Challenge #01860-E036: Tenacity Personified
[Picture shows a cliffside town at the base of a very steep, zig-zagging road. Buildings of a small village cling to the side of slopes that are only mildly kinder than the almost sheer cliffs on either side of this town. There are a few jetties stretching into the dark water.]
A lesson must be taken from The Thaknakys Expedition. They had thought that they had found a graveworld on the other side of the newly-reopened wormhole. There was enough wreckage. Enough record of a global disaster in the form of a tectonic upheaval that rendered all the previously-habitable land inhabitable through rarified atmosphere. They should have looked closer at the ghost cities on top of tabletop mountains, edged in impossible cliffs. They should have checked the artefacts.
Humans had lived there.
If they had known that one, simple fact, they would not have set up airborne mining facilities to grind down the most likely-looking edifice until they accidentally encountered other tunnels made by other life forms. Who were, it must be noted, rather upset that someone else had just barged in and helped themselves without a by-your-leave. Fortunately, negotiations were brief and to the point. Reparations were made. Trading centres were carved out of the living mountains like Petra, only with more airlocks.
Humans, it is now known, will eke out an existence in places where life clearly should not be possible. Part of their pre-Shattering exploratory process was sending successive failed expeditions into inhospitible territory. Most often to find out what happened to the last one... And then repeating the process until one lot or another actually survived. This is most chilling when one realises that said expeditions were entirely voluntary.
Whatever the world was named before the tectonic upheaval, it is now called Dovecote. Cities exist with decorative fronts carved into cliff faces. Farms are entirely hydroponic. Systems exist to re-use effluent in a non-toxic way. The people who live there separate themselves by the Doves and the Mer. The people who live in the sides of cliffs and the people who live in, and under, the deep and narrow seas.
Smaller and less populous are the Seals. The people who have made their homes above the surface, but on the remnants of landslides. They are ambassadors of a sort. The join between the Doves and the Mer. One day, they might don artificial fins and osmosis breathers, and dive to trade with one people. Another, they may wear wings and soar with the other. They excel at terraced gardens, and navigating switchback roads, and building hunchbacked houses that can fit a lot of utility into a very little place.
Human tenacity is both marvellous and terrifying to behold.
The mineral wealth of Dovecote is magnificent. Cotelings of all ethnicities wear or use precious gems and metals with a casualness not seen in any other human. Gold is common in cookware and electronics alike. Sapphires and diamonds are often used to keen the edges of blades.
But there is no shallow water on Dovecote. So the most valuable and precious mineral wealth to a Coteling is flint. Given the inevitable Galactic trade, this is no longer so, but there was a time when the sudden influx of flint to Dovecote resulted in an outrageous surge in polished flint jewelry.
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