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.