Belesao

From Almeopedia

Belesao [be24 le34 saɔ52] is the most powerful nation in the Bé, that is, the Beic-speaking cultural zone of northern Arcél. Its heartland is the Lɛn river, and its capital is the sprawling city of Jansɛ̀, one of the largest cities of Almea. Its language is properly Létɔˇŋ, but may, like the people, be called Lé. Its people belong to the Kibruise race.

Origins

Ecologically northern Arcél is a rain forest, and for thousands of years has long supported high human population densities, including permanent settlements, especially along the rivers. Among the Bé, the men were hunters and the women gatherers; discarded seeds geminated near the settlements, at first randomly, then encouraged by the women, though this at first only supplemented gathered food. Around -1000, however, the nawr ox was domesticated, and allowed fields to be more easily cleared and tilled, leading to a transition to full garden agriculture. Even today, plots are not cultivated permanently, but carved out of the jungle, tended for a few years, and abandoned.

Trade with Krwŋ, across the mountains, led to more sophisticated technology and cultural patterns. As it was the women who tended the gardens and thus were more likely to be found by traders in their settlements, they became the local traders. Power within the tribe shifted from men to women— the basis for the unusual female-dominated societies of the Bé.

States emerged around 500, and jostled for supremacy, leading to the Lé dynasty, which unified the civilized area in 1214. Though it collapsed some three centuries later, a victim of the ecological collapse of Krwŋ, the name of the dynasty was retained as the name of the people of the Lɛn valley.

Medieval empires

Ktuvoks fleeing the destruction of Munkhâsh attempted to form a ktuvok empire in the swamps at the head of the Lɛn in the late 1600s; this led to union of the Beic states and a rare male-dominated period, the Men’s Empire. The men however retained a queen as the nominal ruler of the empire. The empire fell in the 2000s.

Around 2100 the region was unified again, for the first time using the name Belesao. The new empire conquered Mɔlɔsɔu, but was itself conquered by Kemic barbarians.

The modern queendom

Belesao
2825
Native:	Bé Lé Sàɔ
Verdurian:	Belesao
Characteristics
Capital:	Jansɛ̀
Government:	monarchy
Ruler’s title	queen
Language:	Lé
Religions:	Beic paganism

The modern nation emerged in 2825 as the barbarians were pushed into the highlands. Several times it attempted to conquer its neighbors, Haoraŋ to the west and Mɔlɔsɔu to the east, with varying levels of success. In the 3200s the global rush for tea, grown in the central highlands of Arcél, led to a struggle between Uytai and Belesao for control of this suddenly crucial territory. In the last century Uytai briefly controlled the upper Lɛn. The Uytainese control most of the tea-growing region today, but they are unable to prevent traders from travelling north as well as south; the Kebreni buy most of the tea which moves through Belesao. Kebri conquered Pahsau to help safeguard its trade routes.

In the current century the Lé, used to being the dominant state in their half of the continent, have begun to realize that they are far behind the northern nations of Ereláe in technology, and vulnerable to economic and perhaps political domination. This has led to both angry reaction and slavish imitation— though it is not yet clear what aspects of Ereláean society to copy. There is little understanding of the Ereláeans' science or economic systems; a good deal of interest in their religions; and an intense interest in their technology. On both sides there is a good deal of confusion caused by Beic female domination: neither side really readily believes that the weaker sex can run a society. The Lé tend to assume that the Ereláeans must be violent and stupid, their advanced technology perhaps invented at home by female savants and wizards; the Ereláeans at their worst assume that the Bé they meet are sex objects cutely pretending to rule, and at best romanticize them as mysterious and strangely capable, like the iliu.

Etymology: In the Lé language, Bé ‘great’ (the ethnonym for all Beic-speaking peoples) + Lé (once a dynastic name, now an ethnic group) + sàɔ ‘country’; Keb. Belesau, Ver. Belesáu; Uyseʔ Hwaitai 'woman-land'