Florian

Florian is the preferred term for Antisense culture post 2174, the year of the Flowering, and Year Zero of the Florian era.

History

After the opening of Zigsa's Nest in 2174, the Survivors felt that their world had permanently changed and a new era had begun. While previously their agenda had been to stay safe and grow their resources, now with the help of their new allies the machines, their efforts were to be directed towards cleaning up, replanting and reclaiming the earth. The people of Zigsa's Nest also vowed to look for other survivariums and bring humanity back together again.

The First Florian century

This was a time both of great hardship and intense jubilation, as the deep karmics of Zigsa's Nest turned their expertise towards the problems of healing the wounds of hanyo times. Three major priorities surfaced: 1. to look for and aid other survivariums, 2. to clean up the most threatening of the toxic threats, and 3. to pioneer new settlements on the surface and surround them with gardens and forests. In all three endeavours, the help of the machines proved invaluable.

As people moved into ever more hazardous territory, casualties mounted, and there were at least three devastating plagues from fallout from biological weapons unearthed by the tertons working on the first two projects. However, considering with the people were up again, casualties could have been much worse. Towards he end of the First Florian century, a fourth project wa added to the list: to research and improve machine bodies, modbods and life cycle so that they could live longer and work better. New amour had to be developed rapidly to help machines to clean up Japan, which had broken in half and partially slid into the sea. The discovery of the fukushimycetes melanofungus that had adapted to using radioactivity instead of sunlight as an energy source made it possible to clean and contain the vast radioactive fallout emanating from Japan, which became known as the Forbidden Land ans only machines could survive there. Over the nex few hundred years, the melanofungus was encouraged to build a huge black structure over japan that became known as Mount Abora.

In spite of the very great cost, enormous progress was made in this century. By the end of it, a preliminary map of most of Asia had been created showing the patterns of toxicity and the locations of survivariums, and people had begun sharing their knowledge and helping each other. As the oldest and most advanced of the survivariums, Zigsa's Nest took the lead in bringing people together and helping them. The Nest was starting to become the repository of all the terma, orknowledge, treasures and memories of the Survivors that it would grow into over the next hundred years.

The Second Florian century

The second century was a time of consolidation in Asia. By the end of it, the first bashas were operating around the Issyk Kul lake, and there were viable gardens and living spaces under the basha canopies. By the middle of the century southern Asia had been mapped and its people integrated into the Florian world. This was a great boost for world culture an many of these survviariums had preserved large numbers of plant and animal species, and the greening got a huge boost from this. By the end of the century, Africa had revealed its 453 survivariums and their terma and was being cleaned and greened, while the frist steps had been taken to map South America. However, a new crisis showed up: the derelict space hotels of the hanyos, now in decaying orbits, and housing weapons and reactors that would precipitate unthinkable disasters if they crashed on earth. It was clear that drastic steps had to be taken to neutralise these threats, so the Florian world was now committed to developing a space program.

The Third Florian century

This is known as the Age of Space, because it saw the building of the first five space elevators, known as the world trees and the nascent space stations (glass onions) they were to feed. The space hotels were captured and tethered to these stations, broken up and carted safely down to earth. Much data was recovered, including several video feeds of the Comet of 2123 striking the earth and causing the Yellowstone Supervolcano to blow its top. There were also much grimmer data on the last days of the hotels after the Come Strike robbed them of their supply chains: the hanyos had resorted to cannibalism and spacing each other before the air and water broke down and killed them all. Several hanyo bodies that had been spaced and then strapped to the outside of the hotels were taken down and buried.

The Fourth Florian century

In the first decade of this century, the Florians recaptured the Moon and cleared out the last of the hanyo war machines from Earthspace. To do this, they had to descend into a kiloemetre-deep ilmenite mine in the South Pole Aitken Basin of the Moon. The Florianising of the Moon meant the Florians now had a supply of Helium 3 for their reactors. Now basha establishment proceeded apace, and by the end of the century the Green Zone had taken a definite shape. Machine now had three stages in their lifecycle: a first, humanoid or aichan stage, and second, mobile aigo stage, when they became modbod users, and the third, sessile aisphere stage, when they became gigantic pearly spheres rooted in a basha.

Back on earth, the forests were growing rapidly, and it became necessary to introduce large numbers of herbivores to control the overgrowth. The bashas were now bursting with animals, so some were allowed to venture out and build themselves homes among the trees.

The Fifth Florian Century

For the first time in their history, the Florians felt they could afford to relax a little. The space stations were now party zones for young people, and the forests were full of creatures. However, there were no large predators: the largest were the snow leopards and the swamp tigers, both of whom were solitary hunters with a small prey footprint. While the balance between forest and herbivores was still viable, it was projected that in a few hundred years there would be serious overgrazing unless predator activity substantially increased. Large herbivores had no natural enemies and were living to obese and unhealthy old age as a result, creating a great deal of avoidable misery and messing with the already small gene pool. A few tertons suggested using [[Zigsa's Pups to solve the problem, but this met with some resistance.