Green Antarctica

"They are the utter opposite of everything we know as civilization, yet are not savage. Rather, they are like a black mirror unto ourselves. As industrious, as clever, as restless and dynamic. They have taken my ship apart like a child's puzzle, meditating over each component, striving to duplicate and better the production. I curse the day that the wandering spirit sent men to sail the seven days. ...in my heart, I feel fear, because now they know that we exist..."

—Captain James Cook, July 1774, sometime after castration

A Dark Fic Alternate History from AlternateHistory.com, written by its member D'Valdron. The story concerns a world that is to all appearances like ours, until Captain Cook discovers an enormous, technically sophisticated civilization in Antarctica that has been developing on its own, quite unaware of the rest of humanity. The people there are not friendly. The timeline starts with the colonization of a more livable Antarctica by humans, and the development of society and technology therein. Can be read here if you're a member of AlternateHistory.com.

Tropes used in Green Antarctica include:

• Affably Evil: The Hali culture. They'll invite you into their homes, politely respect your differences of opinion, and engage you in a discussion about the translated works of Charles Dickens. And then you find out that the Hali's hat is cold blooded torture. Even their women and children enjoy it as a recreational activity.
• Alliance, The: The Southern Pact, an alliance of European and South American against the expansive Tsalal in Southern Cone.
• Alternate History: You wouldn't want to live in this one!
• Badass: The original survivors who founded the Tsalal society. Unfortunately, the very beginnings of Antarctic human civilization were a pure Start of Darkness.
• The Bad Guy Wins: This happens repeatedly in Tsalal history. That's how Antarctica gets the way it does.
• Black Speech: Most Tsalal languages sound this to people from the outside world.
• But Not Too Foreign: Johnny Tsalal. Hunter S. Thompson took comfort in this.
• Butterfly of Doom: Averted until cca. the 18.-19. century, when Europeans start venturing closer to Antarctica.
• Call a Rabbit a Smeerp: Averted. Antarctica actually has a surprisingly detailed ecology of unique animals. Most of them are based on the prehistoric animals native to Australia and South America, of which they are evolved forms, specialized to the insanely hostile Antarctic climate and ecosystem.
• Chupacabra: The Chupa/Shupa is a very obvious expy.
• Church Militant: Several examples of Tsalal religious authorities that form a state within a state.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: Too many to count, but the Hali culture is the most infamous practitioner of this. And they do it For the Evulz.
• Crapsack Continent
• Dark-Skinned Blond & Dark-Skinned Redhead: Becouse of their Australoid origins and about 40000 years of social selection preferring black skin, Tsalal skin tones are as dark as humanly possible. Hair colors show more variety, but those redheads are quite rare.
• Death World: The native lifeforms of Antarctica are just plain nasty. There are the Gugs, ants that shoot fire, giant platypi that have evolved convergently similar to crocodilians, and a kind of small mammal whose bite sends humans into comas. And that's just the tip of the iceburg...
• Drop Bear: the Southern Koala is this, with some flavoring of Xenomorph. A dreaded taboo creature even for the Tsalal.
• Even Evil Has Standards: The Nightmare Children (Child Soldiers who were raised to be complete and utter psychopaths from birth) were viewed as horrific and cruel even by the Tsalal.
• Everyone Is Bi: More like "Everyone of the Tsalal is bi, if it's a way of degrading your inferiors. Or their dead bodies.
  • Especially if the Body's going to be part of the buffet that night.
• Eviler Than Thou: The other Tsalal consider the Cold Islanders to be this.
  • For reasons that an outsider would consider trivial, such as wearing the color white. And being obsessed with creating "Remade Men"
• Kangaroos Represent Australia: The Sicaripods.
• Faux Affably Evil: Face-crotch Guy. He's Hali.
• Feathered Fiend: Antarctic teratorns (type C) are two hundred pound acid spewing, horn-tufted killer birds with faces sort of like a big cat, a tiger or lion, except with a jagged beak instead of a muzzle.
• God Is Evil: The central tenet of the Zhu religion.
• I'm a Humanitarian: A whole continent of them.
• In Spite of a Nail: Something happened that Antarctica didn't have the glaciers they did in OTL. Yet world history still went on exactly the same until the Tsalal got into the picture.
• I Love the Dead}: The Yag culture.
• It Got Worse: To quote a section: "Lucky Irish" (var) Luck of the Irish, Irish Luck, Lucky Irishman. (phr) 'Any Irish you meet is a lucky Irish.' The association of the Irish with supernatural forms of chance, or luck, dates back in common phrasing at least to the 19th century. After 1902-04, the association of luck and the survivors of the Irish became ubiquitous. Superstition: A seagoing ship with Irish on board was protected from calamity.
• Killer Rabbit: The Kuddly Kritter or Tsalal Koala looks like a big Australian Koala Bear and is one of nastiest species from Green Antarctica.
• Knight Templar: Most Tsalal religions are very dogmatic.
• Land of One City: During the 19th century, Argentina is reduced to Greater Buenos Aires.
• Luke Nounverber: The Tsalal have a mythological hero who's title is "the childraper".
• Merchant City / Vice City: Buenos Aires becomes a major hub of all kinds of trade between the Tsalal of the Southern Cone and the northern powers.
• Mysterious Antarctica
• More Teeth Than the Osmond Family: The Devils, lampshaded in-series.
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: The author described the Flayermen as "sort of like Nazi Pedophile Vampire Ninja, except unfriendly and evil".
• Oedipus Complex. In time's of famine, it's perfectly acceptable in Tsalal culture for a boy to kill and eat his father, and then take his mother and sister as his wives. That is assuming his father doesn't do it first.
• Orange and Blue Morality: The Tsalal civilization in general, but especially the Hali.
• Powered by a Forsaken Child: The Tsalal use children as guidance systems for their bigger rockets and space program. And they don't understand why the Northerners are so upset about it.
• Prison Rape: The Ptarh culture is built on it. Ironically, the same culture also lacks real prison.
• Rule of Scary
• Schizo-Tech: The Antarctic natives discover things like coal mining, rocketry, and domesticated monkeys way, way ahead of time. Guns, not so much.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: Howard Phillips' Flayerman mask.
• Secret Police: Probably.
• Shout-Out / Homage:
  • To Edgar Allan Poe and his famous adventure/horror novella The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. The very name of the disturbing Antarctic natives of this Alternate History is kind of a dead giveaway. The story by Poe featured the "Tsalals", black-skinned, black-toothed evil natives living near the South Pole. The author has acknowledged this series was Inspired By them.
  • Also, to virtually every other Mysterious Antarctica piece of fiction ever written. including those by H.P. Lovecraft : The Plateau of Leng, complete with wierd landscape, architecture and really disturbing inhabitants. That, and... Suprise ! Lovecraft himself is a journalist in this Alternate History, who travels to Antarctica to study all the weird and creepy native civilizations (and get some ideas for his short stories, presumably).
  • To The King in Yellow, not only with the obvious "kings in yellow", but also by using other names supposedly present in the fictional play, like Hali.
• Slave Race: All other humans. The Gugs.
  • The Gugs (mentioned above) are a a kind of eusocial Monkey the size of gorillas that drag their prey under ground, rip their legs off so they can't get away, keep them alive so they can "use" (rape) them, and then eventually eat them. However, the Tsalal have found a way to domesticate them. This involves the Gug master wearing the skin of a Gug king, castrating the young males, and raping and beating them daily to show them who's boss. They are used in both mine labor, and as shock troops. They are also smart enough to use human tools and weapons.
• Snow Means Death: The Tsalal attitude.
  • Justified by the long, deadly, and very snowy winter.
• These Are Things Man Was Not Meant to Know: Tsalal art can be disturbing. Extremely.