By about 1,100 years before Krava’s time, the ancient Maras – now the warlike Chariot People – were making their presence felt all across the Great Lands.

Their expansion was aided and abetted by natural disaster. Climate change, leading to poor harvests and the spread of epidemic diseases, had already undermined several of the older civilizations. At about the time of this map, the active tectonic zone beneath the Sailor’s Sea gave rise to a series of volcanic eruptions, one of them cataclysmic in extent. That disaster wrecked the Kavrian Matriarchy entirely, and placed further stress on urban societies everywhere.

The Chariot People took advantage, sending small armies of chariot-driving warriors to fan out far and wide from their old homelands. These warrior bands “took over” existing societies, demanding tribute and imposing their own customs, but providing armed protection and stability in exchange.

In the west, the Kardanai branch of the Maras continued to make inroads on ancient Zari territory on both sides of the White Mountains. In the south, the Korsanari surged out across the Sailor’s Sea, taking up residence across the islands once ruled by the Matriarchy. The Elder-folk city that once supported the Matriarchs had been abandoned by this time; the Maras raiders who finally reduced it to ruins found none of its people left behind for ransom.

On the southern continent, the Nesali New Kingdom proved to be the military superpower of the era. The Nesali reduced the Darusi petty-kings and the Kurri state to vassal status, and even sacked the town of Shuppar at one point.

After the sack, the Second Empire of Shuppar recovered, although its ruling elite now spoke a Maras language among themselves, even while they used Kurani languages and customs in public. Shuppar itself had become the largest urban settlement in the world, with over 20,000 inhabitants inside its massive walls. It was the first true city the Common-folk had ever built, but it would not be the last.

The greatest advance of the Maras was in the east. Climate stress had driven the old Tamiri city-states and the Nandu Kingdom into anarchy, opening a power vacuum that the Artai tribes could exploit. Many of them came down the Eagle’s Pass into the coastal plains, taking over city after city, imposing Maras rule wherever they went. In the end, the Artai migrants took up many Tamiri customs and religious ideas, but they completely transformed the local language and society.

The only major civilization untouched by the Maras surge was the Mereti. After a period of anarchy, the Mereti had established a New Kingdom under their Thirteenth and Fourteenth Dynasties. Along the way, they had finally adopted bronze-working, and some of the military technologies that made the Maras so formidable. Filled with xenophobic confidence, they felt ready to stand off any foreign invasion.

The Chariot People seemed poised to dominate the Great Lands once and for all. However, in the far north the skatoi, former servants of the Renounced Gods, were stirring. Even without divine guidance, they had acquired many of the military technologies their Common-folk enemies had used to defeat them in the past. Now their numbers had grown, to the point that they needed new lands to support them . . . and they had begun to look southward for the solution to that problem.

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Personal Note: You’ll probably deduce that I’ve finished revising older maps in this series, and am now at the point of creating the last few new ones. I’ve revised some of the text associated with these maps as well. If you’re interested in seeing the finished product – a complete “historical atlas” of the Great Lands, with all of the revised text and a sheaf of new material to boot, please consider signing up as one of my patrons (link to Patreon in the left sidebar).