Sharrukin's Palace

Over several human generations, the Elder Folk pursued their long-term plan for the salvation of the Great Lands.

In the east, the three Elder-folk enclaves remained small and compact, independent cities that were within but not of the local Common-folk realms. They built alliances with the Kavrian matriarchs, the Nesali petty kings, and the Dahari city-states. They helped extend the local technological base, teaching improvements to agriculture, metal-working, and social organization. Over time, they fostered the growth of armies that would one day be set against the Renounced Ones in the north.

In the west, the enclaves had less to work with. The Zari peoples were well-meaning, but technologically backward, poorly organized, and not very militant. There, the Elder Folk extended direct control outward from their central enclaves, establishing three lordships. The Zari peoples were not subjugated by force, but over time they came to accept Elder guidance. They received bronze-working technology for the first time, and as in the east they improved their manner of life in ways that made sense to them.

This map drops the limit of bronze-working technology, since the efforts of the Elder Folk had spread it throughout the known world. Only the Muri peoples, most of them isolated beyond the southern deserts, remained at a Neolithic level of development until the arrival of iron-working centuries later.

By about 1,900 years before Krava’s era, the Elder Folk and their human allies were ready. Over the course of eight years, the forces of the Renounced Gods were suddenly met with fiercely armed resistance. Four great battles were fought: the Battles of the High Pass and the Silver Lake in Zari territory, and the Battles of the Black Hills and Karatahlma along the northern margins of Mahra lands.

The Mahra had suffered greatly during the last few generations. The eastern Mahra, despite many stubborn hit-and-run campaigns, had been forced almost entirely off the central grasslands. The western Mahra had retained more of their territory, but even they had been forced to retreat southward. A significant branch of the western Mahra – the Athani tribal coalition – pressed southward into the mountain highlands, absorbing or pushing aside the Zari herdsmen of the region. From this desperate migration would come all the glories of the Pallaseni civilization of later centuries.

Now the Mahra, supported by the Elder Folk and the civilizations around the Sailor’s Sea, met the armies of the Renounced Ones in pitched battle. The Battle of Karatahlma was the greatest military engagement the world had ever seen, fought over three full days and involving over ten thousand warriors. In later eras, the battle would loom even larger in the mythology of the Chariot People, framed as a glorious victory over the gods and demons of primordial chaos.

In sober fact, Karatahlma was no more than a strategic stalemate. The Renounced Ones were halted in their advance for a few years, but no force the allies could muster could possibly defeat them. Simply reaching the core of their power, the sanctuary on Mount Akyat, was flatly impossible.

Fortunately, the Elder Folk had something more subtle in mind.

In each of the great battles, allied forces had captured warriors of the Renounced Ones. Now they persuaded their captives, appealing to their fierce pride, pointing out the manner in which the Renounced Gods were exploiting them. Then, after receiving generous gifts, the captives were released.

In the Great Lands, how does one slay a god? Gods are simply spirits, members of a common form of life in that world, grown fat and powerful upon human attention and love. Deprive a god of that attention and love, and its power declines until it returns to its existence as a petty spirit.

The Renounced Gods had used fear (“obey us or die”) and flattery (“you are superior to all other peoples of the world”) to bend the humans of the far north to their will. Now the “fierce men” of their armies awakened to how they had been used . . . and they could reach Mount Akyat.

Thousands of years later, the skatoi encountered by Krava in her journeys would still remember the great revolt of their ancestors, in which they tore down the Renounced Ones and drove them into exile once more. Never again would they pay heed to spirits, or revere any gods. “We slew our gods,” they would say, “and we will slay yours, if they come within reach of our blades.”

As with many myths, that one was not entirely accurate. Twenty years after the Battle of Karatahlma, the last of the Renounced Ones fled into exile, carrying what power they had left back into the southern lands where they had first arisen. There, at the ancient ritual site of Tar-Kuran, they tried once more to depose their fellow gods and reign supreme. The Elder Folk and their allies were ready, and in a great battle – fought on the spiritual as much as on the physical plane – the Renounced Ones were destroyed at last. Afterward, Tar-Kuran was deliberately buried deep and its location expunged from every record, so that no one would ever find it again.

While these events took place, the more mundane history of the Great Lands also continued.

Most of the Dahari city-states were conquered by an expansionist empire, centered on the city of Shuppar. A few, along the coast of the Sailor’s Sea, maintained a league of independent cities with the support of the Elder Folk. The Empire of Shuppar was aggressive and militant, but it maintained its alliance with the Elder Folk and took part in the final battle at Tar-Karun.

The Kavrian Matriarchy reached its greatest territorial extent under its Sixth Dynasty, consolidating almost all the islands of the eastern Sailor’s Sea.

In the east, the Mereti Kingdom expanded as far as the eastern ocean, under its own (very long-lived and stable) Sixth Dynasty. The Mereti created vast tombs for their god-kings in this era, creating a monument that would last for thousands of years. Unfortunately, the expense bled the kingdom dry, and the last few kings of the Sixth Dynasty saw their realm slide into anarchy and chaos.

The Tamiri city-states of the east continued to grow, and a related Nandu Kingdom arose further east along the coastline. Relatively untouched by the wars against the Renounced Ones, the Tamir-Nandu peoples continued to develop a peaceful and highly sophisticated culture.

With the Renounced Gods defeated, many believed the world would enter a Golden Age of peace and prosperity. Unfortunately – as the Elder Folk had always known – such hopes were in vain . . .

Here’s a link to the DeviantArt page for this map.

As the centuries passed, the Renounced Gods expanded their dominion across the northern Great Lands. It was an odd sort of war; there were no generals, no organized armies, no pitched battles for the fate of kingdoms. An armed force of more than a hundred or so warriors was rare. Still, with raid and massacre, one outbreak of pestilence or famine after another, the Renounced Ones slowly pushed their enemies back across the land. A wide band of territory appeared – the Desolation – where no humans lived, and where the land itself had become bleak and barren.

Five more of the ancient Smith-folk holdfasts fell during this time, but now the survivors had become aware of their peril. The remaining enclaves fortified themselves heavily, and the Smith-folk organized armies in their own defense. A few holdfasts even made explicit alliances with the Common-folk around them, providing high-quality weapons and tools in exchange for cooperation in mutual defense.

In the north, the Zari and Mahra peoples were forced to give ground before the Desolation. On the other hand, the Zari peoples continued to expand up the far western coast, protected by the formidable heights of the Blue Mountains. Meanwhile, the eastern Mahra tribes acquired bronze-working technology and continued to expand into new countries in the east. Some of the eastern Mahra also pressed down on the southern coasts, taking over old Zari and Nandu lands, imposing their own culture and languages.

The existing centers of civilization continued in this period. For example, the Dahari city-states took in no new territory, but they continued to grow in sophistication and prosperity. Their population was enriched by a new wave of Kurani-speaking migrants out of the margins of the southern desert. During this era, the Dahari expanded literacy among their urban population, developing the world’s first true literature.

The Kavrian Matriarchy spread across the islands of the Sailor’s Sea, extending its trade networks into distant lands. Under its Third Dynasty, the Matriarchy became more unified and centralized, all of its local priestess-queens recognizing the supremacy of a single High Queen ruling from the nation’s first true city.

The Mereti Kingdom remained relatively backward, still at a Chalcolithic level and lacking in urban centers. It also began to suffer pressure from migrating Kurani tribes in the northwest. Even so, under successive dynasties of god-kings it managed to defend itself and even expand its territory.

These old centers of civilization were joined by a new league of city-states in the Tamiri lands of the northern continent. These cities sat directly on the main trade routes for tin, jade, and lapis-lazuli, and as demand for these goods expanded they became quite wealthy.

About 2,200 years before Krava’s time, the world was astonished by a new development: the return of the Elder Folk (Homo antecessor) after nearly a hundred thousand years of absence from the world. Even the ancient Smith-folk barely remembered these distant cousins when they first arrived.

The Elder Folk had changed dramatically in their long sojourn in other worlds. They remained physically petite and slender, but they had become far wiser and more intelligent, and they had tools and powers superior to any of the people who had remained behind. They soon showed themselves to have a specific mission: to aid the peoples of the Great Lands against the threat of the Renounced Gods.

One branch of the Elder Folk landed on the western coasts of the northern continent, establishing enclaves among the relatively backward Zari tribes of the region. They worked to organize Zari farmers and hunters, preparing them to defend against any attempt by the Renounced Gods to cross the Blue Mountains.

A second branch entered the Sailor’s Sea, establishing enclaves among the major civilizations of the area. One Elder-folk city was built among the Kavrian matriarchs, another among the Dahari city-states, and a third among the Nesali petty-kingdoms. These enclaves, too, worked to prepare resistance against the northern threat. Here, the Elder-folk also had a second objective: to delve into the history of the gods of the Common-folk, and uncover the origins of the Renounced Ones.

At first, the impact of the returned Elder-folk was small, and they could do little to stem the tide of ruin from the far north. Still, over time the Elders would do much to promote civilization, and place the relationship between the Common-folk and their gods on a healthier and more sustainable basis.

Here’s a link to the DeviantArt page for this map.

By about 2,500 years before Krava’s time, metal-workers on both sides of the narrows of the Sailor’s Sea had developed the technique of alloying copper to produce bronze. Reflecting this, the limits of Neolithic and Chalcolithic technology have been dropped on this map. The Neolithic lifestyle has finally expanded to the far corners of the world, and even copper tools are becoming commonplace. Now, bronze-working is the critical technology that distinguishes leading-edge cultures from their less sophisticated neighbors.

The new technology spread slowly at first. The tin necessary to produce high-quality bronze could only be found at the extreme edges of the trade networks of the time. Still, tools and weapons of the new material soon became a prestige item, and warriors and traders alike began to traffic in it. The new metallurgy was one of several factors that gave rise to the first urban civilizations in the world.

The first true cities appeared in the daharim region, a dozen or so settlements with extensive fortifications, large palace and temple complexes, and populations of 3,000 to 6,000 each. These towns formed the nuclei for city-states, each ruled by a hereditary royal dynasty, all competing for the best farmland and trade routes.

To the east, the Ka-Meret peoples gave rise to their own first civilization, the Mereti Kingdom. So far, this was still a chalcolithic culture, but the Mereti god-kings developed very sophisticated techniques to organize agricultural labor and trade. The Mereti kingdom was not at all urban – even the god-king’s palace was surrounded by mere farming villages – but in terms of territorial extent it was the largest unified human realm at the time.

Out in the islands, the Kavrian Matriarchy appeared. The Kavrians were the greatest sea-farers of their time, a critical link in the trade networks that crossed the narrows of the sea and made the Bronze Age possible in the first place. Led by an alliance of priestess-queens and daring sea-captains, the Matriarchy was also not yet an urban state, but its halls and palaces played host to visual arts, dance, and music unmatched in the world.

Most of the language groups of the Great Lands had changed little over the past thousand years. In the north, the Mahra peoples were an exception.

A division between Western and Eastern Mahra languages was becoming more clear with each passing century, the dividing line placed roughly at the boundary between the woodlands of the Lake Country and the central steppes. The western Mahra benefited from the new trade in bronze, and were more sedentary and peaceful. The eastern Mahra had committed themselves to the horse-nomad’s lifestyle, and had become fierce and tenacious warriors despite their relative lack of bronze weaponry.

The eastern Mahra move toward a warrior culture was, in part, driven by a new danger out of the white north.

The ancient “demons” who had once taken refuge around Mount Akyat had regained their strength, building an army of “fierce men” and modified beasts. Now they emerged from their refuge, carrying war across wide ranges of the northern continent. Once they had been gentle gods of peace, fertility and good harvests. Now they had become the Renounced Gods – terrible deities of war, pestilence, famine, bitter cold, and death. Where they went, the peoples of the north submitted or died.

The first campaigns of the Renounced Gods were against the Smith-folk of the far north, especially the reactionaries who had fled the Neolithic wave thousands of years before. Now their fears had come true. The armies of the Renounced Ones attacked three of the old Smith-folk enclaves, “liberating” the spirits bound there and slaughtering the people.

Some of these campaigns crossed eastern Mahra land, and the horse-nomads soon learned the bitter necessity of resistance. Under pressure, the eastern Mahra quickly developed the horse-nomad’s way of warfare: superb mounted archery, capable of fast, mobile strikes followed by quick retreats. Strengthened by their own divine patrons, the Mahra were able to survive the onslaught. Some of the oldest hero-tales in later Chariot People mythology referred back to these early wars against the Renounced Ones, across the sea of grass.

Not all of the eastern Mahra were able to stand and fight. Retreating before the generations-long attack, some of them sought refuge in distant lands. One group (the Kusi tribes) migrated into the far east, onto the cold steppes north of the Eagle Mountains.

Another group (the Nesali tribes) made the fateful decision to migrate south, and even to cross the narrows of the Sailor’s Sea. They settled among the Zari peoples of the region that would one day be called Navenia. There, new bronze weapons combined with their existing mounted archery to give them complete military superiority. They soon took over the region, setting up several petty kingdoms ruled by Mahra warrior-aristocrats. It was a pattern that was to be repeated many times across the Great Lands in the following centuries.

Here’s a link to the DeviantArt page for this map.

By about 3,500 years before Krava’s time, the world seemed to be in an era of slow, steady change. Yet beneath the surface, forces were gathering that would transform everything.

Over the past 1,500 years, both Neolithic and Chalcolithic technologies had spread more widely. Some of the major language groups had also expanded; the Mahra and Zari peoples, in particular, had settled much broader ranges of the northern Great Lands. The Zari peoples appeared ready to win a centuries-long competition for domination of the northern continent.

On the other hand, the northern Mahra tribes had achieved something of great importance: the domestication of the horse, not simply as an occasional meat source, but as an animal useful for riding and for transport. At first, this development simply enabled the northern Mahra to travel widely across the steppes, managing their herds more effectively. These people soon took up the first horse-nomadic lifestyle the world had ever seen. The possible military applications had yet to be thought of . . . but over time, the once-peaceful Mahra peoples would transform themselves into the aggressive, expansionist Chariot Folk.

In the south, the Karuni peoples of the daharim (“rivers”) region approached the development of civilization. Some agricultural villages expanded to unusual size, well over a thousand inhabitants in the largest. Trade networks appeared and grew more extensive. Ancient token-reckoning systems gave rise to true writing. Tribal oligarchies yielded to hereditary dynasties of priest-chieftains.

Meanwhile, a prolonged dispute among the spirits and gods of that region had profound consequences.

The dispute began when a clique of minor Karuni deities suggested that the existing relationship between spirits and humans was profoundly detrimental to the spirits. They pointed to the dependence of “gods” upon their human worshipers, and the outright enslavement of lesser spirits by Common-folk shamans and the Smith-folk. They proposed aggressive action, a radical revision of the relationship that would place spirits firmly in command. Their opponents, including virtually all of the prominent deities of the region, pointed out that this proposal would devastate human populations and destroy the very societies upon which their style of existence depended.

Shortly before the time of this map, the dispute broke into open warfare. Spirits fought, both directly and by pitting their mortal worshipers against one another. The conservative “divine” faction won; the rebel spirits were (literally) demonized and driven out of the Karuni region. The victors assumed, for the time, that the conflict had been resolved, but this assessment was premature.

Instead of vanishing, the “demons” fled into the far north, taking refuge in the area of a massive snow-bound height that would one day be named Mount Akyat. There they licked their wounds and began to plan their revenge.

One of their long-term projects involved interaction with the primitive hunter-gatherer peoples of the area. They used their divine powers to sway these people, breed them, and biologically alter them. Soon they had created a new kind of humanity: Homo ferox, the “fierce man,” stronger, faster, and more violently aggressive than any of the older species.

The new species grew but slowly, in the harsh conditions of the northern forests and tundra, but in the centuries to come they would prove a terrible plague upon the northern Great Lands. Thousands of years later, Krava would know them as the skatoi, and they would become her bitterest foes . . .

Here’s a link to the DeviantArt page for this map.

As in our own world, the discovery of agriculture was a tremendous revolution. Over time, the Common-folk peoples who committed to this new way of life made a fateful exchange: reliable food sources that could support unprecedented population densities, at the cost of back-breaking labor, social stratification, and subjection to a growing class of gods and priest-chieftains.

While the primary center of agricultural development was around the ancient site of Tar-Karun, in the end five distinct peoples (and one outlier) took advantage of the new technology. These formed new language-group communities, each with its own distinct cultural template. They slowly spread across the Great Lands, displacing the thinly scattered hunter-gatherer population . . . and where the new Neolithic peoples went, their gods went with them.

The Karuni peoples were probably the most religious, devoted to gods of the sky and the harvest, building the first temples in the world. Their societies tended to be strongly patriarchal and rather aggressive, forcing others aside to gain access to the best farming lands.

The Zari peoples took a softer approach, especially after they crossed the narrows of the Sailor’s Sea and took root along the coasts of the northern continent. Zari societies tended to be more egalitarian, dividing authority between male chieftains and female priestesses. Later they took to building megalithic structures, lines and circles of standing stones, possibly in memory of ancient Tar-Karun.

The Mahra peoples took up a mixed lifestyle, some of them farming in the river valleys and by the shores of the Great Lakes, others following herds of goats and sheep in the grassy uplands. They were patriarchal but not aggressive, preferring to move away from danger rather than confront it.

The Tamir–Nandu peoples spread rapidly across the south-eastern coasts, taking advantage of the plentiful monsoon rains and rich soils of the region. They were distinctive for their relative lack of social centralization and stratification. In such a rich land, anyone dissatisfied with the leadership at home could simply pack up and move, setting up new farms or villages at a safe distance. Rather than building temples for a few primary deities, the Tamir-Nandu societies continued in the Mesolithic tradition of venerating myriad local spirits, building small shrines for them.

The Ka-Meret peoples pursued a mix of river-irrigation and monsoon-irrigation, and were the most centralized cultures of this period. Their relationship with their gods was distinctive – their culture put great value on ecstatic states of “possession,” in which gods spoke and acted through human hosts. Some Ka-Meret chieftains became almost permanent hosts for their divine patrons, setting up an early form of divine kingship.

Wherever these people went, they brought a Neolithic technical set with them. Back in the heartland of the Karuni and Zari societies, a Chalcolithic technology had arisen as well, with the use of copper to supplement stone tools. This and the following maps will mark the boundary of each new stage of technological development.

In the far south, the Muri peoples were not yet fully Neolithic, but they had begun independent development of farming and herding in their own territory. Their communities were tied together by a strong tradition of endogamy and matrilocality. Young men tended to leave home and travel long distances in search of a bride, and then settle down in her village after the marriage. This led to lasting links between villages, permitting exchange of trade goods, languages, and ideas.

The ancient Smith-folk looked on all these developments with concern. Before the era of agriculture, the balance between Common-folk and Smith-folk had been stable across thousands of years. Now Common-folk were starting to swarm across the land, bringing their gods with them – no longer so dependent on the Smith-folk for survival, and threatening to outnumber them by wide margins. This admittedly brought new wealth to the old Smith-folk enclaves, but some conservatives feared disastrous consequences in the long run.

Thousands of the Smith-folk departed for the distant north, setting up new enclaves far from the agricultural wave. Unfortunately, in so doing, these migrants unwittingly set up the conditions for the very disaster they had dimly foretold . . .

Here’s a link to the DeviantArt page for this map.

By 9,000 years before Krava’s time, the Ice Age was in full retreat. Although a remnant of the ice sheet remained in the far north and west, most of the northern continent was becoming greener and more hospitable with each generation. Tundra turned to open steppe, and then to deep forests, spreading inexorably northward.

Both of the humanities living in the Great Lands took advantage of the new springtime.

The Smith-folk enclaves grew, and more of them took root in congenial mountain valleys exposed by the retreat of the Ice. Some of these enclaves attained populations in the low thousands, with complex social systems and even a few permanent structures in stone or wood. These enclaves had not yet acquired the mighty fortifications of later millennia, but the structure of the latter-day holdfast was finally becoming clear.

Meanwhile, the Smith-folk had become accustomed to the presence of the taller, more versatile Common-folk sharing the wide lands. They taught the newcomers (some of) their ancient knowledge, and gave away tools and artifacts of power in exchange for meat and hard-to-find materials. Some Common-folk bands even set up trading relationships, carrying light goods and ideas among the Smith-folk enclaves. The result was a tenuous network of trade and communication that stretched across two continents. This system gave rise to a variety of high Mesolithic cultures.

In one small area, the first hints of something even more significant had appeared. At the eastern end of the Sailor’s Sea, some of the Common-folk began to supplement their otherwise-typical Mesolithic lifestyle with the harvesting of wild grains. This was not agriculture – not yet – but it enabled the Common-folk of the region to attain population densities impossible elsewhere.

One of the centers of this pre-Neolithic activity was at a place called Tar-Kuran, the “high place” where a dozen disparate tribes came together to build a common ritual center. The center of Tar-Kuran was a great ring of carved standing stones, the result of thousands of man-years of back-breaking labor. When completed, the “high place” became known among the Common-folk tribes all across the Great Lands, and people came from incredible distances to see it.

What the elder peoples thought of Tar-Kuran is lost in the depths of time. It’s possible that some of the Smith-folk of the southern continent aided in its planning and construction. They could not, however, have been prepared for some of the consequences. For at Tar-Kuran, the placation of land-spirits and hunting-spirits, and elaborate rituals for the grain harvest, gave rise to something genuinely new. Some spirits invoked at the “high place” thrived upon the attention and fearful supplication of the Common-folk . . . becoming the first gods to dwell in the Great Lands.

Here’s a link to the DeviantArt page for this map.

For many thousands of years, the Great Lands remained divided. The early Smith-folk had the northern continent to themselves, while the Common-folk spread across the southern continent. The two land-masses approached one another in the narrows of what would one day be called the Sailor’s Sea, but there was no land bridge to facilitate interaction. Only at the height of the glacial age did the two peoples finally come into sustained contact.

In the north, the Smith-folk had evolved a distinctive way of life. A few bands wandered far and wide across the northern continent, following a primitive hunter-gatherer existence. Others gathered in specific upland areas, alpine valleys or mountain slopes that proved especially congenial. There, they used their growing skills with spirit-magic to build and support extended communities. Hundreds of people might live in close proximity, staying in the same area for years at a time, supporting skilled specialists in the arts of tool-making and spirit-binding. These early tribal communities were the first seeds of the Smith-folk holdfasts of later millennia.

The Smith-folk had long since been aware of the southern continent, but it was not until the Last Glacial Maximum (about 25,000 years before Krava’s time) that some of them found a way across the narrows. Overcoming their natural aversion to the sea, enough tribes made the crossing to establish two new communities on the southern continent. There, they came into contact with the Common-folk, leading to trade and the exchange of ideas. The southern Smith-folk tribes soon became the largest and wealthiest of their kind.

From their new neighbors, the Common-folk learned of the vast new lands to the north. Some of them soon began to venture their own crossings of the narrow sea. It was a slow process, taking many centuries, but over time the Common-folk became well established on the northern continent. Some of them turned west, living in caves and sheltered coastal areas, mostly living on fish, shellfish, and small game. Others, more ambitious, turned north or east, hunting the megafauna of the plains. When the Ice began to retreat, tribes of the Common-folk were there to take advantage . . .

Here’s a link to the DeviantArt page for this map.