Arcél 1112

From Almeopedia

Arcél 950

Arcél 1300

1 The land of ancestors
2 The rise of Krwŋ
3 The Bé
4 Elsewhere
5 Characteristic figure

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The land of ancestors

For almost a century Tsopwan held onto Pheʔ, then abandoned it as unprofitable. This seemed to Uykhrai to be a signal of decline, and king Ħwentet sent his armies south. To hide his motives and foment rebellion, he posed as the champion of the ancestors, the uywar which had been impiously stolen and taken to Tsopwan.

Whether or not this was a factor in his victory, Ħwentet succeeded in conquering the delta by 984. (Pheʔ, for the moment, regained its independence.) He grandly returned the uywar to their cities, and named his realm Uytai, the land of the ancestors, as a pledge of universalistic piety. The levels of tribute were not reduced, but redirected to Uykhrai, where Ħwentet built a suitably large palace and temple complex. (He also restarted the calendar with the date of his victory; this is still the system for reckoning years in Uytai, so that the present year is 2496.)

His son Mwatsye continued the crusade against Tsopwan, occupying and burning the hated city in 1020. Mwatsye had only a daughter, Tsimkrau, but he raised her as his heir, teaching her diplomacy, administration, and fighting. She learned well; in the 1050s she led the Uytainese army to conquer both Pheʔ and Tueʔ. (Tnełun was sacked but not occupied, and disappeared as an organized state.)

Though the conquered regions were all Uyram, they had long histories of their own as well as their own laws and customs. Mwatsye and Tsimkrau continued Ħwentet’s policy of universalism: except for Tsopwan, all the conquered cities were allowed to keep their local lords, laws, and worship; they were careful however to acquire the proper local credentials. Tsimkrau went so far as to marry the kings she had deposed, as well as the best claimant to the throne of Srethun; she announced that the son she bore would incorporate the blood of all three. If anyone suspected that genetics did not work that way, they prudently kept their silence— the queen’s anger was known to be brutal.

The Uyseʔ logograms had developed into a complete writing sytem. Now that the Uytainese could write whatever they wanted, what did they want to discuss? Mostly the illustrious history of their ancestors. The older the history the better, so legends back to the founding of the first cities were recorded, and for good measure the imagined histories of even earlier and more glorious empires. Even a modern Uytainese would be quite surprised to read this atlas, which would seem to leave out half his history.

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The rise of Krwŋ

In the forest zone, Sɔitsɔi and Krwŋ fought constantly for dominance. The sure bet seemed to be the former, which was larger; but it had trouble turning its territorial advantage into armies. Krwŋ did not; it replaced tribute or taxation in kind with a levee of fighting men, which gave it a large standing army— perhaps 50,000 men, which if not the millions claimed by later legend was still immense by contemporary standards. The emperor Nyekyɔu conquered Pursut in 1064 and his son Funuy conquered Khɔrči (capital of Sɔitsɔi) in 1112.

The Krwŋese emperors made little attempt to respect local conditions, though there was also no great cultural gap to bridge. The emperor ruled the world; that was all anyone needed to know.

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The Bé

Expeditions were periodically sent into the jungle to trade with the Bé. There was no interest in conquering these half-naked savages, nor in staying long in the inhospitable heat and dense jungle, but there were interesting goods to acquire (lumber, hides, slaves, streff matting, stripcorn glue, medicinal plants, spices and dyes), and the Bé were willing to pay well for southern manufactures.

Various places became trading posts when the outlanders were around and guarded depots when they were not; one of these, Héjùs, came to dominate its region through a combination of organization and intimidation, becoming the first Beic city-state. An aristrocratic jɔ, the Tràŋ, presided over its rise, but only by closely cooperating with the other jɔ in the town and region and spreading the profits. They did not claim any spiritual power or authority (though their activities were blessed by the goddesses), and their lifestyle was not that different from the other clans. It would thus be an exaggeration to call the chief (háɔ) of the Tràŋ a queen; nonetheless her title (Tràŋháɔ, later simply tràŋ) became the Lé word for ‘queen’.

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Elsewhere

The Yurdzo river valley was remote and rustic, with as yet no resources worth the 1000 km trip to the Ħomtso delta. It therefore developed in its own way, and by this time its first kingdom was organized, Siad βo, under king Hendwor. Despite the distance, its administration was a slavish though smaller copy of that of Uytai.

For unknown reasons, the state of Dneht collapsed around the year 1000.

Both pastoralism and agriculture continue to expand at the expense of hunter/gatherer populations. Of particular note: