Notes

This story is more philosophical, almost spiritual. As a result, it doesn’t convey many facts about real nature or real history, and it was also somewhat difficult to work much action and suspense into it. (I think I eventually succeeded, otherwise you wouldn’t have been able to read this story.)

The Ghostbird is a Pterosaur. That is NOT a dinosaur, but it does have a common ancestor. (In my world, these were created when Cosmo took a dino egg in an early stage and magically transformed it into a new species.) During the previous era, this was an entire swarm. Here we see the very last one.

In the first version, Dilova’s favorite saying was “wowie wowie wowie”. But I thought that sounded a bit too childish for the tone the Saga of Life has.

About birds and flying

There is NO evidence (or reason to think) that our current birds learned to fly by diving from great heights. The explanation is simple: all birds we know start flying by pushing off with their feet. Unfortunately, that didn’t fit so well into the story.

(I would’ve had to write something where the hind legs of the birds continually grew stronger and the wings continually larger. Over very, very long periods of time birds became as efficient as they are today. Not very exciting, right?)

Similarly, there is a distinction between birds that are good at walking and birds that can only hop with both feet simultaneously. The second category simply never adapted well to life on land and prefers flying a lot. Maybe at some point, a story will appear about that.

About Dracs

The Dracs are derived from the Draconian Laws. Before that, local leaders decided what rules they thought should be in place, all on their own. Usually with the excuse that “god willed it so”.

The people called for public rules, clearly stated, against all crime. Draco provided that. But he was so extremely against everything, and had no examples of what laws should look like, that the Draconian laws punished almost everything by death. Over time these naturally became more lenient and better.

About Clansteads

The unique thing about the Greeks (of antiquity), was that they had no king or emperor. It’s also is why they never became a great empire (like Persia or Rome).

They were subdivided into “city states” that each had their own culture, politics, rules, and so on. (Athens was the most influential. Sparta is another well-known one.)

The Clansteads are a derivative of that idea. (The timeline and reason for emergence don’t match reality. For instance, Greece already consisted of city states by the time Draco came along with his laws.)