Well, the thing is... I mean, if we consider the possibilities of... you see, if we look at genetic evidence... consider, there's clearly much we don't... oh, fuck it. I give up, do you hear me? I give the God damn hell up! If you have further questions, I'll be at the Speckled Zebra.— Dr. Dhruv Lughari, evolutionary dendribiologist (retired)
Realm of The Reptiles
Sauria is a world in its early iron age, with great empires growing around shallow seas, early steps towards science and philosophy being taken, and a wide variety of cultures, ranging from stone-age hunter-gatherer bands to kingdoms and empires which have built massive cities, the equals of Rome or Memphis or Tenochtitlan. It seems likely that, over the next few hundred years, the inhabitants will discover gunpowder and printing, harness steam and electricity, build computers and airplanes. The tools, buildings, and cultural patterns, while different in detail, are very strongly reminiscient of Earth in overall shape: There are merchants and thieves (sometimes not the same people!), priests and kings, peasants and crafters. As the layout of continents is alien, a thriving world at this stage of progress should be fertile ground for historians and anthropologists, a chance to see how much the specifics of Earth's geographic layout influenced cultural development and the rise and fall of civilizations.
Except that planet is inhabited by several species of sapient, human-sized, dinosaurs.
At least six species (collectivel termed "dinosapiens" by the popular press, regardless of biologists'
objections) are known, each with a wide range of minor ethnic distinctions. All are bipedal and roughly humanoid, all seem of approximately equal intelligence, containing idiots and geniuses and a vast lumpen proletariat in between. Fragmentary notes and records lead Baseline scientists to believe there's likely other species in parts of the world not well documented, but they also note that if trans-dimensional explorers based their ideas on Earth off of medieval beastiaries and travellers' tales, they'd have concluded some odd things.
Despite the dominance by reptiles, mammals exist in various minor niches, primarily as small pest species, with the sole exception of one species of advanced, bipedal, and tailless primate which resembles a very early human ancestor -- an evolutionary nightmare given that it's a placental mammal when the other mammalian species are still egg layers.
The evolution of multiple sapient species who could not have been recently genetically compatible, all apparently reaching the same level of development concurrently, boggles Baseline scientists, as does the degree to which all of the species form social systems very recognizable to humans, with similar types of hierarchies, division of labor, etc. It has given scientists in "hard" fields like biology and "soft" fields like sociology equal fits, leading to interdisciplinary drunken binges (and not a few brawls) at the
Speckled Zebra.
Grallphar
The breach point opens within the Empire of Grallphar, which some have called "Dino Rome" due to a handful of cosmetic resemblances. It is a sprawling Empire whose capital is a large city built on a large, shallow inland sea, with a large ocean accessible across only 20 miles of land at the thinnest point. Multiple once-independant nations have been swallowed up and become provinces; other, more distant nations retain quasi-independance but must pay taxes to Grallphar and obey dictates regarding trade, rights of travel, settling of disputes between citizens of other nations, and so on. Dendrihistorians view this as transitional between fully absorbing the outliers, or, rebellion and fragmentation. There's no telling.
Grallphar is late TL 2 and is the most advanced society Baseline has encountered on this world. Exploring too far from the breachpoint is difficult due to problems of blending in, and the likelihood a human will be simply killed as a weird-looking animal or a horribly deformed, probably diseased, dinosapien. Puzzling out even the rudiments of the local language is likewise slow going.
Species
These are the known species in the world; all are found in abundance in Grallphar. The more cosmopolitan a region, the more mixed the species tend to be within it. The major species cannot interbreed, but can... uhm.. inter
act, with varying cultural taboos pertaining thereto.
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