Lacs: The unpalatable legends that swirled around the Selk'nam and their dreaded homelands had kept them safe for centuries, but ultimately they weren't enough to put off fellow South Americans the Nazca and fellow Pacific wayfarers New Zealand from sailing through the mists to claim the rocky tundras for themselves. That said, neither of them were going to put the final blow in. I mean... that's a curse just waiting to happen, isn't it? No one wants to get eaten by Cthulhu on the way home. Unfortunately for Xo'on Uhan-Té and the survivors of the Newzca invasions, such mythologies had not made it as far north as the Nestorian Moors, whose own religion was perfectly terrifying on its own merits. I imagine it was as much a surprise to them when the token force they sent down met with very little resistance, netting Abd ar-Rahman an unlikely colony.

The truth is, outside the enduring mysteries that surrounded this elusive people, there was never anything very scary about Selk'nam. Their last shot at relevance was all the way back in the Medieval Era, when they passed up a perfect opportunity to rob Uruguay of Paysandú. Since then, most serious discussion about the civ centred on the viability of their ultimately disappointing Jesus-walking melee units, or their early wars with the Nazca, which only ever netted them the one city of Ocongalla. Of all the perennial runts, though, it's not difficult to conjure fond memories of Selk'nam. They were a civ that many viewers, myself included, knew nothing about prior to CBRX, and a civ that quickly became one of the game's most iconicBeta Israel was a civ that could have done so much more than it did. They didn't start out with particularly towering expectations, and their mountainous starting location suggested they might do little more than turtle until the late game. (Which, sadly, is what they did.) But there was a brief period, after the discovery of their extreme production boost caused by the synergy between their UA, their religion, and their UB, when we thought they might just defy expectations. That productive capacity was enormous; at one point, it propelled them to number two in production cylinder-wide, an event which corresponded with their all-time high power ranking of 18th. But the burst of production quickly faded, and Beta Israel remained a second or third tier civ for the rest of the game before being bodied by Zimbabwe, battered by Nubia and Palmyra, and then finally eliminated (by Zimbabwe again). As the last civ to die before Endgame, I can only assume that Gudit the warrior queen is a little bit disappointed. and beloved players. One last cheer for Selk'nam! Hip hip........ h̷͆̔ö̸́͛o̷̿̄r̷̛̀ā̷͘ÿ̵́͊!̵̒̿