Oron

Chapter 3-1

The history of Attluma, the ancient island-continent, predates that of any known cultural history of the world, yet it is here that the languages, societies, and civilizations of the historical world have their origins. The gods and goddesses, the demons and evils of Attluma are the ancestors of the mythic beings that populated humanity’s earliest recorded imagination; the social advances of the greatest Attluman nations were much later paralleled by the cultures of Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the Mediterranean societies; and the time-dimmed story of Attluma’s sinking into the sea has been passed down as the myth of Plato’s Atlantis.

The north of Attluma reached into frozen seas and was entirely uninhabitable. The northwest, a mountainous triangle, was the home of barbaric tribes, some nomadic, others agricultural. The barbaric folk were dark-haired and dark-eyed, although later cousins, roaming into isolated forests beyond the mountains to the northeast, were blond or red-haired. In their time—before the recorded history of Attluma—these barbarians of the northwest reached a height of advancement marked by iron weapons, bronze and copper jewelry, weaving, domestication of dogs, goats, and cattle, and farming. They lived in large huts that accommodated entire families and were constructed of timber, thatching, and hides. These people were constantly at war, however, not only against each other, but also against the mighty evil creatures that held Attluma in t****l.

For before the dominance of mankind, the island-continent was the home of the earliest gods and supernatural beings, as well as all forms of animal life and strange plant life, including the most primitive. The gods and elemental demons and monsters, however, warred among themselves continually; tradition held that the demons and monsters had themselves created the island-continent as their home and that the gods and human beings were intruders upon their lands. Eventually the gods, wearying of the struggle, removed themselves to the heavens, leaving Attluma to the demons and to the aspiring tribes of early humans. This was the age of the Dawn, and the dark things reigned supreme. Mankind—the pockets of tribes in the northwest and the mountain people in the west, the tribes of the deserts and, farther south, the dark-skinned peoples of the jungles and far southern coastline—lived in utter fear, at the mercy of these powerful supernatural beings: Kossuth, who reigned in the fetid southern tropics of Kiaq; Ibkarai, the creature of the deserts and the jungle, at his capital in Ibkarad; Surthuth, who dwelt in the frozen north at Salaseth; Belthal, in the southwestern swamps; and their armies and hosts of lesser evil things—Setet, Bith-irim, Somodor, and Keft, Yasdis, Arkatu, and Imro, Delthis, Yem-yur, and Omidom, beings of rock and fire, of iron and storms.

As the northern tribes increased in number and ability, rude government came into being under the hands of the Two Families of the barbaric northwest: the People of the Sword and the People of the Flame. It is from the lineage of the People of the Sword that the great heroes of Attluma had their descent. It was of their stock that the mightiest hero of the First Days was born—Taïsakul. A great myth-cycle revolved around this hero, but little was known of him. His birth was semidivine, yet even the identity of the goddess who mothered him was not known to any philosopher or scholar—although, of course, the votaries of every feminine deity claimed Taïsakul. What was believed was that this hero was given the Brand of the Gods and, in a career of wandering over the entire island-continent, defeated the agents of evil and darkness. Taïsakul was able to banish them but not utterly destroy them. He sent them to Hell, or entrapped them beneath the oceans, or enclosed them in mountaintop fortresses, or sent them beyond the far stars. Yet sorcery and magic still existed, for the land had been born evil, and minor demons and unhumans continued to live on the fringes of spreading civilization; and it was always possible for human men and women to make covenants with dark things.

At his death, Taïsakul was revered as the greatest mortal of human history and was called the Na-Kha—“world hero”; and with his dying vision he looked down upon the broad central plains of his world and named all the lands enclosed by the seas at-lu’ama—Attluma—”given to humans.”

Na-Khaat-lu’amaThe tribes that had grown up around Taïsakul—those of the northwest who had followed him, those of the central plains, the dark-skinned people of the deserts and jungles—now began to inhabit different portions of the land. The north central and central regions of the continent were laced with huge rivers, covered with thick forests, wide fields, and great deep lakes. Here were territories that were to become Salasal and Logne, although Salasal’s later history was one of continual annexation by, and separation from, Logne—so that many times in history Salasal disappeared altogether, and rebel states with the names of Otos or Themera or Illuë sometimes took its place. South of what was named the River Odek and the huge inland sea of Lake Croir was founded Setom. Farther south was Csith of the desert lands and Kheba in the southeast of jungles. Terehem and Loksim sprawled huge and flat, covered by desert, steppe, and more jungle. To the southwest, still unnamed, lay lands of swamp, while directly north began a steep ascent of rugged hills, great gorges, deep passes, and mighty waterfalls farther north where the Serir River met the sea. Here began a mountain range that reached to the River Nevga in the land of the northwest barbarians.

As time passed, the dynasties founded by the followers of Taïsakul shattered, new rulers came to power, and empires were created; and so within a thousand years these were the nations of the earth: Salasal, half-barbaric and half-civilized; Argalon, taken from the northern expanse of Logne; Logne of wild fields and great forests; Setom; Samdum, along the forested eastern seaboard; Csith; Kheba, taken from Samdum; Loksim; and Terehem. Great caravan routes were established, and the natural waterways were used both for shipping goods and for warfare. People from everywhere collected in cities—and yet, beyond the cities, the unconquered lands were so vast that most of the world at this time was still primitive and untouched.

Bossus, a traveler and scribe to a king of Logne, left a record delineating his journeys, and he commented upon the diffusion of peoples and cultures in Attluma during his time. He did not visit the barbaric northwest, but he knew by hearsay of the blond people north of Salasal. Salasal, he said, seemed to be composed mainly of folk from the rude northwest, although the influx of peoples from Argalon and Logne had created in Salasal a mixture of cultures. Salasal, however, was not as cosmopolitan as Bossus’ own Logne, where people from all over the continent met, conducted business, and made for a diverse and exciting atmosphere. Logne anticipated the cosmopolitan, highly civilized world of Neria, a later nation that would not reach its peak in more than a thousand years. Along the eastern seaboard, said Bossus, journeying south, the people became shorter in build, darker in color, and more fiercely independent. The peoples of the desert were dusky, tall, and jealously proud, while in the jungles lived the Black races and the copper-skinned folk who had little to do with the bourgeoning cities and empires to the north. In his travels, Bossus collected many artifacts, documented many cultural customs and habits, and observed a wealth of religious practices. His writings were deposited in the royal library of Logne at Istidrul and were copied and recopied by generations of scholars.

Some hundreds of years later, however, by the time King Selthis ruled in the deserts of Csith, Kossuth, the greatest of all the early evil entities, made bid against the gods and Fate and sought to rise again to the lands of earth. Early seers and prophets had predicted such a time; primitive shamans and civilized seers all knew that the heavens and the constellations merged in a cosmic joining every thousand years, and that then even the ancient power of Taïsakul’s magic could not bar Kossuth’s ascent from Hell. The evil conquered and held the southlands of Attluma; all that had been gained was lost; for a thousand years, human beings of all lands lived under immense skies of utter darkness, sunless. The dead rose to life; demons and unhumans marched the plains and swam the rivers; death, decay, and corruption of the soul flourished. Civilization collapsed under the immensity of a world governed by laws of darkness, shadow, and sorcery. Humankind’s precarious hold upon the lands seemed lost and irrecoverable. It was not until this dark millennium had passed that a second great hero, the Na-Kha Amrod, of the lineage of Taïsakul, was able to defeat Kossuth once more and return him to Hell.

Na-KhNow the sundered nations began the painful task of rebuilding. The countries of Attluma became these: Salasal in the north; Argalon against the northeastern seaboard, and Logne, stretching from the Northeast Seas to the river valley of the sweeping Dnir; Neria, south of Logne, with its broad admixture of peoples from all countries of the continent; Setom, south of the River Odek and Lake Croir, a nation of bejeweled princes, civilized decadence, brilliant poetry, finely wrought art treasures, and the most beautiful women and handsomest men in the world; Samdum, carved from the north of Kheba, a mercantile nation first in shipping until young Khom usurped its position, whereafter Samdum settled into a lazy existence; Kheba, half-desert, half-jungle, still weak from its contact with the demon armies of the far southlands; Csith, now past its days of glory; Kostath-Khum, created from the western portion of huge Loksim, a shadowy land having little to do with of its neighbors, a province of swamps and rivers, deserts and dead winds; Terehem, a hot land, desert and jungle, exotic, and the refuge of human wizards, serpent people, the home of fiery lakes, haven for roving bands of desert marauders and pirates, its very atmosphere one of suffocating incenses and perfumes; Kustaka, most secretive of nations, protective of its idols and dark knowledge, its rulers said to be semi-demonic; and Ishdaris, a low nation that dealt in human sacrifice and worshipped living idols housed in jungle ruins, its shores populated by brigands and buccaneers who harried the lanes and islands offshore. These were the nations of Attluma at the beginning of the Middle Days, for now the First Days were past, the years that had lasted from the wanderings of Taïsakul to the end of the rule of Kossuth.

Cities expanded upon the most important riverways and along the overland trading routes: Shemsan, Sousos, Istidrul, Sum, Bakyon, Samrem, Cenre, Phros, Kabai, Kastakuk, Semneth, Ebra, Menth, Ishdor, Hakor, Endith-Enros. Governments were entirely in the hands of hereditary rulers, save for those few countries where change of government was not well administered and often led to bloodshed. Priests and priestesses, devoted to the early deities, held much power and prominence. There were also magicians and sorcerers who, rather than passively worship in temples and at festivals, secretly unearthed the languages, images, and magicks of the primal demons and the many supernatural agencies of the half-world. The city of Sorkendom, claimed as the site of Taïsakul’s death, became the capital of Neria, until a shifting population and continuing rise in commerce made Cenre, on Lake Croir, a more suitable locale. Sorkendum continued as a beacon for scholars, philosophers, and religious seers, as well as magicians and rebellious seekers of arcane talent.

The Middle Days was an era of increasingly large cities and metropolises, astonishing growth in business and trade, the dominance of very powerful nations and the fractioning and growth of other states: Ormos, Tol, Kormistor, Lusk, Amer, Miskor, and the loosely organized confederacies of the barbaric tribes of the north and northwest—tribes with an oral tradition of their great days before Taïsakul, the history of the distant Two Families. In the southlands, the peoples of the desert continued to live as they had for hundreds of years, despite their contact with civilized traders and explorers. In the jungle, lived societies still untouched by the growth of cities and business elsewhere. The extreme, inhospitable lands of the northern tip of the continent were named, for purposes of cartography, Arasnak and Kamish, but only in southern Kamish was endurance possible. Here—with their society stabilized by the guarding mountains north of Salasal—lived the descendants of the blond barbarians who had migrated south thousands of years before.