SKULL DIVISION: LORE VI
PART 6 OF 7
THE GREAT WAR
War is the stench of smoke and fire. It is the eyes stinging from the flash of destruction. It is the taste of gunpowder hanging in the air for months, coating the tongue with a fiery and metallic residue.
Hours after their negotiations broke down, the Apes thought they would introduce their catapults to the doorsteps of the Monkes. Halfway through their journey, they were ambushed by the Monkes’ infantry in the rainforest that separated their territories. This marked the first use of force in what historians would later name the Great War of Solaria.
The escalation was marked. Within 48 hours, the Monkes had shored up their fortress, while the Apes had encircled the Northern tip of the island with their warships. The Monkes, in retaliation, unveiled their floating artillery.
The Birdz were content to have the conflict confined to the rainforests. But, as the threat moved to the seas, it became uncomfortably close to the cliffs where they nested. In a security council referendum narrowly won by a single vote, their leaders decided to act preemptively to display their dominance over water.
Unprepared against an arsenal delivered unexpectedly by air, the Apes and Monkes retreated to land where they sought protection under the heavy canopies of the rainforest.
At some point, thinking that it would bring peace, the Solarians had offered to take custody of the skulls — not realising that the logic that was perfect to them was shared by nobody else. The other tribes viewed this proposal as dripping with arrogance and condescension. When their proposition was rejected, the Solarians then tried to disable the network across the state, thinking that a clean break would deescalate matters and defuse tensions. Instead, it shattered all channels of communication and created confusion.
It did not take long for war to knock on the doors of the alliance of the Penguins, Grims and Aurorians, who responded in unison. The Aurorians brought with them their technological prowess and the Grims their powerful ancient magic. The Penguins, while small in body, were large in numbers— their sizeable population outstripped the other tribes substantially. Working together, their combined troops swept downwards from the North, creating a wall of fire and ice that decimated every living thing in their path.
And so it was that the Great War plunged Solaria into a state that neared extinction. The crops that were sown in spring bore nothing to be harvested by autumn. The seas, once teeming with fish that the Birdz trawled and traded, turned the colour of blood. The trees that once gave the Apes and Monkes shade and protection were petrified and barren, the rainforest they once stood in now a toxic wasteland.
With each passing day, Solaria continued to decay.
***
The morning came when the Solstead Owners woke up to find that their water ran brown with the detritus of war and their plates empty from the slow death of the soil. Their stockpile, deliberately built from years of thrift and bureaucratic management, had begun to dwindle.
They had thought their neutrality, which they guarded like sentinels, was the foundation with which they had built their relationships with the other tribes.
Armed with the realisation that the line that separated neutrality and apathy was as thin as the edge of a sharpened knife, they found themselves rethinking their perspective; their refusal to engage with the other tribes had done nothing to stop the war, which now rampaged like a hurricane threatening to swallow Solaria whole.
Finally, they opened their eyes and saw that they were Solaria’s last hope.
—
This is Part 6 of 7 of the lore of Skull Division, a Solana NFT minting on 18 November 2021.
