Vengeful Waves (short story) from Star Wars' Myths & Fables by George Mann
By 2,026 BBY, on the planet Glee Anselm there lived a race of two people: the Nautolans and the Anselmi. You could recognize the Nautolans by their pale skin in hues of green, gray or blue as well as their glistening eyes and the coiling tentacles that stemmed from the back of their heads. The Anselmi did resemble the Nautolans, but you could tell them apart due to the Anselmi’s blue flesh and smooth pates, upon which were only a pair of twitching antennae. The two cultures had flourished for a millennia and together had grown from cave dwellings to large underwater cities that made the ocean spirit proud of both of its children.
The Anselmi and the Nautolans had lived in peace a for a thousand years, and the Anselmi empress and the Nautolan queen had become great friends, just as their mothers had before them, and the cultures were in harmony with one another. The two peoples shared art, knowledge, goods and affection. The rulers understood that balance is what kept their societies successful and the ocean at peace.
But however, as the Anselmi flourished, so did their desire to possess more and their need for power grew, and they began to look at the Nautolans with envy. They became envious of Nautolan farm beds that were more fertile than their own, and the way that their nation curtailed the borders of the Anselmi, stopping their expansion. At first, ambassadors from Anselmi came to the Nautolans and asked for that land to be given to them, and the Nautolans gave it to them in friendship. This was met with no gratitude from the Anselmi, but only laughter and superiority at how easy it had been to take the land from the Nautolans. But this new land did nothing to quench the thirst for power and wealth that the Anselmi had, and a growing sense of unease between the two peoples formed. The Nautolans preached peace while the Anselmi preached self-belief and the rights of their own desires over all else, including the Nautolans. They actually came to believe that the Nautolans were weaker and more ignorant than them. Threats of violence were in the air over land and resources, and the Nautolans were at a loss at to what made their neighbors turn against them.
Finally, the Nautolan queen dispatched an ambassador to speak to the Anselmi empress, since relations between the two had grown tense, with a message of warning. The queen stated that if this tension grew between their two peoples, the balance of the planet would be disturbed and the living spirit of the ocean would exact punishment upon them. The queen begged her former friend to cease their desire for expansion, because the Anselmi empress risked the downfall of her own people in angering the ocean spirit by attempting to lay claim over all, as both peoples were only allowed to live there if they maintained the balance of the ocean.
But the arrogance that had seeped into the Anselmi empress’ mind led her to believe that she and her people were more superior than their neighbors and also more than the ocean spirit itself, and she did not take heed of the warning. But she knew that the Nautolans were great warriors and could not be fought successfully, so she sent the Nautolan ambassadors back with this message: that the Anselmi would prove their dominion over all by laying claim not only to the sea, but also to the lands that lay above them, forcing the Nautolans to admit that the Anselmi were superior.
Even though the Nautolans pleaded with their neighbors to reconsider, the Anselmi dragged themselves above water, and found themselves on a vast island full of greenery in the middle of the ocean that had been unspoiled. They felt that now they had a full vantage point of all over which they had laid claim to. The Anselmi in time adapted to a life on dry land, constructing a large empire of temples and cities from the rocks, stripping natural resources from the earth as well as gorging themselves on the fruit and animals of the island, until they became lazy. Throughout it all, they maintained their distance from their old neighbors and sent back every ambassador unanswered, until finally all communication ended. The Nautolans mourned for their old friends but remained in their own territory, leading peaceful lives and taking nothing but what the ocean provided for them. All they desired was the safe return of their former friends and neighbors, but were afraid for them.
In time, the Anselmi outgrew their island home, because of the overly large palaces they had built for their arrogant leaders and because of the resources they had overly used in their greed. They grew envious of the ocean itself, and vowed to push the ocean back so that they might uncover more land for themselves to conquer. Through great feats of engineering, huge dams were constructed, and the water was drained away from land on which the Anselmi erected new houses and big statues in their own honor. They were prideful of the horrible thing they had done, because they believed it ultimately meant that they were all powerful.
The Nautolans tried one last time to warn the Anselmi about what would happen if the balance of Glee Anselm was upset, but their pleas fell on unhearing and prideful ears that did not listen. The ocean spirit had finally been pushed too far, and rose up against the Anselmi in a violent rage. Vast tidal waves and storm broke down the dams, reclaiming the land for the ocean once more - but the ocean, wanting to teach its children a lesson they would not forget, enacted more vengeance upon them. The waves crumbled their statues, their cities, their palaces for days and days, until the ocean was satisfied with the balance it had restored. The once glorious Anselmi had been diminished to a small group of survivors, who were forced to scrap together a meager existence upon dry land in the ruins of their former empire. The Nautolans were filled with sadness at the devastation their old friends had faced, but remained in their cities beneath the waves, and never again was the balance on Glee Anselm broken.
5 (star): The style of this collection is really suited to telling a broader history of groups of people, and that showed here in this fable of the fall of the Anselmi. I loved the messaging here about the wrongs of colonial conquest and rejecting community in favor of attempting to hold dominion, and how this can lead to a peoples' downfall. I am looking forward to seeing how this gives a deeper context to the storylines in Jango Fett and in the Choose Your Destiny: An Obi-Wan & Anakin Adventure comic. I am also wondering if this will be a flashback/subplot in the new Tides of Terror comic coming out that features Kit Fisto.
