Bérunor

From Almeopedia

Lake Bérunor [ˈbɛ ru nor] is a large lake in the hilly region just west of the southern edge of the Rhânor range. In the Count of Years, it is the sheltered area where the first iliu, Iriand and Alāna, raised their children; their community was also said to be the childhood home of Denūra, the first human female. There are still ilian ruins on the eastern edge of the lake, and a small iliu settlement within the lake.

The elcari also settled the region, but abandoned it during the last of their wars with the múrtani, c. -2500 Z.E. Their name for the lake is Lyôbênqichidd ‘great gold lake’, as the region was rich in gold.

Some time after this humans moved into the area around the lake, which has been largely occupied by the Somoyi-Meťelyi ever since. After the fall of Cuzei many Cuzeians moved to the region, spurring the creation of the first organized Somoyi kingdom, Metauro, in the 1200s. The peasantry and nobility of the kingdom were Somoyi, but the merchants, craftsmen, and soldiers were Cuzeian. A capital, also named Metauro, was built on the south shore of the lake.

In 1626, as part of their machinations against Caďinas, the ktuvoks convinced the múrtani to conquer Metauro. This was not only miserable but humiliating: the múrtani were generally only raiders, incapable of harrassing an entire human realm; but tens of thousands of múrtani were enough to occupy the small country, especially when the Caďinorians were otherwise engaged. The múrtani were finally defeated in 1671.

The re-established kingdom continued in obscurity under the 2200s, when an ambitious king took over the scattered settlements along the Lernukh. This was a fatal miscalculation: the agriculturalists appealed for help to their nomadic kin, also Somoyi. The nomads sacked Metauro, and continued to hammer at the kingdom in the course of their general raids on the Caďinorian empire. The town of Metauro was burned to the ground in 2370, and the kingdom never recovered. After a generation or two, there were so few peasants left that they were left alone as having nothing worth raiding; the majority of the land was added to the nomads’ grazing territory.

By the 3000s, the military balance of power had shifted back to the agriculturalists. The kingdom of Bešbalic conquered the southern shore of the lake in 3150. Farmers colonized the fertile valleys, slowly overwhelming the Somoyi with sheer numbers. When Bešbalic itself declined, much of the settlement came from Benécia; the language of the region is therefore Benécian, though there are still Somoyi herdsmen in the hills.

Within a century they had occupied the whole lakeshore, and built a new capital, Ešan, on Ilio island off the eastern shore. When this withstood a concerted Somoyi counter-attack, in 3338, the town achieved enough renown to enforce its authority over the whole lake region; the new state is also known as Ešan.

Etymology: Meť. Meťauro honorific + ‘gold’, Keb. Meťeru; Cuêzi (Āeti) Beiriē ‘(lake) of mists’; Caď. Berundos ‘great mist’; Bar. Berunnor (from Berundos + -nor ‘land’), Ver. Bérunor