It has come to my attention that nowhere in my recent writings have I actually addressed the vanishing of Haraal. And while it is my first instinct to assume that any potential readers of these mad scrawlings would be intimately familiar with the major cultural myths of the known world, assuming is exactly what I should not do. Indeed, perhaps one of you right now lives far and away from knowledge or influence of Deneroth.¹ I would be remiss in omitting anything which could contribute to a more complete understanding of the world in which I write, and the context of powers that currently be.
Haraal, unifier of the Ersuunian tribes, emperor of a burgeoning empire, living culture-hero on the receiving end of cult-like levels of reverence even before his deification, removed his crown and abdicated from his throne one day after a strange visit, leaving without a word, never to be seen or heard from again.
Of course it isn't so simple as that, but those details are all that can be agreed upon between sometimes starkly contradictory sources.
First, we are unsure of exactly how long Haraal reigned as king-chieftain. Histories of All by Yashka the Sage reports a reign of 114 years and this number is often regarded as canon, particularly in Deneroth. But Yashka wrote his chronicle several centuries after the disappearance of Haraal. Mythinterpretations of History by the late Berschut Groz offers a more conservative estimate of 70-80 years. Both theories either explicitly or implicitly support the idea that Haraal was blessed with supernatural vitality and long life, but neither gives Haraal a definite point in the timeline of history which we so enjoy using. We can relatively safely say that he reigned no earlier than 800 years before the time of Yashka however, putting Haraal no more than 2,300 years in the past.
Second, we are unsure of where Haraal disappeared from. We do know that his imperial palace-camp was somewhere in the northwest region close to the sites of his last great battles, but its exact location has remained a mystery shrouded in myth, with more than a few frontier folktales and cunningfolk assertions clouding it up further. It is assumed that the camp was located on a relatively flat area of land where the royal herds could graze comfortably, but that still leaves a very wide possible range of area. Again, we can only judge by the broadest limits, and say that the palace must have been located somewhere south of modern settlements such as Bluehill, and that it would have given the Axebite a wide berth- even Haraal was cautious of some dangers, it seems.
One day, traditionally emphasized as being just like any other with no foreshadowing or warning, Haraal was adjudicating cases brought before him in his throne room. After the third or fourth defendant graciously accepted his imminent beheading after prolonged exposure to The Presence and The Gaze, a hush suddenly fell upon the court. There was a muffled sound in the distance, outside, and it was slowly growing in clarity and volume. Haraal took notice of this after he found his servants not immediately responding to his commands, and had the doors to his court opened wide in order to better hear what the disturbance was.
It was crying.
Deep, gut-wrenching weeping, growing in volume and in voice.
Haraal waved a hand to send two of his guards out to investigate, but in a matter of moments they filed back into his throne room with limp arms, stunned expressions, and thoroughly overactive tear ducts. Again, he sent guards out to confront the issue, sending four this time. Four sobbing messes returned to him. A third time, sending six guards, Haraal was once again confounded. This almost comical mix of repetition and escalation continued for some time until Haraal had dispatched his entire royal guard, to no avail.
The other members of his court were growing concerned by this point, so Haraal rose from his throne and cast his aura upon them. Calmed somewhat, they begged their lord to go and see what this dreadful thing was. He proclaimed that he was already on his way to doing so, and then strode out into the light of day. Huge, dark-bottomed clouds were already approaching on the horizon, but his eyes fixed on something far more immediate.
At the base of the hill which his palace crowned, his people had fallen into disarray in droves. Hundreds of men, women, and children had absconded from their duties and their leisures to add to the mournful cacophony. They did not heed their lord when he commanded them to rise, to rejoice in his presence. They only bowed their heads lower in grief toward a single point in the distance. Haraal's smoldering bronze gaze tried to fix it in place, but it only continued its approach.
A small, greyish hunchback of immeasurable age was hobbling his way up the slope, one withered, useless arm clutched tightly to his side. He was weather-worn and almost hairless, with one enormous shoulder and a clubbed foot which he dragged along the ground. His scabrous, diseased-looking skin was stretched tightly across his emaciated frame clad in nothing but rags soaked in morning dew. Despite his disabilities, he moved with surprising speed, and his voice, though labored, sounded not the least bit short of breath. For the hunchback was the loudest of the crying voices- only his weeping was song.
It was wordless, lacking in any real rhyme or meter. But what it lacked in composition, it made up for in dreadful emotion. They were the sounds of raw, ageless sorrow and loss. Of grief and regret for everything that has ever happened or never happened. Of a child yearning for a mother.
And that was exactly what he asked, when at last he climbed the hill and halted before Haraal, eyes only dimly registering the man towering over him as they rose up from their naturally downcast state.
"Have you seen my mother? I was lost by her. I have not found her. Have you seen her?"
These questions were all that he interrupted his quavering song with, and he repeated them again and again as he stood pitifully before the emperor. His words were strange and rustic to Haraal's ears, like the tongue of some of his most distant Ersuunian subjects, many centuries removed. Haraal, being uncharacteristically compassionate, was able to look beyond the breach of conduct in addressing a chieftain which would have ended in a greater man being beheaded on the spot. He made an exception for the strange creature, and asked him his name.
Depending on the age or dialect of the account, the hunchback's name varies in form. But each name is generally a recognizable cognate with the others others, for his name when taken literally was "Grief".
Haraal treated with Grief then, all the while becoming increasingly suspicious of the outsider and the effect he was having upon his subjects. It seemed that the influence of Haraal was mitigated in the hunchback's presence, for he could merely quell their weeping rather than elevate them to an exultant state more pleasing to his senses. But Grief would not bend to Haraal's will. Nor did he even seem to be conscious of the effect his presence seemed to be having on the palace, as if he had spent so long in his current state that this was his 'normal'. He asked over and over for news of his mother, whoever she was, and patently ignored any of the emperor's attempts to assuage his anguish and coax him into staying and reveling at his court.
Things might have gone very differently, had Haraal decided to quit his attempts at dominating the will of the hunchback.
But there was no challenge insurmountable to the son of the pine tree, scion of the sacred peak. No individual had ever resisted him, and a hunchback would not be the first. He butted heads with the cluelessly resilient Grief until his own followers were red eyed, vomiting, and bleeding from their noses with the force of that sympathetic misery. He promised rare silks, jewels, and iron to him if he ceased his weeping. He promised him a place in his court if he told him his story, and the root of his cursed power. He promised him a mended body and thousand purebred horses to draw an army of chariots across the land in search of his mother, if he would kneel before him. All of this and more was ignored by the hunchback, who continued to whimper the wordless lullaby of his missing parent.
At last, Grief announced that he needed to find her, and turned his back on Haraal to begin ambling back down the hillside.
This is said to be what sealed the fate of Haraal.
He went after the hunchback, quickly overtaking him with his long stride full of indignant purpose. The chieftain put himself in the way of Grief several times as he tried to shuffle away, each time demanding that he halt and show him the reverence which was due. Each time, Grief slunk around and sidestepped the tall, bronze man. Finally Haraal seized the hunchback in his hands and lifted him off of the ground, shaking him violently as he commanded him to come to heel.
Grief locked eyes with Haraal for the first time, then. His song and his mourning stopped, and a silence fell over the campgrounds so heavy that it could be cut with an obscure bladed weapon of Ersuunian origin, the identity of which is still fiercely debated in some highly semantic circles.² Then, slowly and deliberately, Grief began to move his arm. Not the "good" one with its swollen shoulder joint, but the shrunken and skeletal one which had been held to his chest for the whole time. Ruined joints popped and cracked loudly as he extended his limb toward Haraal, who regarded it strangely but did not pull away, even as the bony fingertips touched him upon the cheek, and then reached around to the nape of his neck.
There shouldn't have been any observers of the event capable of seeing through unclouded eyes by this point in time, but the narrative nonetheless states that Grief appeared to grow in size suddenly, while Haraal shrank. Perhaps he also shrank back in fear, despite the long-held belief that Haraal knew no fear. The hunchback met his stature and then exceeded him, somehow standing tall and straight despite his shape remaining the same. Then his other massive arm rose up to embrace the dwarfed form of the chieftain, almost like a parent would a child.
And then he whispered something into Haraal's ear.
What was whispered is unknown, but it is one of the most highly speculated-upon pieces of history and/or mythology to day.
Whatever the hunchback's words were, in a span of seconds they broke the spell. Grief was shrunken and warped again, Haraal as tall and statuesque as he'd ever been. Grief was singing anew, and ambling down into the wilderness beyond the reach of the Haraalian camp. The wracking sobs which had plagued the palace subjects subsided at long last, much to the relief of all. But when they looked up to their lord uninhibited, they saw him turning away.
Haraal had a haunted look about him. His burning eyes were darkened and glassy, and they looked around wildly as he staggered back from the spot where the hunchback had grabbed him.
Then he screamed.
He screamed, and clutched his ears as if it were ringing in his own ears, and then he fled in a frenzy across the palace grounds before leaping atop and unbroken horse and riding beyond the horizon. As he passed by the ever-growing tapestries which lined the thoroughfare leading to his court, it is said that their intricately woven programs twisted and morphed to depict not their history and grand achievements, but a bleak future of clouds and blood. Haraal fled into reaches unknown, forsaking crown, throne, and people as the failing of his powers and the ineffable words of the hunchback shook him to his core.
Sober-minded from the catharsis of the hunchback's influence, and free of Haraal's Presence and Gaze both, his subjects are said to have promptly burned the settlement to the ground and then dispersed, the site of that short-lived capital forever lost to history.
Traditions which venerate Haraal as a deific figure tend to describe his confrontation with the hunchback as a penultimate battle against good and evil, which ended in Grief being banished at great personal cost to Haraal, who vowed to return to his people one day once all pain and decay had been driven from the land. Belief in the imminent return of Haraal has waxed and waned with the centuries, growing particularly strong during times of hardship when many such millennialist movements are taking root, but dissipating soon after it becomes apparent that the end is not nigh.
Even among less dogmatic communities across the Ersuunian Basin, where birth defects and deformities often set an individual apart as special or touched by divinity, the possession of any aspects associated with Grief is a universally dire social stigma lacking in any duality or complexity of meaning.
The streets of Porylus seem to be free of such anxieties as we pass them by, but I have heard rumor that Haraalian movements are beginning to come back into fashion with the approach of the three-hundredth year After the Rupture.
¹ If so, please tell me about this distant place so that I might move there.
² The "skirpha" referenced originally by Yashka the Sage has been variously interpreted as a sword, long knife, grain-scythe, or horseman's axe, with concessions to the theory that it was a generic term for "blade" being few and far between. Our own Professor of Fencing & Swordsmanship Berchtold Vogt claims in a footnote in the Appendices of the recently released second edition of his Manual of Masterful Martial Maneuvers that the skirpha was actually a pole weapon having more in common with an earspoon spear with a weighted, metal-capped butt. As his theory goes, the weapon was not actually meant to slice the silence at all, and Yashka's description was actually a subtle infiltration of the old Nambarish tradition of metaphysical poetry, in which the fundamental properties of poetic subjects are altered dramatically for emphasis or coded layers of meaning. Though remarkably deep and compelling compared to his usual area of... expertise, Vogt's theory has only drummed up more conflict among etymologists.
Showing posts with label Ersuunians. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ersuunians. Show all posts
Sunday, May 19, 2019
Friday, October 26, 2018
Raft People of the River Khesh.
"You think you will move all of these baskets upstream faster by land? Sit down, and my rowers will show you the strength of Sayau!"
- Headsman Olu of Handas Islet, to several southern salt traders.
Identifiers are important in many aspects of our societies. Indicators of who we are, what we are, which group we belong to, and how we would like to be recognized. These identifiers can take many forms. The way we carry ourselves when we walk. The affectation we impart our speech with. I know that styles of dress and decoration are among the most highly visible, as someone who once had to (and on occasion still do) trot around in the beige and grey robes of the Ivory Tower University.
But they can be deeper than that. Skin-deep, in a literal sense. Tattoos, piercings, and other superficial modifications to the body can achieve much the same effect, sometimes in an even more impactful manner.
And then there are those which go deeper.
The results of those sometimes lengthy and involved processes can disturb some of us, or inspire a sort of patronizing fascination in others. I will attempt to avoid both while dealing with this group.
I write of the raft-people of the River Khesh, more appropriately known as the Sayaula or Sayauans, but more commonly known by the ethnic epithet "drop-heads". I will limit my use of the term to the statement of its existence here so that I do not sully the rest of this article with it.
The Sayauans hail from the mid-to-southern Khesh River, being the primary occupants of the river and its tributaries and offshoots in between Riven-Bridge and the Deltas. They have been present in the area since the beginning of recorded history in the late Ersuunian era, but it is not known if they are an aboriginal population. For much of their history, the Sayauans have earned their livelihood by fishing or sailing along the river upon long rafts or more rarely wide, flat-bottomed boats. They typically live one nuclear family to a raft, with the entire extended family cooperating as a loose sort of clan. Clan lineage is traced patrilineally, with most families claiming descent from the folk-hero Sayau, from whom the ethnic group takes its name.
Sayauans also practice artificial skull deformation of a type which is unique to this part of the world and time period.
Ersuunian head-binding was once a common practice among the noble lineages of the old herders, in which the skull was bound at a very young age so that it was very high and "steepled", with a flattened forehead. The practice sharply declined after the ascension of Haraal, and is believed to have ceased completely by the second or third generation of his sons. However, we are left with rich accounts of the practice today, as well as more than a few mausoleums or burial mounds filled with such skulls. Sayauan head-binding, meanwhile, still flourishes among the Sayaula, with upwards of nine out of every ten adults having received some degree of binding in their infancy.
What distinguishes the two styles visually is that where Ersuunian binding raises the top, Sayauan binding pulls the skull back. The top of the head as well as both sides are squeezed into a tapered point at the back of the skull by tightly coiling rope around a cone-shaped structure made of reeds or steamed wooden boards. The desired shape results in a low forehead and a side profile which resembles somewhat the shape of a teardrop. This visual similarity is what has contributed to the obnoxious term referenced above.
The logic behind this practice is informed by the mythology of the Sayaula, who believe that Sayau was born with a head shaped perfectly like such a water droplet. Its contours, alongside his supernatural strength and agility, allowed him to swim up and down the river with no water resistance to speak of. It is not obvious whether the practice has a measurable effect on one's ability to swim or not, but the tradition is a central element of their culture regardless.
This ethnic identifier has also made it very easy for outsiders to pick Sayauans out, however, and the unusual appearance of the practice has probably contributed to past persecution of them. More than once, the heirs of Haraal based in the city now known as Riven-Bridge attempted to subjugate the Sayauans in a bid to consolidate control of the River Khesh, but Sayauan knowledge of the waterways generally ensured that they could escape most of their would-be aggressors, and wage a guerrilla war against those who followed anyway. Material support plus the occasional offer of safe harbor from the northernmost Delta dwellers displeased with the idea of Haraalians coming down from the north was also an invaluable, if clandestine asset.
Today, the sporadic warfare of the past has given way to a tense, cooperative peace in which Sayauan barges and merchant groups have flourished, relatively speaking. They primarily deal in the north-south trade which is still supported by the Independent half of Riven-Bridge, while their relationship with the Loyalists is more tepid at best. Contact with the hill-folk further inland is only occasional, but generally peaceable. Interest in the Sayauans from the central cities has increased in recent decades for other reasons, however.
While they are distinct, the two traditions of skull-shaping referenced above, in addition to the extensive history of the Sayauala in the region, has led some researchers from Deneroth and elsewhere to speculate that there is a link between them and the ancient Ersuunians. One theory is that they were once a lower caste of an Ersuunian tribe, or perhaps an entire tribe of non-Ersuunian bond-servants brought with them on their westward migration. What began as a branding or indicator of subservient status then developed into an element of culture owned and used by the Sayaula themselves, after the events which led to their independence. These theories are of course still in their extreme infancy, and it is unlikely that they will see much development until such a time comes that the rare few researchers who do brave the long journey east manage to conduct their research in a more tactful manner.¹
¹ Somewhat understandably, Sayauans are reluctant to offer comment when overdressed foreigners inquire into whether or not their ancestors once owned them.
- Headsman Olu of Handas Islet, to several southern salt traders.
Identifiers are important in many aspects of our societies. Indicators of who we are, what we are, which group we belong to, and how we would like to be recognized. These identifiers can take many forms. The way we carry ourselves when we walk. The affectation we impart our speech with. I know that styles of dress and decoration are among the most highly visible, as someone who once had to (and on occasion still do) trot around in the beige and grey robes of the Ivory Tower University.
But they can be deeper than that. Skin-deep, in a literal sense. Tattoos, piercings, and other superficial modifications to the body can achieve much the same effect, sometimes in an even more impactful manner.
And then there are those which go deeper.
The results of those sometimes lengthy and involved processes can disturb some of us, or inspire a sort of patronizing fascination in others. I will attempt to avoid both while dealing with this group.
I write of the raft-people of the River Khesh, more appropriately known as the Sayaula or Sayauans, but more commonly known by the ethnic epithet "drop-heads". I will limit my use of the term to the statement of its existence here so that I do not sully the rest of this article with it.
The Sayauans hail from the mid-to-southern Khesh River, being the primary occupants of the river and its tributaries and offshoots in between Riven-Bridge and the Deltas. They have been present in the area since the beginning of recorded history in the late Ersuunian era, but it is not known if they are an aboriginal population. For much of their history, the Sayauans have earned their livelihood by fishing or sailing along the river upon long rafts or more rarely wide, flat-bottomed boats. They typically live one nuclear family to a raft, with the entire extended family cooperating as a loose sort of clan. Clan lineage is traced patrilineally, with most families claiming descent from the folk-hero Sayau, from whom the ethnic group takes its name.
Sayauans also practice artificial skull deformation of a type which is unique to this part of the world and time period.
Ersuunian head-binding was once a common practice among the noble lineages of the old herders, in which the skull was bound at a very young age so that it was very high and "steepled", with a flattened forehead. The practice sharply declined after the ascension of Haraal, and is believed to have ceased completely by the second or third generation of his sons. However, we are left with rich accounts of the practice today, as well as more than a few mausoleums or burial mounds filled with such skulls. Sayauan head-binding, meanwhile, still flourishes among the Sayaula, with upwards of nine out of every ten adults having received some degree of binding in their infancy.
What distinguishes the two styles visually is that where Ersuunian binding raises the top, Sayauan binding pulls the skull back. The top of the head as well as both sides are squeezed into a tapered point at the back of the skull by tightly coiling rope around a cone-shaped structure made of reeds or steamed wooden boards. The desired shape results in a low forehead and a side profile which resembles somewhat the shape of a teardrop. This visual similarity is what has contributed to the obnoxious term referenced above.
The logic behind this practice is informed by the mythology of the Sayaula, who believe that Sayau was born with a head shaped perfectly like such a water droplet. Its contours, alongside his supernatural strength and agility, allowed him to swim up and down the river with no water resistance to speak of. It is not obvious whether the practice has a measurable effect on one's ability to swim or not, but the tradition is a central element of their culture regardless.
This ethnic identifier has also made it very easy for outsiders to pick Sayauans out, however, and the unusual appearance of the practice has probably contributed to past persecution of them. More than once, the heirs of Haraal based in the city now known as Riven-Bridge attempted to subjugate the Sayauans in a bid to consolidate control of the River Khesh, but Sayauan knowledge of the waterways generally ensured that they could escape most of their would-be aggressors, and wage a guerrilla war against those who followed anyway. Material support plus the occasional offer of safe harbor from the northernmost Delta dwellers displeased with the idea of Haraalians coming down from the north was also an invaluable, if clandestine asset.
Today, the sporadic warfare of the past has given way to a tense, cooperative peace in which Sayauan barges and merchant groups have flourished, relatively speaking. They primarily deal in the north-south trade which is still supported by the Independent half of Riven-Bridge, while their relationship with the Loyalists is more tepid at best. Contact with the hill-folk further inland is only occasional, but generally peaceable. Interest in the Sayauans from the central cities has increased in recent decades for other reasons, however.
While they are distinct, the two traditions of skull-shaping referenced above, in addition to the extensive history of the Sayauala in the region, has led some researchers from Deneroth and elsewhere to speculate that there is a link between them and the ancient Ersuunians. One theory is that they were once a lower caste of an Ersuunian tribe, or perhaps an entire tribe of non-Ersuunian bond-servants brought with them on their westward migration. What began as a branding or indicator of subservient status then developed into an element of culture owned and used by the Sayaula themselves, after the events which led to their independence. These theories are of course still in their extreme infancy, and it is unlikely that they will see much development until such a time comes that the rare few researchers who do brave the long journey east manage to conduct their research in a more tactful manner.¹
¹ Somewhat understandably, Sayauans are reluctant to offer comment when overdressed foreigners inquire into whether or not their ancestors once owned them.
Thursday, June 28, 2018
Riverine Despotism in the Ersuunian & Early Haraalian Periods.
As we pass farther away from the cesspits downhill from the alehouse, my mind relaxes as chances of some strange tricks on the part of Elrusyo diminish down to the minimum level of risk one always runs when consorting with herb-hermits.
In place of that mental exertion, I'm able to appreciate the river, now broadening and clarifying steadily, for what it is. It, like so many other bodies of running water across the Basin, is a vein of life running through the heartland of so many former states.
And, like real arteries, one need only apply a little pressure to them in order to affect change in the body at large.
The Ersuunians, and the people of Haraal who would eventually subsume or supplant them, are famed in written history as well as modern popular culture for their vast forces of cavalry, able to wash over any opposition like crashing waves. They conquered their enemies and then held onto their winnings through the threat and force of that mounted elite, which would grow increasingly landed and powerful as time went on. They remained the focus of warfare and political might until the appropriation of dry-stone building from Esgodarran architecture eventually met with mortar and resulted in the first fortified and stone-walled cities, which complicated the art of the siege and seriously hampered a cavalry focus.
But an equally important component of control was water access. As mixed and settled Esgodarran-Ersuunian petty-kingdoms formed, pastoralists and montane herders alike became more and more discouraged from true nomadism, and the ability for them together with their entirely agricultural neighbors to move to a new area in the event of drought became practically nonexistent. Recognizing this, chieftain-kings along the Basin's periphery exercised control over the wealthier heartlands by building the most elaborate series of earth dams the world has ever known- excepting the irrigation systems of inland Nambar of course. By limiting or allowing the flow of water into a particular region, the rulers of the northeastern reaches (where the highest percentage of rivers have their source) were able to exert formal or de facto control over groups who were downstream of them and had no way to rectify the issue or displace some other tribe in a better position.
We know this because the descendants of Haraal utilized the exact same methods of control centuries later, as evidenced by one passage offered by our ever-present friend Yashka the Sage, in which "the sons of the conqueror restored to use the old choke points of the rivers."¹ Opposition to this view traditionally argues that the dams must have been an invention of Haraal himself, and the restoration was by many later generations of his descendants whose forebears had let them fall into disrepair. I would argue against that by pointing toward the trend in existing literature of painstakingly and in excruciating detail exulting all of the achievements and creations of Haraal or his known lieutenants. Nowhere within that swollen body of chronicles can be found mention of the river controls. I know- every sophomore-level student at the ITU is expected to have them memorized.²
Today, the majority of the dams and other earthworks are lost along with much of the rest of the architecture present during the height of the Haraalians. Those that remain have been converted from weapons of war to tools of commerce, being used to aid river navigation or at times irrigation. If we are fortunate enough to develop a funded archaeological community in the near future however, I do not doubt that many spectacular artifacts of that bygone age could be found.
It could even shine light on--or put to rest for good--the notion that once upon a time, up until the migrations of the Ersuunians through the eastern highlands, the River Khesh flowed not south into what would become the Deltas region, but east into what we now know to be foreboding wastelands.
What cataclysmic event could have caused that? Had there once been a green east?
¹ Verse 28,441, line 8 of the Histories of All, Yashka the Sage, 1284 BR.
² And while it is officially attributed to Haraal's spontaneous knowledge and intuitive battle-prowess, I would argue that a broad, inherited cultural knowledge of the Ersuunian Basin's waterways from preceding generations played a large role in his conquest of the western reaches. This was one of his last campaigns, which culminated in the battle at the Masib River, south of the Oron'er Mountains. The river's original name is unknown, but today it bears the name of the Masibi people, apparently a distant offshoot of one of the mountain tribes, who believed that the river was the gateway into the afterlife, and as such traditionally set their dead adrift on rafts down its current. Haraal demonstrated that he was no stranger to dramatic irony when he first ordered the flow of the river to be cut to a trickle, then released it in a flood that swept away the surviving Masibs who hadn't been pinned and cut down upon its banks by his army.
In place of that mental exertion, I'm able to appreciate the river, now broadening and clarifying steadily, for what it is. It, like so many other bodies of running water across the Basin, is a vein of life running through the heartland of so many former states.
And, like real arteries, one need only apply a little pressure to them in order to affect change in the body at large.
The Ersuunians, and the people of Haraal who would eventually subsume or supplant them, are famed in written history as well as modern popular culture for their vast forces of cavalry, able to wash over any opposition like crashing waves. They conquered their enemies and then held onto their winnings through the threat and force of that mounted elite, which would grow increasingly landed and powerful as time went on. They remained the focus of warfare and political might until the appropriation of dry-stone building from Esgodarran architecture eventually met with mortar and resulted in the first fortified and stone-walled cities, which complicated the art of the siege and seriously hampered a cavalry focus.
But an equally important component of control was water access. As mixed and settled Esgodarran-Ersuunian petty-kingdoms formed, pastoralists and montane herders alike became more and more discouraged from true nomadism, and the ability for them together with their entirely agricultural neighbors to move to a new area in the event of drought became practically nonexistent. Recognizing this, chieftain-kings along the Basin's periphery exercised control over the wealthier heartlands by building the most elaborate series of earth dams the world has ever known- excepting the irrigation systems of inland Nambar of course. By limiting or allowing the flow of water into a particular region, the rulers of the northeastern reaches (where the highest percentage of rivers have their source) were able to exert formal or de facto control over groups who were downstream of them and had no way to rectify the issue or displace some other tribe in a better position.
We know this because the descendants of Haraal utilized the exact same methods of control centuries later, as evidenced by one passage offered by our ever-present friend Yashka the Sage, in which "the sons of the conqueror restored to use the old choke points of the rivers."¹ Opposition to this view traditionally argues that the dams must have been an invention of Haraal himself, and the restoration was by many later generations of his descendants whose forebears had let them fall into disrepair. I would argue against that by pointing toward the trend in existing literature of painstakingly and in excruciating detail exulting all of the achievements and creations of Haraal or his known lieutenants. Nowhere within that swollen body of chronicles can be found mention of the river controls. I know- every sophomore-level student at the ITU is expected to have them memorized.²
Today, the majority of the dams and other earthworks are lost along with much of the rest of the architecture present during the height of the Haraalians. Those that remain have been converted from weapons of war to tools of commerce, being used to aid river navigation or at times irrigation. If we are fortunate enough to develop a funded archaeological community in the near future however, I do not doubt that many spectacular artifacts of that bygone age could be found.
It could even shine light on--or put to rest for good--the notion that once upon a time, up until the migrations of the Ersuunians through the eastern highlands, the River Khesh flowed not south into what would become the Deltas region, but east into what we now know to be foreboding wastelands.
What cataclysmic event could have caused that? Had there once been a green east?
¹ Verse 28,441, line 8 of the Histories of All, Yashka the Sage, 1284 BR.
² And while it is officially attributed to Haraal's spontaneous knowledge and intuitive battle-prowess, I would argue that a broad, inherited cultural knowledge of the Ersuunian Basin's waterways from preceding generations played a large role in his conquest of the western reaches. This was one of his last campaigns, which culminated in the battle at the Masib River, south of the Oron'er Mountains. The river's original name is unknown, but today it bears the name of the Masibi people, apparently a distant offshoot of one of the mountain tribes, who believed that the river was the gateway into the afterlife, and as such traditionally set their dead adrift on rafts down its current. Haraal demonstrated that he was no stranger to dramatic irony when he first ordered the flow of the river to be cut to a trickle, then released it in a flood that swept away the surviving Masibs who hadn't been pinned and cut down upon its banks by his army.
Saturday, June 9, 2018
Looking Southward and Backward, Part 15.
According to the Histories of All written by the chronicler and part-time eschatologist Yashka the Sage, the last of the pre-Haraalian chieftain-kings did not die well.
He had been a man by the name of Sperhel. By all accounts he was an entirely unremarkable king compared to his predecessors and fellows, never even earning a clingy, obnoxious title in life. He'd never displayed the hot-blooded valor or the particularly corpulent brand of tyranny which the old Ersuunian nobility had become famous and infamous for. But he had been possessed of a somewhat rare knack for self-preservation. More than once, he'd evaded a feast or diplomatic function which, in good Ersuunian fashion, ended in mass-poisonings or deaths by bludgeoning behind locked doors. He'd come out of it being regarded as somewhat of a coward, but he'd come out of it.
When at last the inevitable happened and his small patch of territory was well and properly conquered, Haraal was delighted to finally meet the enigmatic man. After his court was dissolved and his children carted off as royal hostages, Sperhel was paraded before the imperial camp, where he became privy to the creativity of the god-emperor firsthand.
Haraal took up one of the wide iron bands which was fastened to the heads of princelings during infancy, used to shape and manipulate the skull into an (apparently) attractive "crowned" shape over the first few years of life. Of course the band was very tight on Sperhel, being a fully grown adult. But that did not stop Haraal from tightening the band, bit by bit, one minor adjustment every day. The metal bit into Sperhel's skin, then his flesh, and then ground against his skull by the end of the second week. It was a month before the fragments of his ruined skull finally pierced the correct part of his brain deeply enough to trigger a fatal seizure.
I cannot help but empathize with Sperhel in his final hours, as I sit here nurturing my own splitting headache.
Apparently Elrusyo succeeded in getting me to drink heavily last night. For the first time in my temporarily damaged memory, I am hungover. My mouth is dry and my tongue feels like a wad of wool. My eyes are like poached eggs, moving any of my extremities any faster than a snail's crawl results in severe tremors, and moving the rest of my body upsets my stomach to the point that I fear I will vomit up an entire cask of Wocgtheo's Darkest. But I still have my wits about me, somewhere deep in this fevered head of mine.
Enough to recognize that something is wrong.
Everything seemed ordinary enough within our hall of caravansary rooms- I assumed the workers were being brusque because they'd already been up for several hours dealing with other drunken fools. But when I was able to leave and enter the courtyard, I found that there was a palpable aura of quiet and disquiet. Centered on me.
The bartering and arguing merchants and gamblers seated at their tables or standing in their temporary stalls all seem to pause a moment to glare my way, and I swear that one of those explorers from the Khesh river region was sharpening his knife very deliberately while staring at me. I have tried asking my associates if they know what happened, but they're noncommittal in their responses, and are skittish around me- possibly just because I have a higher chance of having something thrown at me than they do, but something about the whole scenario makes me feel like I insulted the wrong person's mother, or spoke a boogeyman's name into a mirror a few too many times. Hraela seems especially distant.
Not even Elrusyo can answer this, despite his assuredly having been next to my dumb, drunken self last night. He says that while he doesn't personally know, he's very confident that I will piece things together for myself before too long. He also says that we should prepare to leave quickly this morning, before more of our handlers decide to abandon us or the locals are struck by the sudden fancy to string a rope up over the front gate.
I won't mind a change of scenery, of course. Even if it means several nights without the comforts of civilization, every mile of progress puts us one step closer to the miniaturized splendors of Porylus.
He had been a man by the name of Sperhel. By all accounts he was an entirely unremarkable king compared to his predecessors and fellows, never even earning a clingy, obnoxious title in life. He'd never displayed the hot-blooded valor or the particularly corpulent brand of tyranny which the old Ersuunian nobility had become famous and infamous for. But he had been possessed of a somewhat rare knack for self-preservation. More than once, he'd evaded a feast or diplomatic function which, in good Ersuunian fashion, ended in mass-poisonings or deaths by bludgeoning behind locked doors. He'd come out of it being regarded as somewhat of a coward, but he'd come out of it.
When at last the inevitable happened and his small patch of territory was well and properly conquered, Haraal was delighted to finally meet the enigmatic man. After his court was dissolved and his children carted off as royal hostages, Sperhel was paraded before the imperial camp, where he became privy to the creativity of the god-emperor firsthand.
Haraal took up one of the wide iron bands which was fastened to the heads of princelings during infancy, used to shape and manipulate the skull into an (apparently) attractive "crowned" shape over the first few years of life. Of course the band was very tight on Sperhel, being a fully grown adult. But that did not stop Haraal from tightening the band, bit by bit, one minor adjustment every day. The metal bit into Sperhel's skin, then his flesh, and then ground against his skull by the end of the second week. It was a month before the fragments of his ruined skull finally pierced the correct part of his brain deeply enough to trigger a fatal seizure.
I cannot help but empathize with Sperhel in his final hours, as I sit here nurturing my own splitting headache.
Apparently Elrusyo succeeded in getting me to drink heavily last night. For the first time in my temporarily damaged memory, I am hungover. My mouth is dry and my tongue feels like a wad of wool. My eyes are like poached eggs, moving any of my extremities any faster than a snail's crawl results in severe tremors, and moving the rest of my body upsets my stomach to the point that I fear I will vomit up an entire cask of Wocgtheo's Darkest. But I still have my wits about me, somewhere deep in this fevered head of mine.
Enough to recognize that something is wrong.
Everything seemed ordinary enough within our hall of caravansary rooms- I assumed the workers were being brusque because they'd already been up for several hours dealing with other drunken fools. But when I was able to leave and enter the courtyard, I found that there was a palpable aura of quiet and disquiet. Centered on me.
The bartering and arguing merchants and gamblers seated at their tables or standing in their temporary stalls all seem to pause a moment to glare my way, and I swear that one of those explorers from the Khesh river region was sharpening his knife very deliberately while staring at me. I have tried asking my associates if they know what happened, but they're noncommittal in their responses, and are skittish around me- possibly just because I have a higher chance of having something thrown at me than they do, but something about the whole scenario makes me feel like I insulted the wrong person's mother, or spoke a boogeyman's name into a mirror a few too many times. Hraela seems especially distant.
Not even Elrusyo can answer this, despite his assuredly having been next to my dumb, drunken self last night. He says that while he doesn't personally know, he's very confident that I will piece things together for myself before too long. He also says that we should prepare to leave quickly this morning, before more of our handlers decide to abandon us or the locals are struck by the sudden fancy to string a rope up over the front gate.
I won't mind a change of scenery, of course. Even if it means several nights without the comforts of civilization, every mile of progress puts us one step closer to the miniaturized splendors of Porylus.
Sunday, April 8, 2018
On the Consolidation of the Ancient Ersuunians.
History seems to enjoy starting cycles just as much as it likes seeing those cycles broken.
It began a new cycle with the settling-down of the Ersuunian tribes into semi-sedentary or even fully agrarian communities within a few generations of mastering the Basin for themselves. They still maintained animal herding as their chief industry, but their vast pasture lands became more rigidly delineated from one another's over time, even to the point that they were individually owned by a chieftain and/or his people. Other land was tilled and farmed, not so that the people could live off of the fruits of those lands themselves, but so that the vast herds would have stored grains to subsist off of every winter.
It isn't explicit where this large number of agricultural workers came from all of a sudden, but I am open to the speculation that they were the first Esgodarrans and lower-caste Ersuunians living together in any sort of cooperation, with firsthand experience and knowledge of the land coming from the hill-people of the periphery. That extensive harvesting of tree products never caught on among the ancient Ersuunians at this time also indicates to me that it was a specialization developed by the Esgodarrans who were pushed farthest into the hilly forests from their original, more pastoral homelands.
Small-scale raiding and regional disputes kept the tribes mostly separate until a warrior named Gohr united them. He did this by launching an aggressive campaign across the basin, incorporating defeated groups into his army and continually pushing forward from south to north, until he was able to force the coalition of tribes battling against him into a stalemate. He then extended an offer for peace and the other chieftains, expecting him to demand of them a treaty which would heavily favor him and ensure him the customary decades of tribute plus bonuses, reluctantly agreed.
Gohr had different ideas in mind however, and at the banquet where they had all gathered together, his political rivals were all poisoned. This included the heads of allied families, and many members of each noble family as well, leaving the entire basin in a state of political instability which Gohr was able to mold to his liking. Out of this vomit-slicked usurpation, he became a proper king. To this day, even in Deneroth's heavily influenced as well as reformed dialectical Ersuut, the phrase "invited to a warlord's dinner" survives to describe an experience expected to be bad, but turning out to be even worse.
This king consolidated his power and pioneered the greater use of agriculture by his people, though the cavalry elite which had won him his battles was exempted from this, as well as the eventual land-tax system which was put in place. It is said that while his riders expanded his domain even farther beyond the heartland of the basin, Gohr's subjects grew skinny and complaisant while Gohr himself grew fat and complacent. A little more than twenty years after taking power, before an heir had been decided upon, one among his corps of nomad-cavalry organized a coup which saw him overthrown, and a new dynasty put in place. Though Gohr did not die from it personally, mass poisoning was used once more as a political tactic.
This set the trend for the next several centuries, as hot-blooded young heroes from the marginal lands of the basin won the allegiance of the riders, overthrew the acculturated and corrupt dynasty, became acculturated and corrupt in turn, and was then overthrown by the next young hero from the periphery.
Successive generations of rulers in their palisade-towns and nascent stone-foundation cities were keenly aware of this cycle, and attempted to break it. Naturally, the remaining dedicated equestrians were opposed to all measures taken. But over the grinding years of centuries, the mobility and independence of those pastoralists was diminished until they could pose no credible threat to their lords, and the ways of war among the Ersuunians transitioned from being focused on an almost mercenary mounted elite to including far more mixed varieties of specialized and in some cases even career soldiers. It took generations of bloodshed and repeatedly denied justice by a hundred different parties, but finally an uneasy peace settled over the basin, where political strife more and more took the form of courtly intrigue over open warfare.
And then Haraal showed up.
It began a new cycle with the settling-down of the Ersuunian tribes into semi-sedentary or even fully agrarian communities within a few generations of mastering the Basin for themselves. They still maintained animal herding as their chief industry, but their vast pasture lands became more rigidly delineated from one another's over time, even to the point that they were individually owned by a chieftain and/or his people. Other land was tilled and farmed, not so that the people could live off of the fruits of those lands themselves, but so that the vast herds would have stored grains to subsist off of every winter.
It isn't explicit where this large number of agricultural workers came from all of a sudden, but I am open to the speculation that they were the first Esgodarrans and lower-caste Ersuunians living together in any sort of cooperation, with firsthand experience and knowledge of the land coming from the hill-people of the periphery. That extensive harvesting of tree products never caught on among the ancient Ersuunians at this time also indicates to me that it was a specialization developed by the Esgodarrans who were pushed farthest into the hilly forests from their original, more pastoral homelands.
Small-scale raiding and regional disputes kept the tribes mostly separate until a warrior named Gohr united them. He did this by launching an aggressive campaign across the basin, incorporating defeated groups into his army and continually pushing forward from south to north, until he was able to force the coalition of tribes battling against him into a stalemate. He then extended an offer for peace and the other chieftains, expecting him to demand of them a treaty which would heavily favor him and ensure him the customary decades of tribute plus bonuses, reluctantly agreed.
Gohr had different ideas in mind however, and at the banquet where they had all gathered together, his political rivals were all poisoned. This included the heads of allied families, and many members of each noble family as well, leaving the entire basin in a state of political instability which Gohr was able to mold to his liking. Out of this vomit-slicked usurpation, he became a proper king. To this day, even in Deneroth's heavily influenced as well as reformed dialectical Ersuut, the phrase "invited to a warlord's dinner" survives to describe an experience expected to be bad, but turning out to be even worse.
This king consolidated his power and pioneered the greater use of agriculture by his people, though the cavalry elite which had won him his battles was exempted from this, as well as the eventual land-tax system which was put in place. It is said that while his riders expanded his domain even farther beyond the heartland of the basin, Gohr's subjects grew skinny and complaisant while Gohr himself grew fat and complacent. A little more than twenty years after taking power, before an heir had been decided upon, one among his corps of nomad-cavalry organized a coup which saw him overthrown, and a new dynasty put in place. Though Gohr did not die from it personally, mass poisoning was used once more as a political tactic.
This set the trend for the next several centuries, as hot-blooded young heroes from the marginal lands of the basin won the allegiance of the riders, overthrew the acculturated and corrupt dynasty, became acculturated and corrupt in turn, and was then overthrown by the next young hero from the periphery.
Successive generations of rulers in their palisade-towns and nascent stone-foundation cities were keenly aware of this cycle, and attempted to break it. Naturally, the remaining dedicated equestrians were opposed to all measures taken. But over the grinding years of centuries, the mobility and independence of those pastoralists was diminished until they could pose no credible threat to their lords, and the ways of war among the Ersuunians transitioned from being focused on an almost mercenary mounted elite to including far more mixed varieties of specialized and in some cases even career soldiers. It took generations of bloodshed and repeatedly denied justice by a hundred different parties, but finally an uneasy peace settled over the basin, where political strife more and more took the form of courtly intrigue over open warfare.
And then Haraal showed up.
Sunday, March 25, 2018
On the Arrival of the Ancient Ersuunians.
It occurred to me as I wrote the last complete parchment of my current travelogue that I have never given a great deal of attention to those commonly alluded-to progenitors of ours, the Ersuunians. I often write as if my audience has received the same general schooling in history as I have, or at least a fraction of it, but as I try to write for a readership not confined to the upper levels of Deneroth, I realize now that I leave far too many gaps and vistas of untouched possibility in my works. This will never be completely remedied, but I will attempt to remain conscious of the issue while moving forward.
Or in this case, even farther backward.
Disregarding for a moment the Esgodarrans, the Pach-Pah lineages, the tribes of the Oron'er Mountains, half of the ethnic admixture of the Nambarish, the Gertish, the aboriginals of the Khokhantipa Mudflats, and the Delta-dwellers¹, the Ersuunians were the catalyst for the development of complex and wide-reaching civilizations in all of the known world.
According to classical depictions, they were a tall and broad-shouldered folk with dark hair and dark or sometimes blue eyes, possessed of a bronze complexion and, in the case of the men, truly impressive mustaches. With that said, I point to the much wider diversity exhibited by the groups descended from them as an indicator that this was simply one of many phenotypes found among them and their constituent peoples at the time of their arrival on the landmass.
More verifiably, the Ersuunians were well-established pastoralists who carried or carted what little material wealth of theirs which couldn't be herded. According to tradition these other articles of wealth included finely crafted iron tools and weaponry, and the materials used to create them, but it is unclear how they managed to maintain both a pioneering lifestyle and a long tradition of blacksmithing. Perhaps their carts were larger and more numerous than commonly reported, or perhaps the speed of their expansion across the continent should be measured more in centuries than in decades.
The Ersuunians were accomplished riders, and the horse is strongly associated with their culture to this day, though it is unclear whether they had such a surplus of horses that all had a mount, or only the nobility and warriors--those most likely groups to have records or accounts about them extant--had access to such resources. By "nobles", I mean the tribal chieftains who led a group in practical as well as ritual affairs, and who commonly passed their title down through a patrilineal like of succession. These chieftains would host a court and establish fortified camps for at least as long as winter lasted, often building them so that they resembled an ovoid or more rarely crescent (perhaps even horseshoe?) shape.
They originated from somewhere far to the east, beyond the lands which have since become dried and parched. Either they dwelt in those regions soon to become desert until they became less favorable, or they passed them up directly in their efforts to find or claim a new homeland for themselves. Wherever they or their own ancestors originated from beyond what is now wasteland is lost to unwritten history, for the extent of those trackless and dangerous lands is unknown either by land route or sea. Whether the Fokari lived in the area at that time is also unclear, but I speculate that if they did, the Ersuunians had one more reason to push further west, rather than contend with established tribes and their herds.
Settling first in the highlands to the east of the rivers and the corridors of steppe country north of there, the Ersuunians spread out over the region over a period of time which might be better guessed at if the University begins to develop an archaeological studies group in the next few years. I imagine that they moved with less than burning purpose, with those who arrived first establishing themselves and their families in decent grazing lands while those behind either passed beyond into the newest frontiers, or forced their erstwhile neighbors ahead of them in return.
Eventually, or "forty-by-forty generations before the cracking of the alabaster bristlecone pine's trunk and the birthing of Haraal" to be exact ³, the Ersuunians would come to the basin which now bears their name.
When they did happen upon this vast and comparatively quite verdant depression, they also encountered the Esgodarrans living there. Exactly how these two peoples related to one another at first is unclear, but at some point their relations turned hostile. It may have been a matter of land dispute, because the mounted Ersuunians were victorious over the Esgodarrans and "drove them into the hills" of the basin according to the Histories of All written by the sage Yashka, circa 1284 BR.⁴ The implication is that the Esgodarrans were present outside of the hills prior to that conflict, and the resulting clashes allowed the Ersuunians to move in and occupy the territory by themselves. This too needs better research than I am able to attempt at the time being, but were I to make the attempt, I would seek to cross-reference these histories with those surviving in Esgodarran accounts, oral or otherwise.
Whatever the catalyst or the series of events, the result was that the Ersuunian tribes now controlled vast swathes of rich new territory, which they quickly adapted to their lifestyle. It was only so long until exploration into the agriculture practiced by several of their new neighbors began, and after that it was a sad inevitability that the first chieftain arose up among them who got the wild horsehair up his backside and decided that he wanted all to refer to him as "king".
Fans of my short piece on the Pach-Pah Empire might be able to spot history repeating itself here.
¹ Why yes, that is quite a substantial list of peoples to ignore when discussing the qualifications for "original" civilizations.² Almost seems like our definition of the term is worth revisiting, doesn't it?
² Let me also preemptively admit to my bold-faced hypocrisy in not including the Longfolk of the Reossos or the Fokari of the eastern wastelands in this list. Much to my chagrin, I cannot treat all of my sources on those peoples as accurate after two to four hundred years have passed since their (arguably) shaky formation. In the latter case, sheer distance has prevented recent exploration by any daring adventurers, and in the case of the former, our modern brand of daring adventurer tends not to be very arrow-proof. Let me also acknowledge the unwritten word which must remain so even now, lest I return home to find my accommodations back at the ITU completely and wholly dismantled despite what any technicalities in the University's code of law and conduct might say otherwise about the matter. Even so far south, I can still feel the shadow of Adelbramp's black marker looming close.
³ Verse eight, line eleven of the Histories of All, Yashka the Sage, 1284 BR.
⁴ Because the passage in question is not drilled into each and every freshman's brain by orientation courses for three semesters straight like the citation just above, and because I am far away from the text at this moment, I cannot state with a great degree of accuracy where in the Histories this information may be found. However, I am reasonably confident that it is located somewhere within the first 48,000 verses of the narrative, narrowing one's search down considerably.
Or in this case, even farther backward.
Disregarding for a moment the Esgodarrans, the Pach-Pah lineages, the tribes of the Oron'er Mountains, half of the ethnic admixture of the Nambarish, the Gertish, the aboriginals of the Khokhantipa Mudflats, and the Delta-dwellers¹, the Ersuunians were the catalyst for the development of complex and wide-reaching civilizations in all of the known world.
According to classical depictions, they were a tall and broad-shouldered folk with dark hair and dark or sometimes blue eyes, possessed of a bronze complexion and, in the case of the men, truly impressive mustaches. With that said, I point to the much wider diversity exhibited by the groups descended from them as an indicator that this was simply one of many phenotypes found among them and their constituent peoples at the time of their arrival on the landmass.
More verifiably, the Ersuunians were well-established pastoralists who carried or carted what little material wealth of theirs which couldn't be herded. According to tradition these other articles of wealth included finely crafted iron tools and weaponry, and the materials used to create them, but it is unclear how they managed to maintain both a pioneering lifestyle and a long tradition of blacksmithing. Perhaps their carts were larger and more numerous than commonly reported, or perhaps the speed of their expansion across the continent should be measured more in centuries than in decades.
The Ersuunians were accomplished riders, and the horse is strongly associated with their culture to this day, though it is unclear whether they had such a surplus of horses that all had a mount, or only the nobility and warriors--those most likely groups to have records or accounts about them extant--had access to such resources. By "nobles", I mean the tribal chieftains who led a group in practical as well as ritual affairs, and who commonly passed their title down through a patrilineal like of succession. These chieftains would host a court and establish fortified camps for at least as long as winter lasted, often building them so that they resembled an ovoid or more rarely crescent (perhaps even horseshoe?) shape.
They originated from somewhere far to the east, beyond the lands which have since become dried and parched. Either they dwelt in those regions soon to become desert until they became less favorable, or they passed them up directly in their efforts to find or claim a new homeland for themselves. Wherever they or their own ancestors originated from beyond what is now wasteland is lost to unwritten history, for the extent of those trackless and dangerous lands is unknown either by land route or sea. Whether the Fokari lived in the area at that time is also unclear, but I speculate that if they did, the Ersuunians had one more reason to push further west, rather than contend with established tribes and their herds.
Settling first in the highlands to the east of the rivers and the corridors of steppe country north of there, the Ersuunians spread out over the region over a period of time which might be better guessed at if the University begins to develop an archaeological studies group in the next few years. I imagine that they moved with less than burning purpose, with those who arrived first establishing themselves and their families in decent grazing lands while those behind either passed beyond into the newest frontiers, or forced their erstwhile neighbors ahead of them in return.
Eventually, or "forty-by-forty generations before the cracking of the alabaster bristlecone pine's trunk and the birthing of Haraal" to be exact ³, the Ersuunians would come to the basin which now bears their name.
When they did happen upon this vast and comparatively quite verdant depression, they also encountered the Esgodarrans living there. Exactly how these two peoples related to one another at first is unclear, but at some point their relations turned hostile. It may have been a matter of land dispute, because the mounted Ersuunians were victorious over the Esgodarrans and "drove them into the hills" of the basin according to the Histories of All written by the sage Yashka, circa 1284 BR.⁴ The implication is that the Esgodarrans were present outside of the hills prior to that conflict, and the resulting clashes allowed the Ersuunians to move in and occupy the territory by themselves. This too needs better research than I am able to attempt at the time being, but were I to make the attempt, I would seek to cross-reference these histories with those surviving in Esgodarran accounts, oral or otherwise.
Whatever the catalyst or the series of events, the result was that the Ersuunian tribes now controlled vast swathes of rich new territory, which they quickly adapted to their lifestyle. It was only so long until exploration into the agriculture practiced by several of their new neighbors began, and after that it was a sad inevitability that the first chieftain arose up among them who got the wild horsehair up his backside and decided that he wanted all to refer to him as "king".
Fans of my short piece on the Pach-Pah Empire might be able to spot history repeating itself here.
¹ Why yes, that is quite a substantial list of peoples to ignore when discussing the qualifications for "original" civilizations.² Almost seems like our definition of the term is worth revisiting, doesn't it?
² Let me also preemptively admit to my bold-faced hypocrisy in not including the Longfolk of the Reossos or the Fokari of the eastern wastelands in this list. Much to my chagrin, I cannot treat all of my sources on those peoples as accurate after two to four hundred years have passed since their (arguably) shaky formation. In the latter case, sheer distance has prevented recent exploration by any daring adventurers, and in the case of the former, our modern brand of daring adventurer tends not to be very arrow-proof. Let me also acknowledge the unwritten word which must remain so even now, lest I return home to find my accommodations back at the ITU completely and wholly dismantled despite what any technicalities in the University's code of law and conduct might say otherwise about the matter. Even so far south, I can still feel the shadow of Adelbramp's black marker looming close.
³ Verse eight, line eleven of the Histories of All, Yashka the Sage, 1284 BR.
⁴ Because the passage in question is not drilled into each and every freshman's brain by orientation courses for three semesters straight like the citation just above, and because I am far away from the text at this moment, I cannot state with a great degree of accuracy where in the Histories this information may be found. However, I am reasonably confident that it is located somewhere within the first 48,000 verses of the narrative, narrowing one's search down considerably.
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