@dudesrock makes the good observation that, in contrast to the healthy pond around Jade’s temple, Kanaya’s desertified locale provides another pretty good reason why she might have had a hard time locating a frog anywhere near where she lived. as @mmmmalo rightly points out, the surrounding “HEINOUS BROODS OF THE UNDEAD” also suggest a post-apocalyptic setting; i’ve discussed Alternia as an apocalyptic planet before, but it certainly warrants re-analysis as more than just prepping the trolls for an apocalyptic game.

Scratch is an obvious culprit, which makes me think back on an interesting Scratch tidbit I’ve never really taken anywhere until now; despite our obvious view of Scratch as a doctor of precise, surgical manipulations, the first chronological appearance of his cue ball is as a bomb. Scratch is, in essence, built from a bomb Caliborn found: and despite his image, he continues to influence the narrative in this way.

so if Scratch’s seeds are also bombs, it stands to reason that his manner of laying claim to a world involves bombing it? making the land uninhabitable to all but the hardiest warriors in the process…

(though we learn in this exchange that Scratch has been watching over Kanaya since her youth, we’re never explicitly told what that actually meant. Scratch’s enigmatic comment that “a dutiful girl raised in the daylight was protected by a bulb-headed guardian, and learned to glow in the dark after death” seems to imply he had a hand in her transformation, just as he had a hand in Rose’s, but again, there’s little indication as to how these two things are related.

Kanaya’s Land of Rays, though, seems to draw a connection between rays of light and the radiation prevalent on Jade’s planet. so is Kanaya’s undead glow, then, supposed to tell us that she, too, is irradiated? a product of nuclear zombification?)