Arcél 2370

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Arcél 2200

Arcél 2550

1 The conquest of Uytai
2 The establishment of Belesao
3 Elsewhere
4 Characteristic figure

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The conquest of Uytai

In 2310 emperor Nyehan of Uytai attempted to recover Twot from the Sumë; this was a disaster. The Uytainese had long been coasting on past successes; they had very little idea how to fight nomads. The imperial army was heavy infanty, suitable for engaging similar armies and besieging cities. Even without horses, the lightly armored Sumë could outrun them, then circle back to harrass their flanks or rear. Nor was iron a military advantage: the Sumë had iron too, from the Bé and the elcari.

The Sumë gtaz, Tmum, divided his army in two, half faced and defeated the main Uytainese force; the other half slipped behind their lines and attacked Uykhrai. The Uytainese had not even bothered to lock the gates; by the time they did so scouts were already inside, setting the city on fire.

The Sumë pressed on and besieged Srethun; but now they were overextended, and the capital was well defended. But this was as much as the Uytainese could do; to end the war Nyehan had to pay a painful tribute, recognize Tmum as his “elder brother”, and recognize the loss of Uykhrai.

Tmum erected a huge pile of stones outside the city to celebrate— an old Sumë custom executed on an unprecedented scale— but to many of his people he was a weakling, as he had not finished the job. In 2325 he was deposed by Ga-Knatij, the warlord of a rival Mnesean tribe, known in Uyseʔ as the Nyuam. (The native name was Nüsam, the name of one of Tlan’s brothers, from whom Ga-Knatij claimed descent.)

The Nyuam administered a beating to the Gleŋ to demonstrate their prowess; they then applied themselves to learning about their opponents. Their teachers were their new subjects in Uykhrai. They were soon conscripting an infantry and building siege engines.

In the 2340s, the gtaz Ga-Bmajin perceived some infraction by his ‘younger brother’, the pauram Swartroy, and used the pretext to mount an invasion. The Nyuam conquered Tsopwan and the rest of the Hurtso valley, a third of Uytai’s population. Much of this territory was aquired by defection: several armies went over to the Sumë side, and quite a few cities surrendered rather than face destruction.

The final push down the Ħomtso was difficult, and required an alliance with the Gleŋ. The pace didn’t quicken till the occupation of Swiʔkyau, which cut Srethun off from the sea. Srethun could at least boast that it was not defeated on the field; it had to surrender (2355) because it was out of food.

Ga-Bmajin kept the looting to a minimum— he still had big plans in the south, and wished to rule the Uytainese, not to destroy them. The imperial family’s goods were fair game, however, and this was a substantial loophole, as the Hanthal controlled huge swaths of land and all significant manufacturing.

Further conquests had to be put on hold, however, when the Gleŋ rebelled. They had never left the highlands and had little interest in peaceful coexistence with the peasants. By 2370 the Nyuam had lost a good deal of their territory, and the Gleŋ had also occupied half of Siad βo.

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The establishment of Belesao

In 23rd century Jansɛ̀, it was said that the sun did not dare to rise without the permission of Kâ. Jansene merchants were handicapped by corruption and protection rackets, and— what was more provoking— suffered from these to a greater extent than other cities did. They formed an alliance with Pànsàɔ which ended in the destruction of Kâ’s temple complex (2261).

On paper, the alliance looked like a united country; was there any way of making it one? None of the interested parties— the Jansenes, the supposed Lé dynasty in Sîpó, the Pàn, the newly conquered or liberated people of the Ŋê valley— wanted one of the other groups to rule; but they didn’t want to return to division either.

In 2267 a béjan or Great Council was called to discuss the issue; the leaders met in Héjùs, a symbol of ancient unity. What they came up with was essentially a king-and-council system. The monarch would not be the current Lé claimant but her ten-year-old daughter Trɛlù— the time till her majority would give the nation time to get used to her; she would also live in a new palace in Kêkè to make it clear that Sîpó wasn’t in charge. The council would be the béjan itself, which must be consulted for certain key decisions, especially war and taxation.

The new nation was named Bélésàɔ— the Bé and Lé country. Bé made a claim to represent the entire Beic area; Lé referred to the Lé dynasty, though by this time it was used to refer to the ethnic group inhabiting the lower Lɛn river, from Joní to the sea. (For convenience I anglicize the country’s name as Belesao.)

The Hàɔ and the Nér were invited to join. The former declined politely, the latter disdainfully. Things went downhill from there, and in two wars (2281-5 and 2314-17) Belesao gobbled up Nérsàɔ.

Hàɔráŋ didn’t avoid troubles of its own. The inhabitants of the Mâɔ and Łima valleys, recently settled and free-spirited, grew tired of being ruled by the Hàɔ. They rebelled, forming the nation of Mauraŋ (in Lé, Mâɔráŋ) in the 2330s. Crucially, they managed to seize Hònpó, the silk islands.

The ethnic composition of Mauraŋ is much more complicated than can be easily shown on small-scale maps. The Linaic people of the region, the Lina, had a similar lifestyle to the Bé and were not simply displaced. Bé settlement was concentrated in the river valleys and in newly founded towns. Over time the Lina intermingled with them and often adopted Beic culture, religion, and language. As a generalization, however, the Mâɔ valley was largely Beicized while the Łima valley retained a much stronger Linaic culture.

Stability, the end of constant regional wars, and the north-south trade produced a renaissance in the entire Bé zone. Trade flourished, cities grew, and with them economic specialization. There was a fascination with machines; inventors devised mechanical clocks, the compass, and cast iron. The writing system minimized phonetic differences, and so allowed literature to be shared across national boundaries. (Each nation had its own distinctive way of writing the graphemes, but at this period they were mutually readable.)

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Elsewhere

Čwam, enriched by the north-south trade and benefitting from a lack of strong rivals, has increased its territory as well. It conquered the lower half of Phetai in 2280, and its neighbor Nyandai in 2309-12. (Čwam and Hàɔráŋ both expanded west for the same reason: there were enormous profits to being the first port the other side reached.)

Many refugees from Uytai ended up in Čwam, and counselled the liberation of their homeland from the barbarians; the Čwamese leadership was starting to like the idea.

A series of wars has reorganized the Itseʔ valley. Tsaʔ is still run by an Uytainese dynasty, but has split in two. A new Dnetic kingdom, Žonyān, has appeared on the middle Itseʔ, while the lower stretch of the river is occupied by a strong new Itsenic confederation, Witsiʔpopok.

In the east the first Kereminthic state has appeared— the kingdom of Ȟamsan, organized to resist incursions by the Gleŋ. The Ȟamsanese had a horror of kings; they came up with a dual power structure, an army which elected its own officers and had exclusive authority to declare and wage war, and a religious head of state, the trečai, responsible for all other governmental functions, and chosen by a process designed to discover the arbitrary will of God. In effect the new trečai was a random married male from a different region than the previous incumbent.

The Gleŋ also took over the Nrineo rift valley, pushing back the elcari who had used its northern shore for agriculture and fishing.

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