#K: there's so many tidbits to share. I wonder if it's worth dragging out some of the old prose

[sleepvines]

Advancer Culture: Underground and Surface

Continuing our sharing of PerLa, here's more on the ill-fated Advancers. Colored text for ease of distinction.

The Advancers could easily be divided into those who lived and worked on the surface, and those who lived and worked underground.

Surface dwellers’ names were tied to their occupations, while subterranean dwellers employed more location-based names. (This latter group is where Drebyl derived their naming schemes, while the former inspired the Syrel’s names.) This means that surface Advancers were used to changing their names often, employing new titles with every shift in occupation, while those below the ground held their names close as a reminder of where they had come from, or somewhere special.

For example, something like "Wires Well, Neatly Binds" would have been a surface name for someone in charge of cable management, while "Ricochet from the Red River" would have been a subterranean individual with ties to an iron-rich waterway. These names were often self determined and/or given as a sign of respect and recognition.

Surface work was about as varied as you can imagine; construction, cooking, transportation and delivery, managing communications and information systems, agriculture, maintenance, etc. You get the idea, running a society.

Those who lived and worked underground mainly operated drills, harvested subterranean plants/fungi, monitored organisms for potential biotechnological applications, and constructed tunnels, stations, and dwellings. A subway network was in the works, but has long since decayed. Nowadays the reinforced tunnels are a convenient travel space for any creatures passing through.

Neither group was bound to their respective realm. An Advancer could have easily worked a few years underground and decided they liked it better up-top, and vice versa. A name change wasn't necessary to facilitate that.

...We'd like to cover wyverns next! They've been weirdly constant throughout this world's many iterations. It's been fun picking out oldish art to share details through.

(this post was almost entirely written by @umberpath, thanks Winn!)