grey Star.

This particular diary was sold at auction during the joint Golden Palace—DragonHold Enclave auction festival.

The Archmage of Grey Star was a very respected name in the Mage circles and academia of Pangea, as the Archmage was considered one of the founders of what would grow to become the Plane’s academia.

Some entries within the diary could very loosely be interpreted as evidence of the capability of civilisations of old to travel between Planes.

The keyword being ‘very loosely’. However, due to the weight behind the Archmage’s name, few dared dismiss her words as nonsense, nor even the most outlandish stretch of interpretation of said words.

Then again, even though it was widely accepted that interpreting the portion of the Archmage’s diary as evidence of ancient Interplanar travel was weak at best, it was far from being the weightiest evidence of the claim.

After all, the diary being evidence of the claim was only a very recent phenomenon. There was other evidence that had long since borne the weight of evidence for the claim.

The most talked-about of these is perhaps the claim of the unknown ancient civilisation believed to have existed within the Ironmourn Desert, north to northeast of the Virellian Empire, more specifically northeast to north of the Fury Lands.

It was widely believed that there once existed an unnamed ancient empire in the region. However, due to the ancient empire dabbling in feats beyond its capabilities, it was wiped out by the Natural Order—more specifically, by Time.

If this belief was true, it opened a myriad of possibilities.

Time was a Universal Supreme Law. Their hubris aside—daring to think they could comprehend and control such a powerful existence or phenomenon that touched all existences equally—the fact that the empire was able to move Time, such that it drew the ire of the Natural Order—Time—hinted at the level of their techno-magical development and advancement.

For a civilisation so advanced that they could create something which they reasonably believed could allow them to touch upon and control the Natural Order—something that forced, or at least triggered, the Natural Order enough to respond directly, such that powerful professionals of the current age could still feel reverence while looking towards the desert—was it a stretch to believe that such a civilisation had also developed a means to move between Planes?

Whether by direct Interstellar exploration or via similar teleportation means as those used in the current era, most of academia found it difficult to ignore the possibility, as it made more sense that a civilisation as advanced as they believed this unnamed ancient civilisation to be would have means of Interplanar travel than for it not to.

It was simply impossible to reach the level of technology needed to achieve the feat this unnamed ancient civilisation had achieved without having some means of Interplanar travel.

And if, indeed, this unnamed ancient civilisation possessed Interplanar travel, then Interplanar travel already existed on the Plane in times past. Then, it would make logical sense to expect that this ancient era of Interplanar exploration brought with it an influx of Outer beings that would have contributed to Pangea’s collective gene pool, forever enriching and diversifying it further.

Whatever the case, regardless of the cause of Pangea’s racial and species diversity—be it simple mutation cum evolution, Interplanar Expedition, or a mixture of both—what was clear was that multiple unique species and races which didn’t exist anywhere else now existed on the Plane and would continue to exist on the Plane.

This was a far-reaching fact that reached even within Alex’s expedition party, with Mordor being evidence of the former while Sugud was evidence of the latter.

Speaking of the two, after separating from Alex and his wives upon arriving at the Enclave City, they quickly returned home, where they were met with happy faces from loved ones who previously didn’t know whether they were dead or alive in the aftermath of the news of the ‘accident’ that had befallen the expedition.

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