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.