Swans - Live Through Me
On the matter of Mist and the Social War, Pt. I
For centuries, the rivalry between the nations of Alexandria, Lindblum and Burmecia resulted in a series of conflicts that plagued the Mist Continent, bringing it to a state of civil unrest and uncertainty about the future.
Frictions between the different ethnic groups spread across Gaia have occurred since its earliest days, when the first known civilizations began a mass migration from the lowlands to the higher plateaus. The scarcity of food available in the regions under the Mist, coupled with the numerous wars waged across the lands, is one of the main factors that led to this migration, a moment in history quoted by Alexandrian researcher Abraham Cunningham as "the second dawn of humanity, when the development of life outside the thick layers of Mist was seen as possible, if not necessary, to be accomplished".
The fear of the Mist is a topic that has been well-documented through past literacy at different time intervals. According to Regent Cid Fabool III's memoirs written during his travels around the continent, "this mysterious entity is believed to breed monsters and trigger irrationality. It reduces people as less than human by hardening their hearts and fogging their minds with ill thoughts". Pliny, one of the founders of the Library of Daguerreo, has dedicated his life studying, writing, and investigating natural and supernatural phenomena found in the world's atmosphere and geography. He was the first to establish a link between the rise of tetanus cases in Lindblum's military with the exposure of wounds sustained by soldiers who were in direct contact with the Mist.
In the years that followed Pliny's discovery, "mist poisoning" became the generic term used to describe various illnesses and infectious agents associated with different degrees of mist contamination, ranging from respiratory diseases to physical disabilities to mental disorders. Severe cases of mist poisoning occur with more frequency on risk groups, which includes children, the elderly and a set individuals know as mistwalkers, or mist dwellers, whom the writer Frankfurt once described as "inland pearl hunters, men and women who risk their lives in search of treasure lying within the old world's ruins". Most of the mistwalkers are autonomous workers who do not possess large amounts of wealth, although it's very common for nobles to hire them to look after valuable objects or to collect herbs with medicinal properties that are found within the Evil Forest and other inaccessible areas that lie in perpetual darkness.
The presence of mistwalkers in large urban centers led to a social stigma that, given their harsh working conditions, they were mainly responsible for widespread outbreaks of hydrophobia and other lethal diseases, which resulted in a sentiment of antipathy towards the different. "Not only mistwalkers", as Frankfurt noted, "but the immigrants, the poor, the disabled, the black, all of them were accused and seen as degenerate beings, inferior citizens, sick individuals, filthy rodents if they also happened to be Burmecians, who are, in a way or the other, naturally born as mistwalkers".