Sharrukin's Palace

To review the bidding: I’m working up some background notes for a novel I’ve started but gotten stuck on, with the working title of The Curse of Steel. Last time I set down some ideas for specific peoples and ethnic groups to be found in the setting – rather Tolkienesque, with quite a bit of input from the paleontological fantasy of Michael Scott Rohan. Today, here are some notes about a rough-draft timeline that can serve as a high-level framework.

• Age of Myth (until about 9000 years before present):
  • The world spends many thousands of years in a deep glacial age. Gods hostile to human life dominate the world, led by a powerful and malevolent deity (the first Great Enemy). Benevolent gods come to the mortal world to battle the hostile deities, eventually killing them or driving them into the outer darkness.
  • During the wars, the benevolent gods ally with Elders and Smith-folk, helping them to create the first sophisticated kingdoms (but not civilizations, since they don’t involve cities) in the world. In response, the malevolent gods create the Beast-folk to serve as shock troops. Humans and the Sea-folk remain primitive, barely surviving in small refugia and taking little or no part in the wars of the gods.
  • Once the malevolent gods are finally defeated and the world begins to warm, the Elders withdraw to the divine plane to live with the benevolent gods. The Smith-folk remain behind, some of them reverting to primitive hunter-gatherer lifestyles, others looking for opportunities to practice their crafts now that the wars of the gods are over.
• About 8700 years before the present: Several groups of Smith-folk settle in a region analogous to the Fertile Crescent, striking up a mutually beneficial relationship with the human hunter-gatherers of the region. The Smith-folk teach humans primitive agriculture and Neolithic-level technologies, helping to build large cult-centers (megalithic architecture).
• About 8200 years before the present: Rising sea levels encroach upon a low-lying region in the far northwest, undermining the connection between the continental mainland and a “Northern Isles” region that will eventually become analogous to the British Isles.
• About 6700 years before the present:
  • Foundation of the world’s first pseudo-city, a Neolithic population center on the edges of the “Fertile Crescent” region which grows to about ten thousand inhabitants. The settlement remains organized along hunter-gatherer lines, with no social stratification, civic cult, or record-keeping.
  • A malevolent goddess, the second Great Enemy, enters the mortal world, remaining hidden, spying out the state of the world. She becomes disgusted with the “crowding and swarming” of humans, and seeks out ways to eradicate them through infectious disease.
• About 5700 years before the present: Farming communities begin to spread slowly in all directions from the agricultural urheimat, possibly driven by the need to avoid crowding and disease. While they migrate across the Great Lands, these farmers intermarry with and displace the original hunter-gatherer peoples.
• About 5400 years before the present: A large landslide takes place adjacent to the northern seas, causing a massive tsunami. The last remnants of the “low country” are overwhelmed, and the Northern Islands are cut off from the continental mainland.
• About 4900 years before the present: The first great pseudo-city collapses, wracked by disease and social upheaval. The collapse accelerates the spread of Neolithic technologies and society across the Great Lands, as farmers seek to spread out and bring more land under intensive cultivation.
• About 4200 years before the present: Neolithic peoples have reached the far northwest of the Great Lands, and the coasts of the western sea. Farming expansion pauses for about a thousand years.
• About 3700 years before the present: With the aid of the Smith-folk, a small population of Neolithic farmers in the central Great Lands develops bronze metallurgy. The technology is jealously guarded and fails to spread.
• About 3200 years before the present:
  • Human farming societies cross the strait to settle in the Northern Islands, also spreading into far northern regions. The Great Lands are now dominated by farming communities, although the older hunter-gatherer populations still survive in reclusive enclaves. The Smith-folk thrive in this environment, setting up small communities and bands of itinerant craftsmen, offering technical services and maintaining long-distance trade networks.
  • Just as farmers come to dominate the Great Lands, the second Great Enemy reveals herself, openly seeking to do away with humans and return to the world to its “natural” state. Her first gambit is to encourage a series of plagues in the Neolithic populations, decimating many communities. Human populations throughout the Great Lands remain depressed for centuries afterward.
  • The incipient Bronze Age society in the central Great Lands is a victim of the Great Enemy’s activity. Bronze metallurgy is lost for several centuries before being reinvented in the “Fertile Crescent” region.
  • A large contingent of the Elders departs the divine plane to pursue the malevolent goddess, resulting in several centuries of warfare in the northwestern region of the Great Lands. The Elders recruit Neolithic-level humans as adjuncts in their war, sometimes as soldiers, more often as serfs who can raise food and supplies for the war effort. Humans still benefit from the relationship, learning a great deal from the Elders and coming to speak a pidgin version of their language.
• About 2700 years before the present: Humans in the Fertile Crescent analog develop Bronze Age metallurgy, with some help from local Smith-folk communities. First development of true civilization (intensive agriculture, record-keeping, social stratification, organized religious cult, cities). Bronze Age technologies begin to spread across the Great Lands.
• About 2600 years before the present:
  • The war ends with another intervention of the benevolent gods, who deliver a final defeat to the second Great Enemy. Some of the Enemy’s lieutenants (minor gods and demigods) escape the defeat and hide in the mortal world for centuries to come. One comes to lurk among the nascent civilizations of the Fertile Crescent analog.
  • With the enemy defeated, most of the surviving Elders return to the divine plane, although a small remnant population remains in the Great Lands for many centuries.
  • The human societies who directly aided the Elders in their war are rewarded with the opportunity to migrate to a very hospitable minor continent amid the western sea. There, they develop their own civilization based upon all they have learned from the Elders and the benevolent gods.
• About 2500 years before the present: In the wide plains east of the Great Lands, a human pastoral culture domesticates the horse. This development gives these humans an advantage over their neighbors, and they begin to spread more widely.
• About 1600 years before the present: Another of the malevolent gods (the third Great Enemy) begins to actively interfere in the development of human civilizations in the “Fertile Crescent” region. This deity is more subtle than his predecessors, seeking to manipulate humans and rule them rather than eradicate them. His activities provoke no obvious response from the divine plane for many centuries.
• About 1500 years before the present:
  • First Bronze Age societies appear in the northwestern region of the Great Lands, and in the Northern Isles.
  • The first ships from the mid-ocean civilization begin to visit the Great Lands, although they make no permanent settlements and never remain for long. Contact with the Bronze Age tribes of the region is friendly and mutually beneficial.
  • The first human empire is established in the “Fertile Crescent” region, with the third Great Enemy lurking in the shadows behind the human kings.
• About 1200 years before the present: The horse-breeding people in the plains east of the Great Lands develop a new set of technologies, including the spoke-wheel chariot and the composite bow. These Chariot People discover they have an immense military advantage over their neighbors, and their society becomes structured to exploit that advantage. They begin a centuries-long process of moving into new regions, taking over as a warrior elite, then imposing their language and customs on the prior farming societies they have conquered.
• Present Day:
  • The peoples of the Great Lands, especially those in the “cradle of civilization” regions, have made the transition to an Iron Age technology. Only in a few very peripheral areas are some people still lingering at a Bronze Age (or Neolithic) level.
  • The Chariot People have invaded and infiltrated as far as the Northern Isles, and have come to dominate the Great Lands. Krava’s people are among these later arrivals, resembling early Celts (Halstatt culture).
  • The third Great Enemy remains hidden, slowly building up the power of the human empires under his sway.
  • The mid-ocean civilization is the great power of the world, sailing all around the planet, trading with everyone they find. In recent centuries they have contacted the Sea-folk and have done much to spread the “little people” all over the planet. Unfortunately, they have also gotten a taste for power, and their relationships with other cultures are becoming less gentle or benevolent.

Okay, with that I’m ready to start working on a revised version of the map, focusing on the “Great Lands” regions. If get really ambitious, I may use that map to construct a variant board for a tabletop game that I can use to generate the history in a bit more fine-grained detail. With any luck, that will help me envision Krava’s world more fully, so I can get that novel unblocked. More to come.

The setting for The Curse of Steel is a region whose name will translate as The Great Lands (the constructed-language word is probably something like Mortalani). This is a region roughly analogous to western Europe (or north-western Middle-earth, if I’m being honest) which has just about completed its transition to the Iron Age.

The primary inspirations here are Tolkien’s legendarium, and the fantasy of another British author: Michael Scott Rohan. From Tolkien will come the general shape of the world map, and a few pieces of back story. From Rohan will come a more Darwinian approach, in which the divine powers aren’t all so benevolent to humans, and societies are rooted in the long prehistory of a world that wasn’t created for their benefit.

The Peoples

At present I have five “races” (more accurately, hominid subspecies) in mind for this setting.

Elders

The Elders are a very ancient population, ancestral to all the others. Think of these as highly evolved and sophisticated homo erectus.

Elders tend to be shorter and more gracile than humans, but they are strong and quick for their size, and are immune to aging or disease. They are not by nature more intelligent than humans, but they have many ages of traditional wisdom to draw upon, and they have considerable natural talent with magic. Their natural lifestyle is that of intensive hunter-gatherers. When they have the opportunity, they will sometimes maintain small sedentary communities in order to practice more advanced arts and crafts.

The Elders are almost extinct in the mortal world. Most of them departed from the world long ago, to live in the divine sphere with the benevolent gods. Some return from time to time on specific errands, always apparently arriving by sea, so individual Elders and even small groups are sometimes seen.

Smith-folk

The Smith-folk are about as tall as humans, but they are stocky and extremely strong. Think of these as resembling homo neanderthalensis, although with better manual dexterity and more advanced material culture.

The Smith-folk learned advanced crafts from the Elders in ages past and are now known as the best stone-workers, wood-workers, and metal-smiths in the world. They are very clannish and insular. They tend to live in small communities within reach of agricultural society, where they can trade their craft-work for food. When that doesn’t work out, they will often revert to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle (or turn to brigandage).

Sea-folk

The Sea-folk are small hominids, about half the size of humans, not very strong but quick and nimble.  Think of them as homo floriensis who have taken to more advanced tools.

Sea-folk originally evolved on a chain of islands far away on the other side of the world, where they followed an intensive hunter-gatherer lifestyle. Centuries ago they encountered human sea-farers, and took to that life with great enthusiasm, making themselves so useful that every sea-captain sought them out. Today, they can be found in coastal communities everywhere.

Sea-folk are very gregarious, curious and imitative, good at picking up languages and mimicking local customs. They are superb sailors and fishermen, but are also known as thieves and rogues.

Humans

Humans are the default population from which my protagonist and most of her peers and rivals come. They are biologically and sociologically identical to homo sapiens sapiens, modern humans from Earth. They are the most diverse of the peoples of the world, following many lifestyles and living at a wide range of levels of technology.

In ages past, some human populations interacted with the Elders and learned a great deal from them. Transplanted to a minor continent amid the Western Sea, these were among the first to develop an advanced civilization. Today they are great sea-farers, traveling all over the world to trade with the peoples they find. In the Great Lands, they have begun to establish permanent settlements on the coasts, and their relationship with the indigenous peoples is turning greedy and exploitative.

Other humans developed civilization independently and are beginning to establish large empires of their own, but these have generally fallen under the domination of cruel and greedy gods. My protagonist is from a more “barbarian” culture, technically advanced but still at a tribal level of organization. Most human societies in the area where the story takes place are blended from ancient hunter-gathers, farmers who moved into the area in more recent millennia, and a warrior elite who arrived even more recently with their distinctive customs, language, and military technology.

Beast-folk

Beast-folk are the “youngest” of the major hominid subspecies, bred by malevolent gods in the last few thousand years. They have no close analogue in our own prehistory.

Beast-folk were bred to be carnivorous pastoralists, living on herds of horses and cattle on the broad plains east of the Great Lands. They’re also not above eating members of the other four subspecies when opportunity arises. They are larger and stronger than the other peoples, and raised from birth as warriors. They don’t make particularly good soldiers, since their logistical requirements don’t allow them to form large armies. On the other hand, they make excellent raiders and shock troopers.

Beast-folk were created to be destroyers of civilizations, and many of them remain hostile to all outsiders, feared and hated. They are somewhat variable, however; some beast-folk are less necessarily hostile, and a few have even assimilated into human societies.

Final Notes on “Races”

Yes, if you tilt your head and squint, you end up with “elves,” “dwarves,” “hobbits,” “men,” and “orcs,” but I’m hoping to play those themes in a different key, as it were.

One note: when it comes to who can interbreed with whom, humans and the Smith-folk are the ones who have been known to intermarry, while the Elders and the Sea-folk are more biologically distinctive. No one is quite sure whether the Beast-folk can interbreed with any of the others; no one really wants to make the experiment.

Villains

The stories I have in mind are likely to have a variety of villains and conflict-sources. Given that I’m aiming for a pulpy, Conanesque feel, there should be plenty of corrupt kings and evil wizards to go around. On the other hand, the big, world-shaking villains are all going to be gods.

Most spirits and gods are benevolent – or at least not interested in interfering with the mortal world. Occasionally one of the gods decides to be malevolent, emerging onto the mortal plane to pursue their own goals, actively interested in killing, tormenting, or just ruling mortals. The Elders call these malevolent beings the Great Enemies. So far in history there have been three of these:

• The most powerful of the Great Enemies, a god of deep cold and ice. He fought to preserve the mortal world as a place of quiet, austere beauty, free of the “corruption” of sentient life. Held sway for many thousands, if not millions of years, and was only defeated by the direct engagement of more benevolent gods.
• A goddess of disease and pestilence, who thought of herself as a champion of the natural world. She sought to protect forests and animal life around the world by using virulent plagues to eradicate sentient life. Opposed by the Elders, and eventually by a brief period of divine intervention.
• A god of fire, iron, and warfare, who seeks not to eliminate sentient life, but to rule it “for its own good.” Currently active in the world in the present day, not apparently opposed by the Elders or by the benevolent gods.

Okay, that’s a taste of the backdrop. Next time, some notes on the initial draft timeline for the setting. Then I’m going to start working on a new version of the map, which I may also use to set up a worldbuilding-by-simulation exercise to develop the timeline in more detail. More to come over the next few days.