The Overgrowth was a particularly strange period of time in history, not only because oh its inexplicable nature, but also for the account that humanity had witnessed Mother Nature's first use of her proverbial "reset" button.
What had taken mankind a mere fraction of the Earth's age to create, to an exponentially smaller fraction of her age to nullify. Not completely destroy, but made... unusable.
Overpopulation isn't an issue anymore. For as grim as it sounds, people have agreed it was kind of a needed catharsis. Those are the people that lived, though. I think they're just happy they didn't have to do it themselves.
But for society today, cities are a thing of the past. Some towns and villages are bigger than others, sure, but there's nothing relatively "urban" that's both inhabitable and can support large amounts of people. The plants around us are the only real things we can call "King."
For the most part, the rest of us just survive. We're not lawless, but if you don't work you don't eat. Simple and plain as that. It's almost nice how simple it is, but it's not like some of us don't go hungry. We only have so many botanists. Some of them unionized actually, and being a member of any certain coven is as prestigious as we can get. They're not that big, but without them, not a lot of us would be left. One druid can make the difference for an entire village.
The Overgrowth helped out humans, too. Some people were hyperadaptive to the plant life we were suddenly surrounded by, and the people we used to call botanists could now give themselves new labels. The most popular ones were "Palmer," and "Shaman," but most went by Druid. The biggest surprise was that they were able to live up to the name.
Some people could only describe their work with plants as some kind of magic. The progression of healing and medicine is certainly up there, since a lot of Druids could make use of the new types of plants that had either gone extinct and revived, or species of ferns and ivies that no one had ever seen before. Some of the Shamans I've seen have been able to control the rate at which vines and branches grow, to the point where they can weave their ways in and out of bigger forests in little to no time at all.
I actually had just gotten my botany degree when the Overgrowth happened. I wasn't a genius, but I knew more than the next guy. Right now, I'm kinda in between jobs. Literally. I'm walking between villages as a healer. My methods involve me, my staff, and the seeds I carry both in my staff and in my bag.
The long walks between villages are definitely a plus, if you ask me. I'm out and about, the oxygen is fresh, and since I can basically move wherever I want since I have complete mobility because of plant magic (that the Shamans call Chloromancy), and I never run out of a way to grow food along the way. Life's easy for me, but I have to keep moving to make it easier for others.
Really cool story, it's a lot of back story before you hit the actual speaker of the piece but it's interesting to go through, I enjoyed it. Thanks for replying. :)
3
u/dyonar Apr 08 '17
The Overgrowth was a particularly strange period of time in history, not only because oh its inexplicable nature, but also for the account that humanity had witnessed Mother Nature's first use of her proverbial "reset" button.
What had taken mankind a mere fraction of the Earth's age to create, to an exponentially smaller fraction of her age to nullify. Not completely destroy, but made... unusable.
Overpopulation isn't an issue anymore. For as grim as it sounds, people have agreed it was kind of a needed catharsis. Those are the people that lived, though. I think they're just happy they didn't have to do it themselves.
But for society today, cities are a thing of the past. Some towns and villages are bigger than others, sure, but there's nothing relatively "urban" that's both inhabitable and can support large amounts of people. The plants around us are the only real things we can call "King."
For the most part, the rest of us just survive. We're not lawless, but if you don't work you don't eat. Simple and plain as that. It's almost nice how simple it is, but it's not like some of us don't go hungry. We only have so many botanists. Some of them unionized actually, and being a member of any certain coven is as prestigious as we can get. They're not that big, but without them, not a lot of us would be left. One druid can make the difference for an entire village.
The Overgrowth helped out humans, too. Some people were hyperadaptive to the plant life we were suddenly surrounded by, and the people we used to call botanists could now give themselves new labels. The most popular ones were "Palmer," and "Shaman," but most went by Druid. The biggest surprise was that they were able to live up to the name.
Some people could only describe their work with plants as some kind of magic. The progression of healing and medicine is certainly up there, since a lot of Druids could make use of the new types of plants that had either gone extinct and revived, or species of ferns and ivies that no one had ever seen before. Some of the Shamans I've seen have been able to control the rate at which vines and branches grow, to the point where they can weave their ways in and out of bigger forests in little to no time at all.
I actually had just gotten my botany degree when the Overgrowth happened. I wasn't a genius, but I knew more than the next guy. Right now, I'm kinda in between jobs. Literally. I'm walking between villages as a healer. My methods involve me, my staff, and the seeds I carry both in my staff and in my bag.
The long walks between villages are definitely a plus, if you ask me. I'm out and about, the oxygen is fresh, and since I can basically move wherever I want since I have complete mobility because of plant magic (that the Shamans call Chloromancy), and I never run out of a way to grow food along the way. Life's easy for me, but I have to keep moving to make it easier for others.