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Summa Venâriva: A Social History of Venârivè

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Summa Venâriva: A Social History of Venârivè

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Notes on the Text

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Preface

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The Beginnings of Venârivè

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“Where to begin?” It’s the first question a historian must answer in any manuscript, and it’s a deceptively difficult one. It is simple to ask, but the answer often sets the stage for everything else in the work. In this work we wish to trace the development of the entire intellectual milieu of modern Venârivè. We must begin, therefore, with the point where that intellectual community first becomes apparent.

For this we have chosen a date, bt300. It is a rough date - we could have chosen a time a little earlier or later. But it is close to the moment when the term ‘Venârivè’ can first be used to describe a coherent entity. ‘Venârivè’ is a combination of Venârian and Iváe, the two seas that link the region, but just a few centuries before our chosen date the region was hardly linked at all. Instead it was divided into four disparate networks. One network spread along the shores of the Eastern Venârian Sea and inland towards Mafán. A second covered the western lands from Emélrenè to the Járind sea-towns. A third connected the northern peoples - Quârph and Rekâri. And a fourth centred on Hèpekéria and Thónia, and was perhaps culturally closer to Anzelôria than to any northern region.

But between bt1000 and bt500, these four networks slowly became connected. Kàruían traders planted colonies in Hèpekéria and Ûmélria, while the Járind expanded their activities east and south. Behind the traders came lorists, missionaries, fortune-seekers, and refugees. By bt500 all four networks were well connected, after two more centuries the ties were strong enough that we can talk about Venârivè as a meaningful unit. While the cultures of Venârivè remained distinctive, all were influenced profoundly by their cohabitants in the region.

Venârivè c.bt1000

The ‘Classical Age’

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It is with some trepidation that we call the period from about bt1000 to tr1 the Classical Age. The term arises because much of the ‘classic’ literature and lore that is highly respected today was written in this period. Yet the term is misleading, in that the Classical Age was not a golden age of remarkable achievement. Granted, much was achieved that was worth remarking upon – as we shall see – but overall the level of culture was not markedly higher than in subsequent eras. Other terms sometimes used for the era, such as the ‘Foundations Period’, are too closely tied to events in specific regions to be useful in a work that studies Venârivè as a whole. Technological markers are impossible, since no particular technology marks the transition. While imperfect, ‘Classical Age’ references the most important cultural legacy of the era – the written works that are still studied as intently today as in the era they were written.

Widspread Literacy

While Venârivè as a region was a new thing, the cultures within were already old and accomplished. Everywhere, society was literate. Of course, the commoners rarely had access to the benefits of writing, but every culture had the ability to record its myths, traditions, and techniques. Writing allowed craftsmen to share their secrets, traders to plan their voyages, and rulers to record their edicts. And many cultures had their own literary tradition. As we will see later, some have not been exceeded in quality since.

It is possible that this widespread literacy was due to exposure to the elder races. The ruined empires in Mafán, Anzelôria, and elsewhere are also thought to be birthplaces of writing. Probably both statements are true. Writing seems to have been invented several times in several different regions, and no one culture can claim to be its only mother. Thanks to this diffusion, in bt300 no one culture can be seen as intellectually dominant. While not all societies were equally advanced, almost all groups made some contribution towards the advancement of the whole.

Connections and Centres

Contact among the cultures was routine, but economically ephemeral. Goods and people moved easily across the region. Not only do we find Járin jewellery in Hácherim burial crypts of the era, but a small colony of Járin craftsmen appear in the earliest known description of Hácherdad city, and many Hácherim nautical terms derive from the Járin language. Similar examples of cross-cultural contacts over vast distances can be found throughout Venârivè.

But economically, the scale of these contacts was too small to have much demographic impact. Cities remained small, and their prosperity was tied almost entirely to their ability to dominate their own hinterland. The caravan routes to the East brought only a smattering of goods from the ruined petty-states of Mafán, and the internal trade of the region was not enough to stimulate the specialisation that leads to city-building. Rampant piracy certainly didn’t help the traders. The largest Járind sea-towns held only a few thousand people, while the Kàruían cities were barely any larger. A few of the largest, such as Livélis, perhaps exceeded 10,000 souls at this time. But even Livélis depended much more on its olive groves and fishermen than on its merchants for its wealth.

The largest cities were not centres of trade but of worship. The temple-cities of the Târga Valley could exceed 20,000 in population, and smaller centres existed in many areas. Beréma and Chérafîr were two such centres. These cities were built on the religious needs of a society, and were usually the centres of an ethnic state. They varied considerably in character, but all followed a basic pattern. Each was centred on a large public space - a plaza or a thoroughfare - large enough for public rituals. Adjacent were two complexes - a palace that housed the prince and his military, and a temple or group of temples that housed the priests. Virtually all cities were walled, and larger towns had interior walls that segregated the classes - especially foreigners and low-caste workers such as street cleaners, butchers, and tanners. Streets were narrow and choked with mire. Larger cities had aqueducts, smaller ones used wells and cisterns, but these were always inadequate. Open spaces were few, and the absence of planning obvious.

Each city was the centre for a principality of commensurate size. Whereas little Chérafîr held only an ephemeral state within its orbit, Beréma controlled a substantial kingdom. City-states in Hèpekéria were in constant flux - their fortunes shifting with every dynastic change. But in the Târga Valley, the insular cities were immobilized by centuries of religious tradition, their rulers mere cogs in an immortal machine. We call these principalities ‘temple-states’, but they were not necessarily theocracies. While community life was centred mostly on the temple, the palace usually held the political power – though there were many variations. As we shall see later, these temple-states were under enormous stress in the centuries leading up to our period. Their reaction to the changing religious milieu would soon determine their path through the subsequent centuries.

Outside of these temple-states there were no other permanent polities. Only small states had the social cohesiveness to survive. While rulers might for a generation or so claim control over some large territory, these realms were extensions of the personal power of the ruler and lacked the permanent machinery of a true state. Upon the loss of the charismatic founder they inevitably fell apart.

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So, in politics and economics, as well as in intellectual culture, no city or place in Venârivè was dominant. Not that all places were equal - Beréma and Livélis, to be sure, were remarkable enough places to attract immigrants of many kinds. But as no single cultural force could dominate, Venârivè could host a melange of traditions. The opportunities for cross-pollination were endless, but there were disadvantages to not having any large, dominant centres. Some advances require scale. Some require a broad combination of skills to be brought to one place, some require a large capital investment, and some address problems that simply aren’t apparent until a society reaches a certain size. Technologies and ideas that fit these latter categories were stillborn in the Classical Venârivè.

Technologies and Crafts

But most technologies thrived. In many areas it is arguable whether there have been any significant advances since. In music - an art that benefits most from cultural exchange and least from central direction - there is no question that the accomplishments of the era compare favorably with any other. While styles have changed over the centuries, the composer’s understanding of his art has not advanced in any meaningful way. The crude methods of musical notation used in Venârivè have barely changed since, and all theories of rhythm and harmony are rooted in works predating bt300 and well known in the era.

The arts of sculpture and painting were similarly well developed. Technically, the works of the era are on a par with those of any subsequent time. There are a few pigments and paints that were not available, but artists did not lack any skill or theory. They did not often use any theory of perspective, but at least some artists were familiar with the properties of the horizon and could use one- and zero- point perspective to add depth to their scenes. These methods were based on observation rather than any mathematical theory. Sculpture was not particularly popular during the era, but though the skills of sculptors would improve in subsequent eras, there has been little change in technique.

In architecture, the assessment is more complex. Many of the key elements that would allow the building of the great cathedrals and palaces in subsequent centuries were already in place. Arches were common, and domes widespread.

Architects understood that the most vulnerable part of a dome is the central section, and for large domes they often replaced this part with a second, smaller dome. The result is an even taller structure. At least one doubly-compound dome was described by a traveler to Hácherdad – unfortunately the palace he mentioned does not survive. Several examples of arched pendentives have survived, most notably in the Counting House of Phanósia.

But the era lacked a comprehensive theory of load and strength, and more complex vaults and spans were beyond the reach of the era. In part this was due to lack of need. The techniques already described were more than sufficient to build at the scale the era demanded. But it was also due to a lack of analytical sophistication. Architects relied on experiment and tradition, rather than a theory of mechanics. The goal of an architect was to create a building that was in harmony with its purpose. Domes were favoured in large part because they embodied the sphere, and thus paid homage to the celestial powers. To use a different shape merely to be able to build larger would have been counter to their purpose. If a space was too large to be covered in a dome, then all effort was put into improving the materials and workmanship - changing the shape was unthinkable. The compound dome was an acceptable alternative, and one usually arrived at after a simple dome failed. There was little point in analysing the mechanics - no other form would be contemplated.

Venârivan architects worked in a variety of materials. And while they did not much study the mechanics of shape and weight, they understood their materials very well. Their designs took advantage of the particular strengths of their materials - of the elasticity and shear strength of wood, the compressive strength of brick, the durability of stone. Unlike Anzelôrians, who often carved stone columns to look like palms, the Venârivans never engaged in ‘petrification’. Even in their earliest works, the distinction between stone and wood was unambiguous. P’vâric philosophy almost certainly contributed to this attention to the properties of their materials.

Concrete and mortars based on quicklime were used throughout Venârivè, and examples survive in many aqueducts. A description of the harbour of Belán, now a ruin near Árlanto, written c.bt250 suggests that the use of volcanic ash to create hydraulic cement had been known for at least two centuries. But some scholars dispute the dating of Belán’s construction, and definitive proof is lacking.

Many cities featured a fountain near their plaza. These were usually fed by siphons, and although the head they could achieve was limited, they were usually still impressive. They were engineered to provide a large, bubbly flow, to evoke a sense of plenty. The sculpture usually followed animal or horticultural themes, and the overflowing water was a symbol of fertility. Examples survive in the Ázeryàn Empire, including the Pomegranate Fountain that still froths in front of the Eónian temple in Shomîro.

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The metalworkers of the era had over a thousand years of experience with iron, and countless more with bronze and other metals. Not surprisingly, their mastery left little room for improvement. The art of making steel through quenching was known to the Rekâri, at least. Other groups had the good fortune of finding iron deposits that naturally contained impurities that made good steel. The achievements of the smiths of the era would be exceeded in the following centuries by Târgan masters (as well as the Kúzhai), but their workmanship and metallurgy is still admired by modern experts.

However, whereas the quality of iron and steel works was high, the quantity of metal wares was very small. Blacksmiths were nearly the social equals of goldsmiths, and the bulk of their output was in the form of weapons and armour for the wealthy. Common households had few iron tools - usually just those necessary to make their everyday implements, and knives. Almost all farming implements were wood, including the ploughs. Peasant kitchens, too, were equipped almost entirely with wood and pottery.

Glassworking was also well developed. Glass was blown, usually using molds but occasionally using free-blowing techniques. Porcelain-quality ceramics were made in several regions, as well as more utilitarian thrown pottery. Enamel was used for jewellery and adornments. The emphasis was on making very high-quality products in limited quantities. The economy was dominated by the rich, and the middle-class was too small to support specialized industry. Almost all the surviving examples of these arts are exquisite, and their craftsmanship exceeds almost anything made since.

The influence of the ancients was most apparent in the alchemical crafts. The craft was very advanced in many ways. Distillation was a well-known technique for separating liquids, and several types of stills and alembics were in use. Various types of alcohol were isolated this way, including ethyl alcohol. However, if any beverages were so obtained, they are not mentioned in any trading records. Alchemists used filters made from a paper-like felt cloth. They even managed a limited form of cooling by placing a liquid called aculte in a bellows and expanding it – the reduction of air pressure causes the liquid to evaporate and absorb heat. A variety of chemicals were known, including the ari skatteros, which could dissolve gold. Many of these techniques have been lost in the centuries since, and almost nothing new has been discovered to compensate.

But for all this technical ability, there was no attempt to understand the principles behind the methods. P’vârism was the dominant means of understanding natural phenomena, and the six-fold system of elements was incapable of explaining such curiosities. There was no possibility of refuting or displacing P’vâric ideas - the success of the P’vâric system in generating magical results was indisputable. Anything that could not be explained by P’vâric principles was given an ad hoc explanation, or simply ignored as a trivial curiosity.

It is clear that the craft owed its precocious development to ancient sources - cultures that flourished before P’vârism had gained such a strong hold on the arcane community. Theories abound, and the truth may be that several sources contributed to the art. The riddle of alchemy’s origins is important, for it is clear that many secrets have been lost. If it is possible to extrapolate from what is known of this era, then the achievements of the ancients may have been wondrous.

Arcane Lore

But whereas alchemy was oddly precocious yet stillborn, arcane lore in general was thriving. Every culture had a class of arcanists, and the breadth of approaches to magic was tremendous. Many of these traditions have since been lost, or survive only in half-understood tomes and scrolls. Virtually every cultural group contributed at least one magical doctrine, and these ideas collided and combined with each other with exciting results.

While P’vârism was the dominant framework for understanding magic, the Shèk-P’vâr was not yet an organised body. But arcanists had already begun seeing themselves as a class apart from the kvikîr. Chantries were diverse in their membership, and arcanists travelled freely among them. The seeds of the Guild of Arcane Lore were already planted almost everywhere.

Whether the overall advancement of the arcane crafts was greater in this era than in subsequent times is debatable. There is no question that a lot of arcane knowledge has been lost as particular schools have fallen out of favour or chantries have fallen to disaster. But new developments have compensated, and the concentration on P’vâric techniques has probably led to greater advances than would be possible if efforts were spread more broadly. Overall, the achievements of the Classical Age covered a broader range of techniques and principles, but they did not penetrate as deeply as their successors.

In many areas the achievements of the era were considerable, but were hamstrung by a lack of scale. The region during this era simply did not have the concentrations of wealth required to create architectural masterpieces to match those built in subsequent centuries, or the critical mass of expert craftsmen needed to match the achievements of the Imperial Age. But though the era built few monuments that awe us today, or treasure troves that arouse our envy, it should not be seen as a backwards age.

Temple-States

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This religious milieu in bt300 was in a state of ferment. Innovation was everywhere, and the relationship between man and the gods was changing radically. To understand this revolution, we will first look at the roots of religion in Venârivè.

When reaching back to an even earlier era, we find countless religions available to study. In the pre-Venârivan world, every ethnic group had its religion, and each tribe or polity had its own cult centres and specific traditions within that religion. Among the Kàruíans, for example, every city had its own patron god or goddess. That deity was venerated both as the guardian of the city-state and also as member of the larger Kàruían pantheon. The colonies planted by a city would share the same patron, and the general position of a deity within the pantheon was closely related to the power and prosperity of the cities that venerated it.

There were variations on this pattern. Some cultures venerated one or two deities that ruled over the entire culture, though these were usually served by lesser demigods or spirits that might be worshipped by smaller groups. Some deities were worshipped by only a single city or petty kingdom. Pantheons evolved, with specific deities waxing and waning in importance. But certain aspects never changed. Every tribe, town, or principality had a well-defined religion that unified the community and set it apart from its neighbours and rivals.

The state cult was the basis for the social order. It was religion - not kings - that defined and unified the political unit. Chiefs and kings had an important role to play in the religion, but their legitimacy rested on their faithful adherence to the expectations of the cult. It was rare that the secular leader also ruled as high priest. Where this was the case, it was usually in egalitarian societies where the chief had very limited power overall.

Somewhat more common was the two-headed state where a secular chief and a religious high priest shared power. Perhaps the best-known example was among the Eméla, where the authority of the Dhéria-Ísvan was on a par with the Emélan king. By bt300 the Emélan state had evolved to a point where the relationship was no longer as direct. But even today, though Emélrenè is thoroughly polytheistic, the King of Emélrenè must be invested by the Siémist Dhéria-Ísvan to be considered legitimate.

Most tribes and petty states fell in between these two extremes. While the chief was the greatest power in the state, he also served a ritual function, and if he failed in his religious duties there was no chance of his retaining his position. The priesthood had the ability, even the duty, to correct a chief who ruled poorly or neglected the gods. The temple was a power independent from the palace, and served as a check on the power of the chief. The temple was usually also the tax collector, or shared in the collection, and provided whatever bureaucracy the petty state could support. In more advanced polities the temple usually coordinated the public works, such as irrigation and aqueducts. But the chief controlled the fighting force, dealt with criminals, and ran the foreign policy.

Thus, in almost every case there were two centres of power. The chief and his retinue, or in more advanced states, the prince in his palace, protected the population and maintained the physical order. The shamans and priests maintained the spiritual order. It was the latter that truly defined the community and made it cohesive. The boundaries of the tribe or state was exactly equal to the reach of the cult or temple.

Social role

Building social cohesion was the foremost purpose of every religion. It was unthinkable for a member to not engage in the religion. Such an apostate would be shunned by the community. As we shall see, this started to break down in the centuries before our era, and by bt300 only a few communities still had this level of cohesion. But all religions have in their roots a deep revulsion towards apostasy.

In many religions the connection between the god and the community was made explicit in the form of a covenant. Even where the connection was not explicit, every religion had an implied covenant with its worshipers. The contract was simple: obey the rules and prosper. Disobey, and face punishment. For individuals, the punishment was usually shunning. But the community as a whole was responsible to the deity, and disasters of all kinds were interpreted as punishments for the failures of the entire community. Often the king would serve as scapegoat - and sometimes he would be the propitiating sacrifice, as well.

But though the contract was simple, the specific rules could be complex. Dietary restrictions were common, as were restrictions related to hygiene. Some provided tangible benefits - laws regarding the butchery of animals certainly prevented the spread of food-borne disease. But many had no apparent utility. Some were nothing more than taboos, which to an outsider seem random and, although each taboo is trivial they can be overwhelming in number. These laws still served two important purposes. They served as markers for membership in the community, and they discouraged freeloaders - people who wanted the benefits of belong

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ing to the community but didn’t want to contribute in return. Circumcision, tattoos, and other body mutilations served both purposes particularly well.

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In this context, ‘sin’ did not mean a moral failure. Sin meant disobedience. One who sinned was considered ‘unclean’ - unfit for service to the deity. In some cases he might be shunned, but more likely he or she would be prevented from participating in certain community activities or rituals. The sinner could remove the stain through a propitiating ritual - often including the sacrifice of an animal or foodstuff. The details varied considerably, but the general pattern was consistent until new forces started to break up the religious milieu.

In this way, the religion formed the main means of dealing with petty crime. There were no police. Petty crimes were punished through the religion, by shunning and exclusion from community events, and were expatiated through ritual. Greater crimes were dealt with using the only stronger tools at the community’s disposal - exile and execution. Exile - which eliminated the opportunity for the criminal to ever expatiate his sin and restore his right relationship with the gods - effectively condemned the criminal to whatever hell the religion envisioned. Execution merely accelerated the process.

Sacred Places

In religions that had a physical temple or holy place, the temple was usually also a place of revelation. Most temples included an inner sanctum where only an elite group - often, only the high priest - was allowed. From this sanctum came revelations carried by the priest. The nature of the sanctum varied. It could be the apex of a pyramid or the grotto of a cave. It could house a golden idol, an altar, or an ever-burning flame - or nothing but shadows. The sanctum was the holiest place in the cult’s world, and was sometimes considered the deity’s home. It was the site of the holiest rituals, and sometimes, the source of revelation. This was a critical role - revelation was the primary means by which a cult could adapt to changing conditions. When conditions made the existing order untenable, nothing less than a command from the gods could allow its modification. Human opinions and desires were irrelevant unless they were understood as the will of the deity.

Myths

Not all religions had a well-defined tradition of revelation, but all religions had myths. Myths are expressions of religious truths put in the form of stories. They had many purposes, not the least of which was to rationalise the order. The origins and purpose of the covenant - whether the covenant was an explicit construction or was merely implied in the human-divine relationship - was explained through myths. Often the gods personified the relationship, and the covenant was portrayed as a specific contract between one or more gods and the people. More frequently the covenant was revealed in a collection of myths, each of which explained a piece of the order.

When a single god was the divine party to the covenant, the covenant god usually evolved the aspects of a supreme deity. Over time this could lead to schism, or at least spirited rivalry, as seen among the Kàruían states. The covenant god usually absorbed the properties of other deities in the pantheon, and the myths were slowly rewritten with the new protagonist. The other deities faded to the background, often to be demoted to mere spirit, hero, or demigod. Pantheons tended to evolve to include fewer deities of power, but a greater number of lesser beings.

Myths also provided a history, which is important for the self-identification of the community. Such myths often echoed the objective history of the group. The gods and heroes of defeated rivals often appear as giants, goblins, or demons. Sometimes communities merged, and this can be echoed in myths of gods joining the pantheon. It is too much to say that all the events in such myths reflect historical reality, but many clues about the past can be gleaned from them nonetheless.

While it is too much to say that myths were a substitute for science, they did give explanations of sorts for various natural phenomena. All religions had a creation myth, and most had myths to explain phenomena such as rainbows and thunder. But almost all of these myths had a moral element in them, and some were purely moral fables. Satisfying curiosity about the natural world was rarely the most important point of a myth – more often the main purpose was to reinforce the moral code of the community.

Thus the most common type of myth were stories of sin and punishment, or of sin and expiation. All the crimes known to a society appear in its myths, and the consequences thereof are shown in vivid examples. Virtues are rewarded and vices punished, all in accordance with the mores of the society. Among these stories there will often be found examples of a seemingly blameless hero being horribly punished. Inevitably some reason is revealed for the apparent unfairness - an answer that represents that society’s attitude towards life’s most vexing question.

Rituals

If the role of myth is to rationalise the order of society, then the role of ritual is to reinforce that order through constant repetition. Rituals were usually centered on a temple, but some cultures favoured natural places of power. Barási Points were often used as ritual sites, as

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were promontories, caves, and natural springs. A few nomadic groups brought their temples with them, in the form of a portable tabernacle or altar.

Rituals had several purposes. Foremost were the rituals of expiation and purification, which were necessary to allow sinners to reenter society, and for the society to remain true to the covenant with the gods. These rituals could serve either the individual or the society as a whole. In the latter case, the chief or king often represented the society, and the ritual legitimised their rule for another cycle.

It was not just sin that required purification. Many ordinary activities were considered polluting, and ritual purification was necessary before the polluted could rejoin society. There was a hygienic rationale for many such taboos – for example, contact with blood was considered unclean by almost every faith. The priests had no knowledge of germs, but experience taught them that a thorough and pious cleansing protected people from illness. This taboo went beyond just butchering animals, though, but was usually extended to any contact with blood, including from menstruation or childbirth. For some, merely touching a menstruating woman required a ritual ablution. This was not always disadvantageous to the woman. In a Zonâran legend, the wise Queen Alraba prevented a battle between her quarreling sons by summoning all the menstruating women to the battlefield and chasing the men away.

Ritual ablution is still a part of most faiths, but it has much less importance today. It survives in the confession and penance rituals of Laránianism, the butchering rituals of Peónianism, in the laving bowls of the Sávè-K’nôrans, and perhaps even in the Dezenaka ritual of the Navéhans. It is also seen in the low social status accorded butchers, barbers, and hideworkers almost everywhere. In most cities, these guildsmen are segregated, and often the jobs are dominated by immigrants. In part this is due to the stench and mess the jobs entail, but it is also an echo of the ancient blood taboos.

Some rituals were expressions of thanksgiving - of a good harvest or a successful battle, for example. Others were meant to obtain favour from the gods, perhaps in preparation for harvest of battle. Some religions had rituals to divine the future, but for the most part oracles and haruspexes existed outside the religious establishment. The relationship between priests and fortunetellers is usually ambivalent and sometimes hostile. Societies look to their religion to provide certainty in a chaotic world, and the capriciousness of oracles is incompatible with that mission.

Many rituals serve only to reinforce the sense of community. Such rituals include rites of passage, such as those that mark a young person’s entrance into adult society. These are almost always among the most prominent rituals in a society. It is indicative of how deep the crisis was among the traditional religions that in bt300 very few of these rites were still being practiced. Circumcision and other body mutilations had already been abandoned by all but a few groups. But the rites did not completely disappear. The ritual dubbing of knights can be traced to Atáni practices, and tattoos remain common for many groups.

Pantheism

It was the myths and rituals that truly defined a religious community. These things were jealously guarded and adhered to. About the gods themselves people showed a bit more flexibility. The divine milieu within the community was occasionally monotheistic - Ilvîr, for example, was almost always mythologized as having no companion. But pantheism was more common. Individual deities within the pantheon all had a role in the myths and rituals. But to worship a god outside the community pantheon was a betrayal of the community itself.

Not that people did not acknowledge the divinity of their neighbour’s pantheon. In fact, in some cases a community might even consider a rival’s pantheon to be more powerful than their own. The Ilvîran communities among the Járind were not the only group that took a sort of pride in the obscurity and eccentricity of their deity. But whereas ethnic pride certainly swelled the opinion of a deity among his followers, what attached the followers to a pantheon or deity was not how powerful the deity was claimed to be, but the body of myth and ritual that connected the human with the divine.

The technical term for following one deity or pantheon exclusively while acknowledging the legitimacy of others is Henotheism. Most of Venârivè today is henotheistic, but whereas in pre-Venârivan society the distinctions between pantheons were drawn between tribal groups, in tr720 the distinctions are largely a matter of social class. Ethnic religions have survived, particularly in peripheral lands such as Ivínia. But even the worship of ethnic gods such as Sárajìn has evolved to resemble a class religion in places away from the ethnic heartland.

It should be noted that the cross-identification of deities across disparate pantheons (syncretism) is a relatively modern fashion. While deities often crossed lines to join neighbouring pantheons, this was almost always a local phenomenon and the identification was straightforward. The gods of a defeated tribe might become the demons of the victors, or might be remythologized as servants. Popular deities might even be merged into the pantheon directly. So, whereas it is possible to trace the path of some Kàruían deities like Haléa and Eóni through the cities and colonies of that region, in bt300 only a few speculative minds would have considered the idea that the Kàruían Eóni was the same deity as the Áltic Syra. The era for such theological theorizing was still in the future.

Religious Change

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By bt300, the tribal religions were losing their grip in many regions. In peripheral areas, such as Ivínia, the community religions were still strong. And notably, in Hácherdad the temple-state survived all the way to modern times. But in most of Venârivè the traditional religions were in decline, and communities were under stress as a result. But the transition was far from complete. No new structure had yet emerged that could replace the temple-state or ethnic tribe. Until new institutions could be formed to provide order and cohesion, large polities would be impossible.

Part of the stress on the incumbent religions came from immigrants and trade. Outsiders are always a threat to social cohesion and are thus usually segregated as much as possible from the native population. Most cities of the era kept foreigners to specific quarters and made sure that their religious practices were kept discrete. But in most places these barriers slowly eroded, weakening the state religion in the process.

Missionary Faiths

But this is only part of the story. The greater challenge came from a series of religious innovations that occurred in the previous centuries. New religions appeared, their origins obscure but certainly based in conventional tribal faiths, but transcending their tribal origins. Each new faith was wildly different from the rest, but one feature that they shared in common was a missionary spirit. The desire to proselytise was foreign to the incumbent religions, and the advantage it provided would be disastrous to the existing social structure.

Àgríkanism

The first of the missionary religions was probably the worship of the warrior fire-god, Ágrik. One tradition places the founding of the church in central Lýthia at around bt1500, while another suggests Lysâra, but it is impossible to attach any dates or places with certainty. It almost certainly was a conventional faith, probably serving a community of Azéri peoples, and it may be rooted in older gods from the Vénic Isles. There is no evidence that at this time the faith had any missionary impetus. It seems likely that the worship was centred around a volcanic phenomenon, or, at least, the community that worshipped Ágrik was located in an area where fiery volcanic imagery was available for inclusion in myth and ritual. The faith also was probably centred around a physical temple where regular sacrifices could be held. This temple is echoed in the tradition of the 888 cairns, and Àgríkanism today is still strongly centred on physical temples. The veneration given the Balefire Chronicles is typical of that given to artifacts that embody the religious covenant. Although it’s possible that the Balefire Chronicles was an entirely new creation of the transformed religion, it seems unlikely that such a creation would arise from a community that was not already used to the covenant ideal. So it seems that Àgríkanism arose from a conventional temple-state, remarkable only for its vivid imagery.

But somewhere between bt1500 and bt800, when the first independent evidence of Àgríkan missionaries is found, the religion came unmoored from its temple origins. The cause must have been traumatic for the community and its priests, as it forced a dramatic change in the basic structure of the faith. We will look at the change, and from that derive some idea of what might have caused it,.

Certain things did not change. The need to sacrifice to maintain the social order did not. Arguably, Àgríkanism remains today the religion most faithful to the idea of sacrifice and propitiation. The Pàmesáni is much more than just a spectacle - it is a direct throwback to the original propitiation rites of the faith. The covenant has also survived with many of the features of its original form. Àgríkan moralism has nothing to do with modern ideas of good and evil. It is about obedience to an often capricious god, and the maintenance of a particular kind of community. That the community envisioned appears depraved to outsiders is irrelevant to the covenant. Ágrik promises order and prosperity for his dedicated followers - not a superior moral order.

We will note that in later centuries some Àgríkans, perhaps embarrassed by the shallowness of their faith compared to the more sophisticated religions that appeared later, began to alter the Àgríkan covenant. These innovations will be examined as they arise, well after the era we are describing here.

The difference between the original faith and the missionary version that replaced it was the nature of the temple and the scope of the covenant. The central temple was replaced by the idea of the 888 cairns. The number is, of course, a mythological term. It had a twofold meaning - that there were to be many temples, and that they should be built in every corner of the world.

Originally the covenant applied only to the temple community - Ágrik’s ‘chosen people’. But in the new religion the covenant applied not to an ethnic community but to an ethnically heterogeneous warrior elite. This difference radically changed the nature of the faith. Not only did it free the faith to spread to other places, it actually mandated the spread of the religion. The mandate was mythologized as the search for a champion - a search that required the adherents to spread out and find converts in every land.

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How can we explain this change to the Àgríkan’s concepts of the temple and the covenant? It is impossible to trace now exactly how and why the faith came apart from its moorings, particularly since we are not precisely certain just where the faith originated. But the evidence suggests that the transformation began when the original temple was destroyed in a cataclysm. Considering the imagery, a volcanic eruption might have been the culprit. Given the traditional connections between the early faith and the mountains of the Ázeryàn Peninsula, the possibility is reasonable. Apparently the temple-state was strong enough to survive the immediate cataclysm, but with its religious centre wiped out its myths and rituals had to be retooled. The covenant, which promised prosperity and order as long as the community maintained obedience to the temple regime, had to be reinterpreted. Throwing it out altogether was impossible - that would mean surrendering the community’s identity.

So the temple regime was replaced. Instead of being centred on a single temple, it would be centred on any location where adherents could gather. The covenant was removed from the temple and put into a book that could be moved and copied. Now anyone could be part of the covenant, regardless of their location or tribe.

But for a faith to uphold the divine order, it must be supreme within its geographic bounds. A faith that allows for an alternative to its vision will die for lack of cohesion. But the faith now claimed for its boundaries the 888 cairns – in other words, the entire world. Therefore the faith gained an imperative to bring all the world under Àgríkan rule. The earliest Àgríkan mission almost certainly was a militarily successful one, otherwise the idea would have seemed too absurd to survive. But the spread of the religion could not have been by sword alone - there is no evidence of widespread Àgríkan conquests during this period, yet the faith apparently spread as far afield as Hèpekéria and perhaps Mafán.

Àgríkan mythology portrays the early missionaries as bands of priest-warriors who built the 888 cairns all across the world. The stories of their exploits almost always follow a conventional pattern. The missionary leader challenges the champion of the ‘pagan’ tribe, slays him, and the tribe enthusiastically converts. These stories tell us much about how the religion sees itself, but only hint at actual events. It is more likely that a combination of military victory, political machination, and verbal persuasion were required to spread the faith.

PIC

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Àgríkan missionaries - whether they relied on words or steel - faced considerable resistance. Their message was a direct challenge to the incumbent religions they encountered, and they were often met with violence. It may be that Àgríkanism’s focus on the military caste came from the fact that the easiest path to missionary success was to start at the top. To the rulers of a temple-state, conversion to Àgríkanism provided an alternative to the strictures of the conventional temple. It weakened or removed the primary brake on their power. When Àgríkanism was a local community faith, it would have had to serve the needs of the entire community. But as a missionary faith, it could focus on just the ruling class, and evolve myths, rituals, and rules that best serve the warrior caste. We can’t do more than guess at the details of how the Àgríkan faith evolved and spread. But we can say that by bt300 the faith had reached almost all of Venârivè. In some regions the incumbent religions fended off the challenger, but in others it completely wiped out what existed before. Lysâra was definitely an important centre in bt300, but its claim to be the mother city of the faith is dubious. As we shall see, Lysâra’s position in the faith has been intimately tied to the power of the Amànasûrif. The myth of Lysâra’s antiquity is a crucial support for the legitimacy of the Amànasûrif’s position.

Navéhanism

Àgríkanism was the first missionary religion, but it did not have the field to itself forever. Some time before bt800 a second faith began to compete against it – the cult of Navéh. At some point it also jumped from being a community religion to one with universal appeal. It’s appeal would prove to be much broader than Ágrik’s, and it would spread across as great an area despite starting centuries later.

There is no question that Navéhanism is an ancient religion. The myriad demons and demigods that populate the mythos can only be the product of centuries of accretion. Navéh began as a moon-sky god, and probably was venerated by a temple-state similar to the one that spawned the Àgríkan faith. It is hard to guess just where it began. The Târga Valley seems to be the centre of the faith today, but the documented presence of Navéhans in Hârn at the Battle of Sorrows (bt683) suggests an origin among the Phâric peoples. Most likely, the Târga Valley was proselytised somewhat later. Regardless, the identification of Navéh with the moon and night sky suggests a deity sovereign over fate and order. Kèthîra’s night sky is extraordinary predictable, it’s orderliness apparent even to observers with the crudest of markers. Navéh could not have been a capricious deity, but a god who kept the machinery of the universe running like clockwork.

The myths of Hârsa-Návla and Sínan-khu-Hazâr suggest that the early Navéhan religion had a strong tradition of revelation. Hârsa-Návla is a place where only the chosen few can enter and receive visions from Navéh - which exactly describes the sanctum of a temple. So it seems likely that Navéhanism, like Àgríkanism, was a conventional temple-state religion. But somehow Hârsa-Návla changed from a specific physical location to a mythical citadel, and the religion picked up a unique apocalyptic doctrine. How it did so is not recorded - the earliest records of the Sínan myths came too late to preserve the necessary details. But we can make a fair guess of the process.

Some conventional religions have a tradition of prophecy - something entirely different from the divination of oracles, astrologers, and other soothsayers. A prophet was not an oracle but a gadfly - a preacher who pointed out the problems in society and called for their correction. Like the diviners, he made predictions of the future. But his predictions were based only on his understanding of the divine order, usually helped by a knowledge of human nature. Most prophets were relentless pessimists, insisting that the community was doomed unless it lived in more perfect accordance with the laws of the religion. But some were astute political observers, and some were moral thinkers of a high order. Not all societies tolerated them, but the few that did usually benefited from their candor.

The mythic founder of the Navéhan religion, Sínankhu-Hazâr, seems to be the heir of a prophetic tradition. His language and imagery is similar to many other prophets, and on the face of it is simply a conventional call towards greater piety. There is little in his literal words that suggest that he was attempting to create a new religion. He was apparently merely predicting the destruction of the temple-state if the population did not adhere to Navéh’s strict code. As such, he was following the template used by prophets everywhere.

The extent to which Sínan himself exhorted his followers to a higher degree of asceticism than that demanded by an already order-driven religion is hard to tell. Most of what is attributed to Sínan was written down much later under very different circumstances. Even if Sínan did tell his followers to “shed all fleshly ties”, in the prophetic context this simply meant to avoid the sins of the body - lust, gluttony, and laziness. He certainly attracted followers - the Fifteen Prophets, at least.

But there are two features of the Revelations of Sínan-khu-Hazâr that are not part of conventional prophesy. In the Revelations, Hârsa-Návla has been removed from physical reality. It has become a place outside the world, accessible only to Sínan and his chosen disciples. This is a revolutionary concept - a complete break with the temple system.

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The second innovation was the apocalyptic eschatology. Sínan’s apocalypse comes in the form of a war among the gods that would bring chaos to the world. In the aftermath, Navéh would restore order - at least, for his chosen followers. Not all religions feel the need to establish an eschatology, but many that do include an apocalypse followed by a heavenly age. What makes the Revelations unique is that the source of the apocalypse comes from gods beyond the native pantheon. An apocalypse myth is at its core a retelling of the sin-and-propitiation myth, writ on a larger scale. To include outsiders in the myth offends the sovereignty of the native pantheon. The Navéhans must have had a strong reason to include other gods in their eschatology. And it is notable that the end comes, not from fire or flood, but war.

One event suffices as the origin of both innovations. The temple in the state where Sínan-khu-Hazâr preached must have been destroyed by an outside army – probably after Sínan had died. Some of the details can be deduced from the Revelations. The myth makes a point of establishing that before his death Sínan took the Fifteen Prophets to Hârsa-Návla. This strongly indicates that at some point in time Sínan’s followers were in need of a new revelation, and at the same time the Fifteen Prophets required a boost in their credibility. They obtained this credibility by claiming that Sínan had anticipated the need for the revelation. It was a powerful myth.

Sínan had preached that if they kept to Navéh’s law that he would keep the community orderly and safe. Sínan’s followers did their best, yet disaster befell the community in the form of an outside army that razed their temple. They had three possible responses. They could repudiate their religion. They could admit to their own personal failings and confess to sins that merited destruction. Or they could reinterpret their religion. They could place Hârsa-Návla beyond the reach of their enemies, separating it from the now-destroyed temple. By stating that the Fifteen had themselves been to Hârsa-Návla, they could both establish the myth and also counter the attacks of any remaining traditionalists in the community.

With the original temple gone and its people dispersed, Sínan’s disciples began to proselytise in the broader world. It was probably a forced diaspora, as there is no indication in the Revelations that any part of the faithful remained in the original homeland. The Revelations were probably written well after the diaspora began. It’s portrayal of Sínan as a wandering preacher is an attempt to place the origins of the diaspora with the mythic leader, but all the details of Sínan’s life and preaching suggest he never travelled far from the original temple. But Sínan’s followers certainly did travel, and began recruiting followers from every culture they met.

So, like Àgríkanism before it, Navéhanism became unmoored from its original temple. However, the teachings of Sínan-khu-Hazâr differed greatly from the Àgríkan ideals. First, there was nothing about his teachings that limited it to a particular class. As we shall see later, the religion evolved in many areas to appeal mostly to outcasts, but the Revelations are clearly written as an appeal to all peoples. Sínan’s original message was intended to all members of his community, and the destruction of the temple allowed his message to be reinterpreted to apply to all mankind. No distinctions are made for class or ethnicity.

Secondly, the code of conduct it promoted was disciplined, ascetic, and appealing. To the members of a conventional religion, with its capricious demands and its unfailing support of a sclerotic social order, the ascetic Navéhans must have been fascinating. The Navéhans built no temples and made none of the propitiating sacrifices that marked conventional religions. The religion was uniquely personal. Instead of demanding arbitrary sacrifices and obtuse rituals, the religion encouraged a strict code of personal conduct. The new faith engaged the believer in a deeper way than any religion had before.

The creation of Sínan and his followers was not a complete moral theory. The motivation for good conduct was still the propitiation of a deity rather than any abstract ideal. A higher level of moral thinking would have to wait until more religions began to compete in the intellectual arena. But it was a considerable improvement over the comparatively arbitrary codes that it competed against, which helped it spread rapidly. The lack of temples also made a rapid expansion easier. By bt300 it had reached every corner of Venârivè.

Sávè-K’norans

A third religion broke the conventional mold as well - perhaps the earliest of them all. The origins of the Sávè-K’nôr faith are completely obscure. The myths regarding Eilár el Íronoth and his three companions are entirely conventional and tell us little of the historical truth. As we shall see in a later chapter, they were first recorded in their current form to give the church an Ázeryàn connection, which was important in the early days of the Empire. Even the date is an invention, meant to give the church the dignity of great antiquity without placing it so far in the past that the Ázeryàn connection was broken.

If there really was as Eilár el Íronoth, he must have been an organiser and missionary rather than a hermit in the Ázeryàn Desert. In this era he would have found chantries of arcanists already scattered about Venârivè.

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The members of these chantries had little connection to the local communities, and therefore no stake in their religion. As outsiders they would not have been welcome in the local rituals or appreciative of the local myths. They were separated by distance from their native temples, which left a terrifying hole in their lives. Rather than face a life separated from the divine, at least some arcanists chose to build a faith of their own.

Most likely, the members of these chantries would already have been familiar with one appropriate deity. As they studied the achievements of Mafanese lorists they inevitably were brought into contact with the Mafanese god of knowledge, Shávkan. Despite their limited familiarity with him, it would not have taken much effort for these lorists to build up enough rituals and myths around him to form a new religion. This process would have occurred in many chantries simultaneously, connected as they were through the peregrinations of their members. The role of a man such as Eilár al Íronoth would have been to regularize the faith, spread out as it already was.

However, it is doubtful whether the character of Eilár al Íronoth has any basis in a real person. Such characters usually are attributed with the composing of a holy book, and it is remarkable that a church which considers itself a mirror of Inor Teth, where the Vâr-Hyvrák resides, has no tome of its own. This lack suggests that the church evolved in multiple places roughly simultaneously, and the various strands of the faith unified in a slow process of convergence. A holy tome would have required a level of unity that probably did not exist until much later.

Like Ágrik, Sávè-K’nôr was worshipped by a particular social class. The faith had no claim to universality. But it was otherwise completely conventional. The rituals of ablution and the rites of passage that still characterise the faith have the same functions as the rites of any of the community faiths of the era. Only the definition of the community was different. At first the rites of the faith was practiced within the chantries, and there are few dedicated temples that date to this era. The faith certainly reinforced the evolving structure of the chantries, giving them more unity and regularising their practices. In this era, before the creation of the Guild of Arcane Lore, the line between the faith and the chantries was blurred, and the the two institutions would not become thoroughly distinct until they were struck by an intellectual crisis at the beginning of the Túzyn Era.

Impact of Missionary Faiths

By bt600 the missionary religions had begun to have an serious impact on the traditional religious communities of Venârivè. The spread of Àgríkanism was particularly devastating to the communities where it was successful. The defection of the warrior elite to the new religion destroyed the covenant relationship between the community and the pantheon or deity, and the entire edifice of myth and ritual could only crumble in response. Once the religion could no longer provide for the social order, it lost its legitimacy. The members of these communities began searching for new alternatives.

Not all communities fell to the Àgríkan onslaught. The relatively stable and cosmopolitan Járind and Kàruían city-states kept their faiths, though the similarly urban Târga Valley states were fertile recruiting grounds for both Àgríkans and Navéhans. A number of tribes - Alt, Quârph, Ivínian, and others - dealt violently with the Àgríkan interlopers, while some like the Bésha were won over. The temple-state of Hácherdad proved to be entirely immune, to the point where Ágrik and Navéh were treated as demons.

For those communities where the incumbent religion was crumbling, one available alternative was Navéhanism. But the asceticism that faith demanded made it hard to sell to the broad population, and nowhere did it become a majority faith. Instead, communities fell into the two most degenerate forms of religion - faiths that addressed the most fundamental human concerns in the most direct manner possible. They prayed to a mother goddess to bring fertility, and to a god of death to avoid a hellish afterlife.

Peónianism and other responses

Peónianism first appears as an independent religion in about bt600. Many pantheons include a Peóni-like goddess of maternity and fertility, and the appeal of this goddess usually remained strong even after the rest of the pantheon shrank in the presence of the new religions. It took centuries for these several mothergoddesses to coalesce into the universal goddess, Peóni, and even today there are substantial regional variation in Peónian myth and ritual. The church remains perhaps the most decentralized faith, and the most tolerant of local idiosyncrasies.

Peónianism replaced the temple system for the expiation of sin with a simpler idea. The temple was idealised in the form of Válon, the Peónian heaven. Sin was no longer a matter of disobedience to the ideals of the local community - the local community no longer had a unified set of ideals. Instead, sin was defined as disobedience to the ideals of Válon. And the expiation of sin no longer required a temple. The rituals could be performed anywhere.

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It was an good religion for chaotic times. It has particular appeal to the rural peasantry, who were finally free of their obligations to the central temple. For most, Válon was the most attractive vision of heaven yet seen. And the ethical vision was competitive with the Navéhans, but didn’t require the strict self-discipline that Navéh required.

In bt300 it was still too early to use the term ‘Peónianism’ to characterise the many mother-goddess cults. It would take several more centuries for the cults to fully coalesce. At the same time, it was also too early to characterise the many death-cults as Môrgáthanism. But they were nearly as widespread as the fertility cults - in fact, they were very often found together.

The need to propitiate the death god is a common feature in religions, and, like the desire for fertility, often outlasted the devolution of the community faith. Death cults will exist as long as mankind fears death. Like the fertility religion, the death cults varied widely from place to place. They generally required some kind of temple for their rituals, and the priests had a more powerful role. But there was no ethical content to their rites and mores. The death cult could not replace the old religion nor compete with the new religions as a central institution in the community. It was always a secondary cult - a deity that most respected but few followed.

Although Laránianism was just beginning to flourish in the last decades of this era, the discussion of its origin and growth properly belongs in the next chapter. Over the next thousand years all of the religions rooted in this era would evolve - some, dramatically. Religions would become more sophisticated in their understanding of ethics, eschatology, and theology. But in bt300 they were still young, and had not yet travelled far from their roots.

Emélan Religion

The path of Emélrenè shows precisely how the temple-state of the Early Classical Age evolved in reaction to the religious ferment of the age. The earliest Emélan religion consisted of a fairly conventional pantheon, the Kuélrhyn, headed by a forest deity, Ylvýr. Not all lead deities are sun, sky or earth gods who claim universal power. Some, like Ylvýr, are strongly associated with a geographic area or feature of particular importance to the community. Ylvýr headed a pantheon appropriate to the Emélan environment. It included Elarána, a hunting goddess; Beóna, a hearth goddess; Gáranik, a warrior god; Edâryr, a sea god; and a brother-sister pair, Zârenor and Úlana, who are the primary characters in the morality fables of the faith, with Úlana usually getting into trouble through her capriciousness or immorality, and Zârenor resolving the situation through his wits and magical power.

Some time around bt1600, the Emélans made a radical change in their religion. As contact with the Sinái increased the Emélans became familiar with their deity, Síem. Given the enormous advancement of the Sinái, the Emélans could not help but desire to emulate every aspect of their culture, including their religion. Perhaps at the invitation of the Sinái, the Emélans entered into a covenant relationship with Síem. The Covenant of Es represented a major break, and could only have been possible because the community found the Siémist covenant extremely compelling.

And for nearly a thousand years, the covenant worked brilliantly. That is a remarkable time for a relatively small state to exist and thrive within the same borders, and surely much of the reason was the domestic tranquility that a well-regulated religion provides. Neither the Àgríkans nor the Navéhans could get a foothold in the kingdom. The Àgríkan technique of co-opting the warrior class failed against the cohesive Emélans, and the Navéhan asceticism was less attractive than Siémist asceticism, the effectiveness of which the Sinái provided an immediate proof. As we have seen, the worship of Sávè-K’nôr did evolve among the scholar class. He was associated with Zârenor, and his worship was tolerated as long as the practice was confined to scholars who did not challenge the community rituals.

The covenant ended abruptly, though, with the disaster at the Battle of Sorrows. The Siémist covenant had been broken when the Atáni – many of them Àgríkan or Navéhan – forced the Sinái to abandon the Codominium and sever most of their ties with Emélrenè. Emélrenè was shaken as though by an earthquake as the social contract was suddenly nullified. Total collapse was entirely likely, as confidence in the templestate was shattered. The Dhéria-Ísvan responded by invoking the only other religious concept that had any credibility in the realm – the Kuélrhyn. The Covenant of the Eméla was declared in bt670, just ten years after the Battle of Sorrows. The Siémist Dhéria-Ísvan ceded most of his power to the king, who previously was a secondary power except in times of war. He also brought back the old religion, ceding the public square to the old gods and reducing the Siémist presence dramatically.

Veneration of the Kuélrhyn had never disappeared, but during the Covenant of the Es it was not relevant to the community rituals. The myths were still popular, though much of the meaning was forgotten. The perception of the deities had changed, as well. Ylvýr was no longer the centre of the faith – in fact, he appeared almost as a foreign deity, his connection to the rest of the pantheon was now obscure. Gáranik had been mythologized out of the pantheon some centuries before, presumably as people noted his resemblance to the hated Ágrik. Some time around bt1200 a myth

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appears in which Gáranik is expelled from the pantheon for stealing fire for himself. Edâryr and Úlana had been nearly forgotten. So Elarána and Beóna became the principle deities of the pantheon, and the temple district of Beréma was rededicated to their worship.

The new Covenant of the Eméla was clearly imperfect. The character of Elarána had to change considerably from her original archer-huntress form. She was now one of the central deities of a sophisticated state, and her worshippers began seeing in her aspects of a war leader. In particular, they had to see her as capable of keeping the Àgríkans on their borders at bay. In contrast, Beóna required little rethinking. Her cult eventually merged easily into the other Mother-Goddess cults that were coalescing as Peónianism.

Whether the cult of Elarána evolved into the Laránian Church, or Laráni first appeared elsewhere and absorbed the Elarána cult is an unanswered question. The great period of Laránian expansion started about two centuries after the Covenant of the Eméla and was led at least in part by Emélan missionaries. All this is consistent with an Emélan origin for the faith. But it is also possible that Laránianism arose elsewhere – the northern shores of the Sea of Ménkris, home to a horse-warrior culture, is often mentioned. In this theory, some time around bt500 Laránian missionaries convinced the Emélans that their Elarána was cognate with Laráni. Nothing rules out either possibility. What is known for certain is that most Emélans believe that all three ‘white gods’ – Laráni, Peóni, and Sávè-K’nôr – were first venerated in Emélrenè. They credit this to their own superior spiritual awareness – the gods reveal themselves first to those most capable of understanding.

Sources and Spread of Ideas

Tracing the origin of specific ideas and methods found in this era is a challenging task. To start, there is very little evidence available. There are very few manuscripts that can be be reliably dated to this era - many that are believed to be this old are actually much younger. Scholars commonly attribute their own works to more ancient masters. The practice is so common that it is not considered fraud at all. Placing an ancient author’s name on a work is a form of homage, and is considered acceptable as long as the style and content seems appropriate. Digests - collections of materials from multiple sources – often have the stain of plagiarism erased by attributing the work to a great master, preferably one that is centuries dead. Most readers accept the practice uncritically - accepting without conscious irony autobiographies in which the author dies in the next-to-last chapter.

As a result, very few works that are attributed to the legendary scholars and writers of this era are authentically ancient. The best source of information is usually from digests that are known to be much younger, but which contain excerpts from ancient sources. It takes a practiced eye to discern these passages and extract them from their modern context. It also takes a gadfly’s willingness to flirt with heresy - or at least, a disregard for ancient authority. Unfortunately, the main result of this sceptical and analytical approach is to realize how little is really known.

But if we can’t trace individual ideas with any precision, we can at least trace broad styles and schools of thought. Individual scholars are too obscure to discern, but cultural influences can be deduced by analysing language, style, and content. Myth and tradition have to be considered as well. But no one source can be accepted uncritically. To accept linguistic evidence alone ignores the fact that ideas can be easily translated across languages. Style and content are more durable, but scholars looking for parallels often misinterpret similarities as proof of common origin when in fact they are coincidental or the results of parallel evolution. And tradition is the least trustworthy source - and yet usually is the evidence that is most vehemently defended.

We will not attempt to trace any particular idea or style through this era. Instead we will describe the pathways by which most have travelled, and the most important sources from which they originated. Venârivan cultures were children with many parents, many of which were highly advanced. As literacy was widespread, elements of these older cultures could spread broadly and penetrate deeply. Literacy allowed ideas to travel haphazardly, but certain pathways were followed again and again.

Eastern Influences

The most important path led from the East. Cultural elements that originated in Ch’mísa or even ancient Molkûra travelled west, first through Mafán, which added elements of its own devising, and then to Venârivè. The route fell into decline after the collapse of the Mafáni Empire in the mid-Sixteenth Century bt, and for most of the subsequent millennium-plus the cultural exchange between Venârivè and the East was comparatively limited. But despite the long drought, a huge amount of Venârivan culture came from Eastern roots.

There were three main paths by which Eastern ideas were introduced, and over the centuries each varied in importance. The most travelled path followed the Târga River, and throughout our era the cities that dotted that route styled themselves as survivors of the lost Mafáni Empire. With the conservatism that has always been characteristic of the Târga Valley, the city-states

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did their best to imitate and preserve the remnants of Mafáni culture that they inherited. While this was plain enough in their crafts, it was even more apparent in their religion. The temples of the Târga Valley were mostly built to the same gods as in Mafán. Shávkan and Zârath predominated - interestingly, two gods of knowledge and craft. The path went both ways - the worship of Navéh and perhaps Ágrik spread to Mafán during this era.

The Béshakan Desert was a second conduit for Eastern ideas. But the Bésha nomads and Hácherim city-states were more resistant to adopting Eastern habits, and the culture did not penetrate very deep. Hácherdad served as a buffer, allowing ideas through while stripping them of most of their political and social power. On the other side of this barrier were the Kàruíans, who sifted through Eastern ideas and assimilated many that provided direct benefits, yet still preserved their own cultural identity.

The third conduit was in the north. Various Ketâri tribes controlled portions of the northern plains over the centuries. At times the situation was quiescent enough to allow significant trade to pass from Ch’mísa and its environs to and from Venârivè. But even when the routes were closed, ideas still percolated through.

Anzelôrian Influences

Foreign influence came from the south, as well. Traces of ancient Anzelôrian magic and lore can be found everywhere south of the Venârian Sea. There are two paths by which the legendary jungle empires influenced the region. Although maritime connections were limited - the Faláni trade culture did not exist yet - overland connections through Tuvâra and Thónia existed throughout this era. Much of what is now Býria was culturally more closely connected to the South than to the rest of Venârivè.

But the more intriguing connection to Anzelôria came through the survival of an Anzelôrian templestate in the Târga Valley. How such a city came to be is completely unknown, but in bt300 M’ji’mbali still stood as a bastion of Anzelôrian culture in the Târga Valley. The temple-state venerated the Anzelôrian god, Kelána, and although the population spoke Târgana, they were noted for their swarthy skin, unique dialect, and especially their arcane knowledge. The city was reputed to be a thousand years old when it was sacked and utterly destroyed in the wars that birthed the Târgan Empire. The worship of Kelána went underground under Târgan rule. But it reappeared in the Dalkésh pantheon centuries later; kept alive, apparently, but the descendants of the M’ji’mbalites.

Considering the esoteric paths by which Anzelôrian lore reached Venârivè, it was inevitable that all things Anzelôrian would be imbued with a dark mystical reputation. In M’ji’mbali memories of a jungle empire were kept alive, but when that city was destroyed most of its myths and records disappeared. This paucity of reliable sources merely fed the imaginations of adventurers and scholars, and the legends of jungle ruins overflowing with treasure grew. The legends still grow, fed now by the trickle of gold that flows along the Tuvâran trade routes from obscure southern sources.

Influence of the Elder Races

The Elder Races - particularly the Sinái and Kúzhai - had an impact on Venârivan culture entirely beyond proportion to their numbers. The Kúzhai influence was widespread, as they had several cities scattered all across northern Venârivè. It is possible that they taught humans the art of writing, as well as many techniques in working stone and metal. As tempting as it is to believe this, it is more likely that most Kúzhai influence was through example rather than direct instruction. The Kúzhai’s neighbours often appreciated and imitated Kúzhai artistic styles in jewellery and metalcrafts, but there is little evidence that the Kúzhai shared their methods. Only in stonework is there clear evidence of Kúzhai providing direct instruction to humans. Humans have often employed Kúzhai masons, who in turn hired human apprentices. The quality and style of stonework in the areas where Kúzhai have been employed - that is, Western Venârivè - show the results.

There is some evidence that the Sinái took a more active role in their neighbours’ development. In heraldry, for example, the Sinái clearly did more than lead by example. Almost all the Sinái influence came from their relationship with the Járin of Hârn. The Sinái ruled over a Járin population during the Hârnic Codominium, and these Járin absorbed an appreciation for the artistic styles of the Sinái, knowledge of crafts such as glassblowing, and other cultural elements such as heraldry and Siémist mysticism. The Járin adapted the Sinái culture to match their needs and abilities, and shared it through trade with their relatives on the continent. After the end of the Co-dominium the Sinái no longer took a direct interest in human affairs, but their influence continued to spread anyway, carried in the hulls of the sea-traders of the Járind ports.

Internal Developments

Not all cultural advances came from outside. Much Venârivan culture is entirely the product of its indigenous peoples. Groups such as the Númec of Hèpekéria, Bésha of the eastern deserts, and Alts from the north contributed stylistic elements, at least, to the milieu. But few technological advancements or important intellectual concepts came from these groups. Intellectually, as well as physically, they remained on the periphery.

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But one group that began on the periphery eventually grew to provide much of the core of Venârivan culture. The Phâric peoples - actually, a collection of only loosely related tribes - are the source of many of the most fundamental concepts in Venârivan culture - religious , political, and social. In later chapters we will trace a number of ideas to their Phâric roots. In bt300 they were still relatively backwards, with scant urbanisation and an unremarkable material culture. They had been forced from their original homeland over a millennium earlier by the same Ketâri horsemen that conquered Ch’mísa and redrew the map of the East. They responded by pushing into every gap in the defences of the Járind, Alt and other peoples in the West. Contact with new cultures and the stress of incessant warfare caused the Phâric tribes to refine their own institutions, and their military success ensured that their innovations would survive.

Cultural Dispersion and Transmision

Two other cultural regions within Venârivè deserve particular attention, less for their original contributions than for their role in assimilating outside influences and retooling them in original ways. Both the Eméla in far Western Venârivè and the Kàruía of the Vénic Islands near the opposite end of the region had a remarkable genius for digesting the achievements of others and advancing them in new directions. Geography certainly was a factor - both were central nodes where trade routes from several directions met. But stabili y was also important. Neither region suffered overmuch from external attack or internal stress. Their institutions grew and matured with few setbacks, giving them influence throughout Venârivè far greater than their demographic weight would indicate.

The Arcane Eméla

The Eméla are known first as masters of the arcane, but this gives them too little credit for their achievement in other areas. In later chapters we will examine in considerable detail their role in the regularising of several churches and in adapting Phâric political ideas to create the modern feudal state. As of bt300, these accomplishments were still in the future. But the Eméla already were leaders in matters of the esoteric.

For their leadership, the Eméla owe much to the unique character of their land, which contains a remarkable number of places of arcane interest. But they owe as much or more to the close relationship the Eméla shared with the Sinái during the Hârnic Codominium. Almost all of the legendary mages of the era had ties to Hârn, and presumably, the Sinái.

So, though Tódwhyr (c.bt1400) and Úlmeràllawn al Mallóch (c.bt1050) were Emélan, they are both closely associated with sites on Hârn. Barási al Kýnvallwyn (b.bt780) spent most of his career in Mèlderýn while the Sinái still ruled Hârn, and he almost certainly based his writings on knowledge shared by the Sinái. Tarl al Barún (b.bt936) seems to be the exception. He is the only major arcanist of the age that is not closely associated with Mèlderýn, Hârn, or the Sinái. But he is also best known as an organiser and compiler of alchemical lore, rather than an original thinker.

The relationship between the Sinái and Emélrenè is still embodied in the Dhéria-Ísvan. The Siémist High Priest was the religious head of the original templestate and he remains a figure of power in Emélrenè. According to Emélan tradition the Sinái King Daélda established the office, and through him the Sinái King Áranath delegated to the Emelene the task of guarding “the land between the rivers.”

Emélrenè became much more than just a conduit for Sinái ideas. It also attracted scholars and craftsmen from all of Venârivè, making Beréma an entrepot for ideas. At the same time, Livélis and other Kàruían towns were fulfilling a similar role in the Eastern Sea. The Kàruíans were exposed to Eastern culture through their trade with the Târga Valley and, indirectly, Hácherdad. Their colonies on the southern Venârian shores brought them into contact with Númec, Tuvâran, and Anzelôrian culture. Through Ûmélria they touched the Ketâri as well as Phâric tribes. And they traded with the Járind states of the West, and attracted immigrants from there.

Kàruían Thought

In arcane matters, the Kàruían city-states could not match the Eméla. Where the Eméla can point to a half-dozen or more arcanists of legendary status during this period, the Kàruíans can only point to Damókra el Abdêra, the founder of a chantry in Livélis in about bt900. The Livélis chantry, writing in Damókra’s name, introduced a considerable body of Eastern alchemy and astrology to the West, and made some new discoveries in mathematics. But Livélis would never challenge Beréma for leadership in this area, and would eventually be eclipsed by a colony on the Ûmélrian shore, Lekûria.

But as a melting pot for art and ideas, the Kàruían ports were unparalleled. Perhaps the greatest cultural figure of the age was Damókra’s contemporary, the poet and playwright Shéran el Kólchra. His Lay of Léios, which presents the foundational myths of the Kàruían people as deeply moving stories of personal tragedies and triumph, is still considered the finest epic ever written. Shéran’s mastery over pathos continues to inspire inquiry into the human condition. The Kàruían people have never relinquished their leadership in poetry and drama, and in later centuries their pursuit of artistic excellence would lead them to advances in ethics, politics, philosophy, and even theology.

Attitudes and Perspectives

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The closing centuries of this age were an era of change and stress. New religions undermined the ancient social order, new trade routes brought new juxtapositions of ideas. States were small and weak. Materially it was an unremarkable age, with few monuments built or famous treasures hoarded. As we have seen, the craftsmanship and lore of the age was well advanced, but the weak social structures could make little use of their assets.

From the era came little to excite a modern treasure-seeker, but from it emerged the key traits of Venârivè’s intellectual milieu. Arguably, the Venârivè of bt300, though advanced in many ways, was still just copying from its various elders. That which was original was generally not very advanced. But this would change in the subsequent centuries, due in large part to two attitudes that emerged in the last part of this era.

The first was an attitude of cosmopolitanism. It is remarkable in the tales of the era that the ethnic origin of travelers is rarely mentioned. Characters are usually described only by their occupation. Only if it is important is their home city mentioned. By bt300, class identification was growing to be stronger than ethnicity. It was supported by the emergence of new religions that appealed to class, as well as by the weakness of the ethnic states. This attitude made possible the emergence of the chantry system and, eventually, the Guild of Arcane Lore. The Mángai would come a little later, following the template pioneered by the lorists. There were few impediments to the growth of such regional institutions.

The second attitude was an acceptance of a diffusion of intellectual authority. Venârivan scholars learned to tolerate conflicts among authorities - they considered it the inevitable price for speculation. Their fetish for antiquity is still a part of Venârivan culture, but it was tempered by experience. It is impossible to study, say, both Ch’mísan and Sináin ontology without being struck by the apparently irreconcilable differences. But by bt300, scholars had learned to accept both sides of such disputes as true within their own context. Debate was encouraged, and while appeals to ancient authority were highly respected, they were not considered definitive. Appeals could even be made to obscure authorities with some success.

While this attitude certainly encourages speculation and prevents popular ideas from devolving into dogma, it also discourages any attempt at systematic thinking. There has been no successful attempt - and few attempts whatsoever - at a general theory of physics or chemistry in Venârivè. A general theory would require the explicit refutation of multiple masters and their specific theories. Very few scholars would even think that such a thing was logically possible - it contradicts the fundamental principle that all truth exists within a context. A universal truth is by definition without a context, and therefore insensible. Even if a scholar could talk himself past that irrefutable point, it would require the ego of a megalomaniac to make the attempt.

There are other reasons why systematic thought never penetrated very deep into Venârivan thought. The extreme regularity of the Kèthîra heavens made astronomy too simple. The planets travel with such regularity - perfectly synchronised in circular orbits - that even the crudest observations suffice to reveal its principles. Nolocentrism - the model of the heavens in which all the planets, including Kèthîra, revolve around the sun, has been the standard astronomical model since at least Molkûran times. No alternative has ever been seriously proposed. Accurate astrological charts can be constructed from naked-eye observations by merely watching the relative position of the moon, planets, and the stars along the ecliptic. Not surprisingly, astronomical equipment remains crude, and the mathematics of astronomy - that is, spherical trigonometry - is almost non-existent.

Some trigonometry came to Venârivè, probably through Mafán, for the purpose of surveying and building. But there was no stimulus for developing geometry any further. Without the foundation in geometry, algebra and axiomatics could not get started. It is unlikely that Venârivan scholars would even appreciate the axiomatic approach to mathematics, considering their disdain for absolutes.

But in other areas of mathematics, the Venârivans were extremely precocious. Given the regularity of the heavens, Venârivan astrology is an exercise not in trigonometry but number theory. Their understanding of combinatorics was remarkable, and included the rudiments of group theory - The Ch’mísan Remainder Theorem was just the starting point for their investigations into prime numbers. They applied continued fractions to number theory, and could even calculate such values as the square root of two to any level of precision.

The Venârivans had no problem with dealing with infinities and irrationals. In fact, the existence of irrationals was known to the Molkûrans, who proved it as a property of the orbits of heavenly bodies. But no specific example was known until the ‘golden ratio’ was proven to be impossible to express as a precise fraction by a Kàruían scholar c.bt450. (The credit is given to Damókra el Abdêra, but this is extremely unlikely.)

Mathematics barely touched the realm of arcane lore. Those few alchemists with a numerical bent could quantify some physical properies - duration, weight, and length - but stumbled at anything that could not be directly measured. Density and momen-

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tum were treated as qualities - like hardness or color - not quantities. Speed was quantified - perhaps because at some point an alchemist watched a pilot on a ship - but acceleration was not precisely understood. Temperature could only be described qualitatively. The alchemists have never considered the quantification of physical properties to be important. Like the patisserie who judges the temperature of the chocolate by how it feels on his hand, the alchemist of Venârivè prefer to emphasize the personal over the mechanical.

Most of these deficiencies would never be overcome in Venârivè. But some of the areas in which the region was backwards in bt300 would eventually be areas of brilliant achievement in later centuries. The small and simple states of the era had little need for social or political theories. There are no speculations in the written corpus of the era on Law, Economics, or Politics. The states had almost no bureaucratic machinery, and therefore no need for experts in any of these areas. The states did promulgate edicts, of course, but there is no evidence of any legal theories being applied by even the cleverest rulers. The annals of rulers and events that were collected were given only the slightest glosses. Important events were mythologized, while lesser events were inevitably forgotten. No one thought to study the past for clues to the future. History was not yet invented.

Chronology (Before BT300)

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c. bt20000 Earthmasters arrive on Kèthîra.

c. bt15000 Earthmasters depart (‘lost years’ begin)

c. bt10000 Siém and Sinái settle on Hârn

bt7190 Kúzhai present on Kèthîra;

foundation of Kúzhan city of Mêrdáin

c. bt7000 Siém departs Hârn with many Sinái;

c. bt5300 civilisation in Mafán

c. bt5000 Járind people descend from sacred caves in the Mountains of the Moon (Ûmélria);

approximate date of first Númec Rock Art in the Dùrqúdani region of Hèpekéria

c. bt4290 Empire of Mafán founded

c. bt4000 Yârhin (Járind) settled in Quârphor and Lánkor

c. bt3700 Second Númec Rock Art period begins

c. bt3500 Járind Zéran migrate to Zêrhanor (Ázeryàn)

c. bt3500 Járind Émhlè migrate through Lánkor

c. bt3300 foundation of colony of Mokôra, Mafán

c. bt3200 Járind Yârhlè migrate to Huriséa

c. bt3100 Járind Émhlè reach Zonâr (Tríerzòn);

Târga River culture first emerges

c. bt3000 Járind Émhlè reach western shore of Lýthia;

Járind Zónawè migrate to Zonâr (to bt2400);

colonisation of Chògôrana coast by Mafáni

c. bt3000 Kuélrhyn pantheon worshipped by Eméla

c. bt2900 henge culture in west Shôrkýnè;

Kingdom of Nálhaan (Upper Târga River valley);

colonisation of Shénti coast by Mafáni

c. bt2800 Vénic Island culture (Azéri)

c. bt2700 henge culture on Mèlderýn;

Third Númec Rock Art period begins

c. bt2300 Kingdom of Nálhaan extends to Târga mouth;

creation of ‘Golden Empire’

c. bt2100 fall of ‘Golden Empire’ (Târga River valley);

Vénic settlement on mainland Zêrhanor

c. bt1900 linear henge culture begins

c. bt1750 Ketâri militarism enabled by iron-working technology

c. bt1700 Phâric peoples driven west by Ketâri

c. bt1600 foundation of Emélan tribal confederation;

‘Covenant of the Es’ established.

c. bt1550 Empire of Mafán falls to Màfakéta nomads

c. bt1500 Ilpýlen delivers the word of Ágrik;

‘Traditional’ foundation date of Àgríkan religion

beginning of Vénic Dark Age;

c. bt1500- Àgríkan tribal religion becomes separated from

bt800 its temple origins ~ CHECK

c. bt1450 Quáandehn / Màfakéta alliance, conquests

c. bt1430 Great Betrayal of the Quáandehn; conquest of Târga River valley by Màfakéta nomads

c. bt1400 fl. Tódwhyr, Emélan Arcanist

c. bt1400 Yaríli migrate to Iváe

bt1388 first walls of Beréma constructed

bt1340 Uphâri defeated by Eméla in Álagon;

closing of Emélrenè

bt1307 Uphâri defeat Shóna Alliance, take Plain of Káretan

bt1300 Járin migrate to Hârn;

bt1286 Co-dominium on Hârn under King Daélda

bt1198 first Phâric (Atáni) confederation founded in Tochéma (Palíthanè)

bt1180 Tochémi-Emélan Wars (to bt900)

c. bt1170 Kingdom of Chúaanagûrlla, Târga River valley

bt1120 ‘foundation’ of Livélis, start date of Kàruía calendar

c. bt1100 Principality of Mokôra is leading Mafáni state;

approximate end of Númec Rock Art period;

c. bt1050 ‘traditional’ date of the foundation of the Church of Sávè-K’nôr by Eilár al Íronoth fl. Úlmeràllawn al Mallóch, Emélan Arcanist

c. bt1000 rise of Kàruía city-states in Venârian Sea;

c. bt970 Árgollûr Uprising, fall of Chúaanagûrlla.

c. bt950 Járind hill-forts on Chel and in Hârbáal

c. bt946 birth of Damókra el Abdêra, near Dúrien

bt936 b. of Tarl al Barún, Emélan Arcanist

c. bt910 unification of Árganaal kingdoms (Târga River)

bt904 Tarl al Barún begins to lecture at Íshranor

bt903 foundation of Damókra’s chantry, Livélis

c. bt900 composition of the ‘Lay of Léios’ by Shéran el Kólchra

c. bt900 Ivíni begin migrating to Iváe;

Phâric peoples (Atáni) begin raids on Hârn;

beginning of the Atáni Wars (to bt683)

c. bt895 Damókra devises the Kàruía Calendar

bt873 death of Damókra el Abdêra, Livélis

bt870 b. of Barási al Kýnvallwyn, Arcanist

bt750 ‘traditional’ date Church of Navéh’s foundation

c. bt700 height of Járind hill-fort culture (Hârbáal, etc.)

bt683 Battle of Sorrows on Hârn; fall of King Daélda Navéhan presence attested at Battle

bt680 Great Abdication, end of Hârnic Co-dominium

bt670 foundation of Kingdom of Emélrenè;

establishment of the ‘Covenant of the Eméla’

c. bt650 beginning of the Eldritch period of Mèlderýn;

Álantra is centre of a Zonâran petty-state (to c. bt200)

c. bt600 Missionary religions have had significant impact on traditional religious communities across Venârivè

c. bt600 ‘traditional date’ of foundation of Peónianism;

Kàruían states develop on coast of Býrios

c. bt550 Quârphic Phâri begin to migrate west

c. bt500 last of Ivínian migrations to Ivínia

c. bt450 height of Járind sea-town Culture;

break-up of Árganaal Kingdoms Confederation (Târga River valley)

Kàruían scholar(s) determines that the ‘golden ratio’ cannot be expressed as a precise fraction

c. bt400 Sôrki (Shôrka) tribes reach Álagon;

Tríeri (Tríerzi) in north Zonâra (Tríerzòn);

Ivínians dominate Iváe;

end of Eldritch period of Mèlderýn (Hârn)

c. bt380 Táneri conquer significant areas of Thánema;

conflict involving Emélrenè (to c. bt250)

c. bt370 traditional date of foundation of the Church of Laráni

Ôrthas the Defender recorded in court annals of Emélrenè

c. bt350 Thánemi culture in Palíthanè

c. bt330 first Hácherian states formed

The Summer of the Classic Age

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When Ámys Tourástis was dispatched from Beréma in bt320 it is unlikely that he thought that his expedition would eventually become the marker that would define an era. He certainly seemed unlikely to become a famous scholar - perhaps the most influential of all time. Ámys was not even a lorist, but a Járind merchant who married into Emélan nobility. He was well-travelled, had a facility with languages, and most importantly, was an ambitious man. Seeing an opportunity to raise his stature in the Emélan court, he volunteered for a ten-year mission among the Atáni peoples.

At the time Emélrenè was engaged in a long war against a barbaric people on their southern flank. The Emélans would contend against the Táneri off and on from bt380 to bt250, and although the Emélans generally kept the upper hand, the occasional losses had destroyed their sense of invulnerability and gave them a dose of humility. Although the greater part of their conquering impetus had been spent centuries earlier, the Atáni that lived to the north were rapidly growing demographically and politically, and still had an aura of victory about them. Emélrenè’s cultural advantages were diminishing, and it seemed that the future would belong to the Atáni.

Ámys’ mission was a simple matter of espionage. He visited the courts of several Atáni petty kings and reported on their alliances, personalities, and movements. Unfortunately, the information was of little use to Emélrenè, and Ámys’ mission ended quietly. He earned the sobriquet ‘the Barefoot’ when he showed his disappointment with his pay by appearing in the royal court sans footwear. His stunt was spectacularly unsuccessful.

His failure to impress the Emélan court did not discourage him. He began writing about his travels, this time for the edification of the literate Emélan middle class, who found his vivid descriptions of Atáni customs and lifestyle fascinating. Ámys was a gifted writer with an eye for detail, and his works are a marvel simply for their literary content. But the influence of his writings - six folios are known - was much more than stylistic.

It is not a stretch to say that Ámys Tourástis invented history. He was the first in Venârivè to provide perspective on events, rather than merely chronicle them. His description of a war in Western Hârn includes analysis of the motivations of the kings involved, the constraints that dictated their strategies, and even information on their logistics. It was nothing like the poetic descriptions in the Lay of Léios, the mythic histories of religious founders, or the dry chronologies found in the royal annals. It would inspire other writers to do the same, and more importantly, inspire his audience to begin thinking more deeply into events and their causes.

Ámys’ annals also described the laws and traditions of the Atáni, and analysed them in counterpoint to Emélan society. In doing so he opened up new avenues of thought. Previously, law could not be talked about without the context of religion. But Ámys compared legal traditions outside their religious context, freeing later scholars to develop legal theory as an independent field.

Ámys’ Annals of the Atáni were phenomenally popular in Emélrenè. It was already apparent to many that Emélan society was losing its preeminence, and the time was right for a new direction. The Emélans found inspiration in Ámys’ descriptions of the energetic Atáni, and they began emulating their neighbours. Or, more precisely, they began emulating Ámys’ descriptions of their neighbours.

Because as fine a writer as he was, Ámys still had his limitations. Ten years was not enough for Ámys to completely understand everything that he saw. The Atáni were hardly a monolithic culture, and much of the variation was lost or misinterpreted by him. And, like most storytellers, Ámys tended to idealise his subjects. So the Atáni that the Emélans admired and copied were somewhat more perfect than real.

The fashion for all things Atáni grew rapidly, and was soon adopted by the royal court. The leaders soon felt the inadequacy of their own political culture, and they set to reforming Emélrenè’s governance along the lines indicated by Ámys’ works. Their first objective was to shore up the military power of the realm. Events on the battlefield had proven the value of professional heavy cavalry, and the Annals suggested a method by which Emélrenè could obtain a loyal force of armoured horsemen. In bt259, the first king in the Vásinir Dynasty assumed the throne under a new constitution, and Emélrenè became a feudal state. But the feudal structure was highly idealised, with clear-cut rules of precedence and formal oaths. The Atáni themselves did not recognize it at all – their own society had not yet organised itself on the basis of landowning, and Atáni knights were still equipped directly by the kings. Ámys had simply misunderstood what he observed, and conflated the huscarls he saw in the court of the Atáni kings with tributary clanheads and rulers. As we shall see, several centuries later most Atáni realms began imitating Emélan forms, bringing the development of feudalism full circle.

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The Atáni had learned heraldry from the Sinái during the wars for Hârn and from the Járin afterward. Ámys wrote at length on the subject, and the Emélan gentry became enthralled with it. The rigid rules of Venârivan heraldry stem from Ámys’ work and the Emélan’s appetite for idealised models. The works of Ámys Tourástis changed the way people thought about their world, and even the ways they organised themselves within it. His works are a fitting marker for what we will call our Classical Summer, a time of tremendous growth. But his accomplishments were not unique. All across Venârivè, other men would soon tread similar paths.

Underlying Trends

We can find in Ámys Tourástis the cause of many trends, but was there a deeper cause that created Ámys Tourástis? Directly, none deeper than the simple ambition of a talented man. But by bt300 Venârivè was ripe for the appearance of just such a man. A variety of long-term trends were converging to rewrite the cultural map.

Population

Everywhere the population was growing rapidly. Cities exploded in number and size. The majority of cities today trace their roots to the period between bt300 and tr 1 - either they were founded then, or they experienced substantial growth. In this era the pattern of urbanisation was set for the rest of history.

Today this pattern is unusually uniform. It is striking that in tr720, the proportion of urban to rural population is nearly exactly the same in every region, and city populations vary little from region to region and within each region. In theory, the populations of the largest cities should be much higher relative to their lesser kin, and the degree of urbanisation should vary much more. The uniformity of Venârivan urban populations is one of the central puzzles of history, and we will explore it at length as we examine other eras.

But during this era of rapid foundations the distribution of urban centres was closer to expected norms. Leading centres such as Beréma and Hácherdad dwarfed all rivals, and whereas the urban population of the eastern littorals were near modern levels - a little over ten percent, in most of Venârivè only about one in twenty souls lived in a town.

Emergence of True States

Along with the cities came another major social development - the emergence of true states. In earlier times it was impossible to speak of a state as an entity independent of its cult, and whereas tribes might temporarily unite for a specific purpose, no permanent state could exist unless it was small enough for the entire population to have access to the cult centre. But as the ethnic cults weakened the link between cult and state was eventually broken. The political power of the palace could finally outstrip the temple.

The first true state to emerge in the Classical Age was Emélrenè. The Covenant of the Eméla reduced the power of the Dhéria-Ísvan in favour of the King, and over the next few centuries the state grew more self-confidently secular. If there was any doubt about the supremacy of the King at the start of this era, it was erased by the Atáni-inspired reforms of the Third Century BT. Whereas Emélrenè never expanded its borders (as it well could have), from this time forward it functioned as a political state. Power resided predominantly in the King’s Court in Beréma, and its policies towards its neighbours were driven almost entirely by political, not religious, considerations.

The Kingdom of Mèlderýn perhaps best illustrates the pattern in which several small temple-states coalesced into a larger political state. The Five Kingdoms showed the limits of a temple-state - none were larger than could be traversed in a day, and despite the obvious differences in power the larger states never considered conquering or absorbing the smaller. The tiny realms occasionally united to meet common threats, but such unions were always temporary. That is, until the temple system weakened enough for the political to overwhelm the religious. Only then was a permanent unification possible. The Târgan Empire followed a similar pattern, but on a much larger scale.

In many cases the transition can be traced to a particular leader. On Hârn, that man was Lóthrim the Foulspawner. The process came late to that geographical backwater - as late at tr100 there were no polities of any size beyond Mèlderýn. But the colony of arcanists founded by Lóthrim soon changed that. Lóthrim’s empire destroyed the power structure of the existing petty states, and made possible the true states that emerged in the wake of its destruction.

By tr1, true political states filled all but the most remote lands in Venârivè. But the political state was not the only institution that emerged and grew in this period. Just as the weakening of the ethnic cult allowed kings to rise, it also allowed the churches to wax in power and organisation. While they usually claim mythically ancient origins, in truth most of the church organisations have their roots in this era, though they generally had very limited authority.

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Venârivè tr1

Statecraft

In the wake of the growing churches and states came their inevitable followers - the bureaucrats. The administrative demands on a state grow in non-linear proportion to its size. Taxes and tithes that formerly could be collected at a single point and tracked with simple tallies start to require detailed accounting and new checks and balances. The demands on the law outstrips the ability for traditional forms to provide, and kings must begin issuing edicts and their governors must record and interpret them. Of course, kings never write laws. This task is one of many that is delegated to bureaucrats, and as states grew their bureaucracies grew even faster.

But bureaucracy wasn’t limited to palaces. Churches began to build their own bureaucracy, and as we will see later, the first seeds that would grow into the guild system were planted in this era. With bureaucracy comes a need for education, and the proportion of the population that was literate exploded. Bureaucracy also tends to alter the power structure. Warriors no longer had a monopoly on influence in the royal court - litigants, tax collectors, and other bureaucrats mattered as well.

With the advent of bureaucracy the state took on a life independent of its ruler. The death of a king was no longer as devastating to the state, as the bureaucracy maintained the machinery regardless. Even war could be handled without a king - at least, in those states where the bureaucracy was the paymaster of the army. Once this fact was appreciated a new attention began to be paid to the concept of legitimacy. Scholars - and through them, the population at large - began to examine the relationship between the ruler and the ruled in more sophisticated terms.

The Kàruíans were the first to explore these ideas seriously. About bt220 the Livélis playwright Ménekrata wrote The Dèsmédeans. Set in a fictional island kingdom, the play can be read as a gentle lampoon of the deities. In the play, King Dèsméd has died and a number of potential heirs vie for the throne. Each claimant happens to bear a striking resemblance to a deity of the age. (Besides being a epochal work, the play is a valuable resource for those interested in how the human perception of the gods has changed over the last nine centuries.) In the process of pressing their claims -

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usually in a comedic scene - each character elucidates a different idea of legitimacy. The play ends with a stroke of creative genius - an earthquake destroys the island kingdom before a king is crowned, guaranteeing that long after, audiences would argue the merits of every claim.

Ménekrata was probably motivated by the fractious politics of Livélis, which during this era was marked by innumerable plots and coups. He was active in the politics of the city-state, and probably wrote the play to enhance his own reputation as a sagacious thinker. Ironically, it merely gave his rivals the means to force him out of the city. For his comedic portrayal of the gods he was prosecuted for immorality, and he fled Livélis rather than face a trial. His play gained popularity in his absence.

Technology

The explosion of population, wealth, statecraft, and culture demands an explanation, and a considerable number have been suggested. Of course, to some extent progress is self-reinforcing, and an initial advancement in a narrow area can sometimes lead to broader accomplishments, which in turn can stimulate still more advances. But to defer to the idea of the ‘virtuous cycle’ is to abdicate our role as historian, especially when several more direct theories are available.

The foremost theory among those looking for a materialist explanation is that a single invention redrew the map of Venârivè. The mouldboard plough first appears in the decades just preceding our era, and by bt200 it had reached virtually all the regions where it could be of use. Before the invention of the heavy plough the heavy clay soils of the bottomlands were waste. In most areas, farming was limited to the less fertile uplands. So the introduction of the mouldboard plough greatly increased the quantity and quality of land available for cultivation.

It also changed the nature of the city. The citadels of the early classical age were almost entirely hilltop complexes. Their primary purpose was to house the king and the priests, as well as to provide a point of defense. For this they had to be in the midst of the population, and preferably in a defensible position, which almost always meant a hilltop. This was certainly inconvenient for traders, but they played only a small role in the decisions of the early petty-states.

The exceptions were the littoral cultures of the Sea of Iváe, the Kàruían Islands, and a few other coastlands. Here fishing could supplement farming, making possible the port towns from which the maritime trade networks were based. The Kàruían states were particularly successful - the hilly islands and coasts that birthed them have long been cultivated mostly in olives, grapes and other crops which require little or no ploughing. The mouldboard plough has hardly touched those lands, and, notably, much of the advantage that the Kàruían cities held in bt300 was lost by the end of this period.

Over most of Venârivè, as the valley bottoms began to be ploughed, cities were built along the rivers. Palaces and temples moved with the masses to the more productive locales. The valleys could support a greater population density, and river transport allowed towns to draw resources from a larger hinterland. Cities could thus grow considerably larger. They were also much more strongly linked by trade. Trade became a central component of urban life.

The new plough also placed a new requirement on rural society. The plough is expensive, and requires multiple oxen or horses to draw. (In later centuries the development of new horse breeds would reduce this requirement to a single animal.) Individual farmers could not afford such expensive equipment. To afford the plough and beasts the capital of a community had to be aggregated in some way. In some regions this led to the emergence of a highly stratified society, with a landowning class that controlled the plough and thus the means of production, reducing the remainder to a state of actual or near slavery. In other regions a free peasantry was able to avoid this fate, but the needs of the plough caused them to organise into recognisable social units. In time the political organisation of these regions was adapted to the new settlement pattern, and the manorial system emerged.

This transition was marked by two other evolutionary changes. Water mills were not invented in this era - they are mentioned in some of the earliest stories committed to writing. But with the emergence of the manorial system far more communities could build them. We also find the first use of mills for orecrushing, which might explain the fall in the price of iron in this period. Blacksmiths, who formerly were found only in the towns and citadels, now spread into the manors. In addition to crafting the new advanced plough, they made metal implements far more available to the peasant class, advancing the standard of living considerably.

The effects of the introduction of the mouldboard plough are most plainly apparent in the development of Central Hârn. Here a precise date for its introduction is known - the plough was introduced by the Empire of Lóthrim - and the effects on society are well documented. Before the plough the region was divided into dozens of petty states. Like the temple-states of the previous era, the territory of each was limited to a day’s travel from a central citadel. Too small to be called towns, these centres were usually located on hilltops and housed both the religious and military establishments.

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But within a century of the introduction of the plough these petty states had been consolidated into just four sizable realms. While the example of Lóthrim’s Empire certainly encouraged this consolidation, the influence of the plough is plainly seen. Settlement patterns changed considerably as the valley floors were introduced to cultivation. Tashál was transformed from an administrative centre under the Empire into a true city built on trade and industry. The Kath eschewed the new innovation and remained a hill-dwelling culture, and the gap between the Kath and Káldôr became a chasm despite their close ethnic kinship.

Manorialism

While it could be argued that the new realms were, at least in part, survivals of Lóthrim’s Empire, the social structure that they were built on was a new thing entirely. Under the pre-Imperial petty states the only social structure beyond the clan was the petty-state itself. But the manorial system quickly evolved after the fall of Lóthrim. It should be emphasised that manorialism and feudalism are not synonymous. Manorialism refers to the economic arrangement in which tight-knit villages share certain land and assets – either in common or under the ownership of a landlord. Feudalism refers to a political structure in which military service is tied to land ownership through a pyramid of personal bonds. In Káldôr, manorialism developed first and feudalism followed. The petty kings easily transformed into the barons of a proto-feudal system. But it took several generations for their military retainers to become established as the lords of the new manors.

The delay was due to the need for the clan system to adapt to the new economic circumstances. Formerly all military and political power was found in the citadels of the petty kings. But in the new milieu, the manors were an economic power far more concentrated than the old freeholds, and with their growth came a devolution of power from the courts - now held by barons rather than petty kings - to the manors. The huscarls migrated from the keeps to the manor houses, forming an new intermediate class between the barons and the commoners. The barons were not entirely abandoned, of course. They maintained their power through the ties of vassalage, which linked landowning to personal service, and through the personal forces they maintained in their keeps. The new arrangements would be reinforced by the introduction of the Emélan ideas of feudalism adapted from Ámys Tourástis and further romanticized through heraldry and local legends. Once established the system proved remarkably stable.

It has been noted that the goddess Peóni is particularly associated with the mouldboard plough. Her principle servant is Maérmal, the Plough-Ox, and the Peónian faith is strongest where the plough is most used. We have seen other religions tied to specific social groups, but the cult of Maérmal may be unique in Venârivè for being connected to a specific invention.

Farmer

Changes in Settlement Patterns

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The changes in settlement patterns that took place in the late Classical Age are readily apparent in these two maps of this region near the modern imperial city of Ómrium. The first map shows the region as of about bt500. The coastal plain is occupied by a Zónawè culture, centred on the fishing town of Vilépyn. The majority of the population of the plain lived in the central town, which probably held a little more than a hundred households and housed both the local temple and the sub-king. On the rolling plateau above, two Zéran petty states were centred around motte-and-bailey fortifications. These fortified villages were somewhat smaller than Vilépyn, and like Vilepyn housed the civil and religious structures, as well as most of the skilled craftsmen. The countryside was dotted with small thorps – huddled groups of five to ten houses – and some isolated houses. The three population centres were barely connected commercially or culturally.

Changes in settlement Patterns

Four hundred years later the situation was radically different. The mouldboard plough opened the river valley to cultivation, and changes in the religious environment broke the power of the temple centres. The city of Ârriri now dominated the region. It held somewhere around five hundred households, and was part of a regional trade network centred on the mouth of the Zónan River, near modern Berónè. The cultural distinctions between the Zónawè and Zéran were disappearing. Both cultures were now organised around estates, some fortified. Each estate housed twenty to forty households, and collectively they accounted for over eighty percent of the farming population. A few allodial farms survived, mostly in the margins.

The region was now considerably more connected. Not only were roads and bridges better, but the countryside was safer. The military force was no longer completely concentrated in the baileys, but was in part distributed among the more numerous estates. There was less wilderness to traverse, as well. The overall population increased by at least fifty percent in this region, and was generally wealthier due to both greater productivity and access to trade.

Politically, the region was in constant flux. As of bt100 the entire region shown was part of the Kingdom of Ârriri, which stretched up the river valley over fifteen leagues and had a population of roughly twenty thousand. The next year, however, the realm collapsed in the face of a rebellion in an upstream province. Vézyn and Belkenmot each became effectively independent, while Ârriri was annexed by a petty state centred on the upper river valley. Such flexibility would have been impossible in the earlier age. Then, boundaries were dictated by communitarian needs. Now they were a matter of military and economic strategy.

Changes in settlement Patterns

Laránianism

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While it may be that the explosive growth of the Laránian religion was a consequence of the demographic expansion of the age, there are good reasons to consider the spread of Laránianism as a causal factor. The fact of the expansion is indisputable. In bt400 it was the cult of a petty state so unremarkable that we cannot today state with any certainty even the region in which it began. Several cities claim to be the birthplace of the religion, but the evidence for any of them is sparse. Yet by tr100 Laránianism had spread across almost all of Venârivè, and had a profound impact on the political as well as religious structure of the region.

That Laránianism grew as a direct response to the challenge of Àgríkanism is certain. That both religions consider the animosity between their gods a central feature of their mythology is remarkable. Given that Àgríkanism’s expansion predated the rise of Laránianism by centuries suggests that Laránianism was a reactionary force. Àgríkanism challenged the social structure of Venârivan society by breaking the bonds between the military class and the rest of the population. Laránianism countered by rewriting the compact between the governors and the governed, creating a new social order that was ideal for the emerging manorial civilization.

So ideal, in fact, that some credit for the demographic expansion of the era surely belongs to the emergence of the Laránian order. Coupled with the feudal ideals that were being imagined in Emélrenè, Laránianism provided a stable political order that reinforced and supported the new economic order wherever it prevailed. The feudal-manorial order of this era was considerably more efficient than the petty state regimes that preceded it. It was effective at defending the population - the incursions of the Sôrki during this period barely affected regional demographics, particularly when compared to earlier invasions. And it also encouraged the growth of the manorial economy, as the new lords learned to value a well-run manor. The Laránian faith explicitly reinforced these virtues, while the success of the system also reinforced the power of the faith.

While the church officially finds its roots in the myth of Saint Ambráthas, the first missionary for which we have definite independent evidence for is Ôrthas the Defender, who appears in the court annals of Emélrenè in about bt370. He had only a little success in converting the Emélan court, which was still dominated by Siémist and Sávè-K’nôran influences, but he received considerable support for his efforts to proselytise the surrounding region. The Emélan crown considered the Laránian church a stabilizing influence on the new states that were beginning to emerge on their borders. Emélrenè would wait another century before the noble class, inspired by romantic descriptions of virtuous Atáni warriors, began to adopt Laráni as their patron.

The progress of the faith was far from uniform, but over the next four centuries Laráni’s reach would expand until she matched her fiery rival. By tr100 the faith had reached as far as Hârn and Mafán. But, as with Àgríkanism, there was no central organisation directing the faith, and practices and attitudes varied considerably from place to place. It would be several more centuries before the religion would evolve the structures of a church.

The Târgan Empire

Another explanation for the cultural advance in this era looks to the emergence of the Târgan Empire. The Empire was the first state in Venârivè to burst the limitations of the temple-state system. Unlike the Árganaal Confederation that loosely united the region from c.bt910 to c.bt450, there was a strong central power that had precedence over the local temples and palaces. Being the first true empire to rise in the region, its claim to be the successor of the ancient Empire of Mafán was legitimate.

The valley had nurtured great kingdoms before. The development of irrigation in the Upper Valley around bt2900 led to the first known example. The Kingdom of Nálhaan built canals that stretched as long as forty leagues, and from their capital at Nálhathâr they ruled entire Târga Valley after about bt2300. There are deep connections between the Nálhaan and the later empires of Anzelôria which are the subject of considerable conjecture today. There are parallels of language, script, architecture, and religion that suggest much more than just a trading link. The ruins of Nálhathâr are now deep in the Béshakan Desert – proof that the Târga River has been fickle in her course - and some of the dried-up canals are used by Bésha nomads to mark routes and boundaries. The ‘Golden Empire’ collapsed around bt2100, and for most of the next two millennia the Valley was a patchwork of city-states. At times larger realms emerged, occasionally even uniting large portions of the Valley. When the Màfakéta nomads arrived after being displaced by the fall of the Mafán Empire around bt1500, the frontier city of Quáandehn allied itself with them and built a temporary empire. But that lasted only a few decades before the Màfakéta lost their cohesion and disappeared into the Târgan cultural mix. Around bt1000 Chúaanagûrlla briefly united the Lower Valley, but it fell in a broad revolt which led to the creation of the Árganaal Confederacy. This was little more than a defensive agreement, made necessary by the increasing power of the Bàkésha nomads – cousins of the Màfakéta - who had moved into the nearby desert.

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The Târgan Empire was a true empire - that is, a collection of states united by a central force. The cities of the Târga River Valley retained considerable autonomy. The state religions were left in place, but each temple complex had to make room for the Imperial cult. The Imperial cult absorbed the deities of the more powerful cities, creating a large and confusing pantheon. Myths were mashed up, shrines converted for new deities - even the identities of the gods themselves were put into flux.

This confusion has its roots in the very origins of the Empire. The Empire began as a defensive response to ever more intense raiding by their Bésha and Péch neighbours. The decades around bt300 were unusually wet in the region, and the nomad population was bursting. Bésha armies plundered the city of Prâtha in bt292, Ámfar in bt288, Prâtha again in bt286, and razed Rezân so completely in bt280 that it was abandoned. The Péch plundered Parlora in bt290 and bt284, and were barely repulsed by the defenders of Mârkor (now Mánquideh) in bt280. It was this last battle that inspired the unification of the beleaguered cities under the leadership of Mârkor. A series of victories over the nomads and a few recalcitrant cities solidified the arrangement, and the Empire was established.

The temple of Mârkor worshipped dual divinities - Târga, the river goddess who brought order and prosperity when mankind was obedient, and Orgûrl, who brought chaos and death when mankind strayed. To this pair was added Pyârvir, the father-god of Pélona - an important ally in the creation of the Empire. Another deity was added in about bt200: Áranu, the covenantgoddess of Férez - the richest city in the region until its harbours silted up c.tr100. Some believe that the Férez cult was the wellspring of the Laránian religion, but the evidence is sketchy, at best.

But while these four were the primary deities, all the deities of the many cities had a place in the temples. A popular deity from a successful city had the chance to be promoted, as was Áranu, but the more common fate was to be forgotten in the crowd or be hopelessly confused with another. For Shávkan, who had almost been forgotten, new prominence was achieved when he was identified with Sávè-K’nôr and became the patron of scholars. At least two completely foreign deities insinuated themselves into the pantheon - the Mafáni deity Zârath and the Anzelôrian Kelána. Perhaps because of his association with the ancient and literate Mafáni Empire, Zârath had the role of covenantrecorder in the mythologies of several cities, and he continued that role under the Empire. Kelána was the civic deity of M’ji’mbali, a city that managed to preserve its Anzelôrian heritage for over a thousand years until it was destroyed in the Târgan Genocide. For the goddess of luck and fate, Álneha, prominence came late. She begins as a minor servant in the Ámfar pantheon, but gained popularity among the peasant caste and begins appearing in major temples near the end of the Empire.

Considering that the Empire was forged to combat powerful external foes, it should not be surprising that the realm was deeply xenophobic. Trade was monopolised by the state and conducted only in three strictly controlled enclaves - the port of Zerúla and the caravanserai of Ámfar, north of Mârkor/Mánquideh, and the eastern city of Kándar. A state monopoly on foreign trade was common in the petty states of the earlier age, but in this era it was rare, and nowhere was it as carefully enforced as here. There were two major benefits to the state - it kept at bay the missionary religions that had decimated state religions elsewhere, and it allowed the state to reap fantastic profits from the transport of Mafáni and Anzelôrian goods to the Venârian Sea.

More surprising is the power of the theocracy, which was remarkable even by the standards of the era. The unprecedented demands of managing a true empire required a sophisticated bureaucratic apparatus. Only the priests had the expertise required, and they came to control the administrative apparatus. When the priests became the paymasters for the army, the balance between palace and temple shifted decisively to the temple.

The prevalence of slavery was typical for the era, but the scale was unprecedented. The Imperial army engaged in nearly annual raids to replenish the slave population. The success of these expeditions allowed the Empire to works the slaves extremely hard, despite the mortality rate. The system reinforced the power of the state, which controlled the supply of the most important commodity in the economy - slave labour.

The reach of the Târgan army was extraordinary for the era. H’anvúchè was sacked in bt180, ports on the Shéntu Sea learned to pay tribute in the form of slaves purchased from Anzelôria and the East, and even Livélis was forced to buy off the Târgans at least three times. The primary goal was always the acquisition of slaves. Strategic considerations were secondary, and conquest was never intended. The theocracy had no desire to try to integrate foreign cities into the system. They looked upon their neighbours only as a source of slaves. To push the frontiers further from the Târga Valley would only make the logistics of the slave raids more difficult.

It was this aspect of the Empire that encouraged the development of the rest of Venârivè. The Empire itself was intellectually stagnant, impervious as it was to foreign ideas. But it presented a practical challenge to its neighbours. The neighbouring states had to get

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stronger or face slow destruction. They needed to develop larger polities and better defences, or wealthier economies to buy off the raiders.

The Tuvâran states of the Býrian Peninsula failed to respond, and the Empire continued to acquire slaves there until the very end. The Mafáni states along the Shéntu Sea responded by making themselves the middlemen in a regional slave-trading network. The impulse was negative, but the ultimate effect was a considerable increase in all forms of trade in the region. The Kàruíans responded by building their defences and strengthening the alliances among the city-states, setting a pattern of cooperation that can still be seen in the modern Karéjian League. The Hácherim became experts in defensive fortification, but the petty states along the Venârian shore - Pélona, Mérkur (Chenósolis), Gálan (Gálamonìa) and others - were reduced to impotent tributary states.

Mapping the effects of the Empire’s depredations reveals two concentric zones forming a doughnut. Close to the Empire the effect was negative. The constant sapping of demographic strength condemned the Empire’s nearest neighbours to weakness and obscurity. But just outside this zone the states were strengthened by necessity. The political and economic bonds forged in this era still have power almost a millennium later.

Whereas the Târgan Empire was held back intellectually by its insularity, in some areas of material culture it made considerable strides. The Empire was famous for its excellent steel. Târgan steel begins with an unusual ore that contains traces of tungsten or vanadium. This ore was first found in the Sóbranah Mountains in deposits that were exhausted by tr200. Further deposits were discovered in Hèpekéria and have been exploited by Târgan emigrants since the Târgan Genocide. The ore is heated in sealed crucibles following procedures shrouded in ritual and secrecy. The trace elements, combined with the precise proportion of carbon, creates microscopic carbon structures that create a distinctive pattern in the finished product and also gives the steel particular strength. Târgan steel is still the standard that no other human culture has matched. The greatest of their craftsmen, Pytâma Rylátha (bt60-tr7), is still remembered today, while the names of the Târgan high-priests are almost entirely forgotten.

The demands of administering the Empire led to another development that had a much more profound effect on Venârivan society. The Târgan Empire was the first polity to treat the city as a built form, the subject of conscious design. Shifts in the course of the river forced the Târgans to move their cities on occasion, and the rigid, theocratic state deployed the plentiful slave labour with considerable forethought when the occasion demanded. Entire cities were architected and built according to a definite plan.

Târgan cities were organised into distinct zones, with residents grouped by profession. Canals were used for transport within the city as well as for sewage removal. Open spaces were created for orchards and gardens, and squares for public functions. The Târgan cities were enviably livable. No other state at the time had the resources to emulate them, but they would eventually inspire later empires to try to match their virtues.

Growth of Trade

The rise of the Târgan Empire stimulated trade in Venârivè in two ways. First, the Empire had direct control over the entire trade route to Mafán, reducing the cost of transport across the East-West barrier. Eastern spices and silks became available in greater quantity and at lower prices, while Venârivan products - mostly bullion - flowed the other direction. But even ignoring the trade passing through to and from Mafán, the size and wealth of the slave-enriched Empire made it by far the largest market Venârivè had yet seen. Despite its distrust of foreigners, the Empire had a considerable demand for foreign goods. These wares were bought largely with the production from manufactories where slaves produced fine cotton cloth and other labourintensive goods. Zerúla was the greatest port of the era, easily exceeding Livélis.

But the growth in commerce was not limited to the Târgan Empire. Everywhere the growing cities and states were linked by increasingly robust trade networks. Where previously there were four distinct and barely overlapping trade systems, now goods flowed from one end of Venârivè to another without a break. Other factors besides the rise of the Empire fueled the emergence of this new trade regime. As states grew more powerful and better organised, piracy diminished. The general demographic increase spurred both production and demand for trade goods. New Kàruían colonies in Hèpekéria opened that subcontinent. The increase in overall trade was substantial - from two to ten times, depending on the particular place.

As merchants began traveling farther afield and doing more business, they developed more sophisticated means of exchange. At the beginning of this age, merchant exchange was entirely through true barter. Salt, pepper, and silk were as commonly used as a standard of value as silver or gold, depending on the region. But by tr1, gold and silver weights - the mark and shekel, were standardised throughout Venârivè, and true money was on the horizon. This was accomplished alongside the emergence of the first trade guild, the Goldsmiths.

Early Guilds

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The search for the roots of the Mángai inevitably leads to two institutions, both of which originated during this era - the Guild of Arcane Lore and the Goldsmiths. Of the two, the Lorists have a somewhat better claim to antiquity. The Guild of Arcane Lore provided a set of standards that the existing chantry system lacked. It began informally among the chantries of Emélrenè and Mèlderýn - a loose group of comparable institutions that cooperated to promote their common interests. As those groups prospered, other chantries from farther afield emulated the practices of these leaders - in particular, the system of degrees and examinations. Faced with apparent competition, the leading chantries formalised their standards and created an organisation to enforce them. Most were P’vâric chantries, engaged in the study of elemental magic, and many of the early traditions of the Guild survive as the particular rules of the Shèk-P’vâr.

At first the purpose of this elite group of chantries was exclusionary. The top chantries banded together to enhance their own power and reputations, not to build up the lorist community as a whole. But this attitude eventually changed. The failure of the Shèk-P’vâr to control Lóthrim the Foulspawner (tr83-tr120) was one of a long series of failures that proved that the task of maintaining caste discipline was too great and too important for individual chantries and schools. The young Guild had to respond or face eventual disaster should public opinion turn against the lorists, so it engaged in a campaign of expansion, eventually absorbing almost every significant chantry and driving the recalcitrant into obscurity or dissolution. This allowed the Guild to monitor the education of almost every lorist, instill a caste discipline intended to promote the broader interests of the class at the expense of personal aggrandisement, establish standards for the quality of education and the treatment of members, and represent the interests of the class in society. As the Guild grew in power, problems with renegades diminished. Those rare individuals who chafed at the limitations imposed by Guild law were dealt with by various ‘White Hand’ organisations - the secret and unofficial enforcers of the Guild.

From the Guild of Arcane Lore came the tradition of grades of membership - apprentice, journeyman, and master - which are seen in almost every guild today. More importantly, it was the first organisation that was collegial, universal, and self-governed. That is, it was a voluntary association of like-minded people, its membership transcended state boundaries, and it maintained its own rules. It followed the Sávè-K’nôran faith in possessing these three properties. Notably, in this era no other religion could claim the same, as the Àgríkan, Laránian and Peónian faiths were not yet organised across boundaries.

The Goldsmiths began as an early offshoot - or, perhaps, it developed in close parallel with the Guild of Arcane Lore. Workers in precious metals have always been associated with the arcane. The common perception is that these occupations are not much removed from alchemy, and the smiths themselves encourage this notion. But the factors driving the development of the Goldsmiths Guild were different than for the Arcane Lorists. The demand for bullion of consistent weight and purity was exploding, and the Goldsmiths were able to take advantage of this. By tr1 they had leveraged their secret knowledge and organisational abilities to achieve the fourth key property of a true guild: monopoly.

The Goldsmiths controlled the production and certification of marks and shekels. (The Silversmiths would eventually split off to form their own guild in the Second Century.) This made them both the mints and the moneychangers of the era, and therefore exceedingly powerful. In large part their success was due to the acquiescence of the extremely conservative Târgan Empire, which reinforced the guild monopoly by refusing to barter in any medium except the mark. This was in fact a considerable benefit for commerce as a whole. Without the Târgan demand standardisation would have probably never occurred, and gold and silver might not have emerged as a universal currency until much later. While trade can be conducted using other commodity currencies, gold and silver have the advantages of being widely available, portable, imperishable, and of consistent quality no matter the source. By providing a trustworthy standard for weight and quality, the Goldsmiths created a form of coinage that made trading with strangers in distant lands immeasurably safer.

Art and Architecture

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With increased wealth and trade came an explosion of innovation in art and architecture. Everywhere there was a greater capacity for large-scale work. We already noted that the Târgan Empire was learning to build entire cities according to plan. The defensive bulwarks erected by their neighbours required an advancement in construction techniques, as did the need for larger ports. The use of cement became more common, and, in areas where the right kind of volcanic ash was available, hydraulic cement. The architectural achievements of the era would not match the great buildings of later ages in scale, but they were a marked advancement over their predecessors.

As builders struggled with the challenges of building larger edifices they found few models to teach them. So they solved the problems of spanning larger distances, supporting heavier weights, covering larger faces and floors, bringing light and ventilation, and all the other ramifications of scale in their own idiosyncratic ways. Every region or state developed its own style - or in some cases, styles - of construction. Builders sought to attribute their ideas to ancient experts, but their fanciful claims were betrayed by the striking individualism of their work. Most of these regional styles would eventually be abandoned, either due to technical flaws, aesthetic deficiencies, or theological or political considerations. But no one was predicting this winnowing at the time. There was no self-conscious analysis by the builders or their patrons - architecture was still a craft, not an art.

With increased wealth came advances in other arts. The new palaces and citadels in the northern realms required warm wall coverings, and the art of tapestry advanced considerably. As more silk and cotton imports came from the East, western weavers improved their skills to compete. But painting and sculpture showed little advancement, and poetry languished as the favoured literary form became the travelogue. Ámys Tourástis was followed by many imitators, such as Chéka the Wanderer, who recorded the details of his pilgrimage to Aráka-Kalái (c.bt72). The Bjâri Sagas, popularised by the Ivínian skald Bjâri Threehand in the mid-Second Century BT, were translated into at least nine languages by bt100, introducing all of Venârivè to the Sárajìnian mythology. Ivínian raiders of the Fifth Century tr were surprised to discover Búqdin peasants (a Thónian tribe of Eastern Hèpekéria) who recognised Shálka despite having obviously never seen an actual sled. The thirst for knowledge of distant lands was nearly universal - only the Târgan theocrats fought against it - and was slaked by a stream of works by missionaries, merchants and (inevitably) pretenders.

Heraldy

We briefly mentioned heraldry already as an import from the Atáni via Ámys Tourástis. But that statement doesn’t fully reflect the creative energies of the Eméla, who went far beyond the practices of their neighbours to create not just the modern heraldic system but the institution and laws that surround it. The heraldry that Ámys Tourástis saw among the Atáni was simply the colored pennantry used by war leaders to identify their cohorts. Heralds today generally credit the Sinái for the invention of the heraldic blazon, but in doing so they disregard the similar practices found in the ancient Empire of Ch’mísa, as well as a few references in ancient poems and stories that suggest the Atáni already used painted shields and pennants on the battlefield. It may be that this simple idea has more than one mother.

Ámys Tourástis’ vivid descriptions of the Atáni blazons ignited a fashion for heraldry throughout Emélrenè. Not just nobles, but merchants, craftsmen, and even taverns and churches began drawing up coats of arms. At first there could be no regulation, but almost immediately the noble class began demanding exclusivity. For this purpose the nobles discovered in the Annals the concept of the Herald.

The Annals only barely mention the idea. Tourástis noted that in each Atáni clan there was at least one man charged with maintaining the genealogy of the clan, and that the ‘heir-men’ of different clans occasionally met among themselves to check their records. Tourástis also mentions ‘hall-lords’, an office within a keep, perhaps equivalent to a chamberlain. Tourástis mentions this office as being the carrier of the pennant on the battlefield, and having some ceremonial importance in the court. The Emélan nobles conflated these two offices, creating the office of herald, and devising a ‘college’ for their heralds to meet. The Enclave of the Silver Orb was founded c. bt220, and within a generation had an effective monopoly on the granting of arms in the kingdom. (The Enclave claims to have been created at the same time that the Vásinir Dynasty was crowned, bt259, and that the Vásinir crest is the first to have been registered, but this is simply a pious fraud.) The monopoly was established by royal edict in bt207, and confirmed in an edict of bt200 that explicitly limited armorial bearings to the nobility.

With the establishment of a professional class of heralds came a slew of regulations. The responsibilities of the newly invented herald were not well defined at first. But once the Enclave was established, the institution quickly evolved into an advocate for the noble class within the social realm. The Enclave became the enforcer of noble privilege - not just the giver of arms, but the arbiter of who was allowed into the class

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and the preserver of class distinctions. The Enclave and its child institutions were legalistic from the very beginning. The fussy rules for tinctures, metals, and charges were among their earliest inventions, intended to establish and maintain the distinction between their professionally designed and recorded arms and the amateur, unrecorded bearings that were produced in other lands or before their monopoly was established.

The herald was not yet an ambassador, though even at this time a herald was granted some immunity on the battlefield. This immunity was not to facilitate negotiation, but was simply a matter of honour. The enthusiasm for chivalry created a number of similar battlefield rules - baggage trains were not to be attacked, mercy was to be extended to the defeated. As the herald took on the extra danger of bearing the pennant, which compromised his fighting ability, chivalry demanded some special treatment. It would not be until the Ázeryàn Empire began to disintegrate that this tradition would evolve to allow the herald a diplomatic role.

Heraldry spread to wherever Emélan culture was viewed as being worth emulating. Mèlderýn and the petty states of Western Venârivè took to it early. The Atáni states adopted it enthusiastically - within a few generations they thought of it as their own invention, though almost nothing in Emélan heraldry resembled the old Atáni practices. It is not at all clear whether the Silver Harp Palace of Arms in Eváel and the White Mountain Lodge in Ázadmêre predate Emélan heraldry or were founded afterwards. Armorial bearings among the Elder Races certainly existed before Atáni Wars, but the colleges might have been founded in imitation of the human institution to provide a new avenue for diplomatic and cultural exchange.

This history of heraldry illustrates how the Emélans took the practices and institutions of their Atáni neighbours, reshaped them into radically more sophisticated forms, then watched as their neighbours adopted the new forms as their own. Virtually the entire legal and cultural structure of feudalism advanced in this way. Ideas of noble privilege, fiefs and vassalage, administration of justice, serfdom and freedom - all were adapted and codified in these centuries by the Emélans, and all were eventually adopted by their neighbours. But few even in Emélrenè give proper credit - due to the popularity even today of Ámys Tourástis’ Annals, almost everyone assumes that feudalism is as ancient as the people themselves.

A Region Transformed

By tr1, Venârivè had been transformed. It was richer and better organised. The triumph of the missionary religions had freed statecraft from straight-jacket of the ethnic cults. Cities were widespread and commercially active. Trade networks were established and busier than ever. After three centuries of nearly continuous expansion, Venârivè was awash with optimism.

In bt9, in the Azéri city of Îrkárgai, a new capitol building was completed. It was built in the shape of a symmetric Y, with three halls each opening into a raised central chamber. In the centre sat the Autarch - a position that rotated every eight years. In one hall assembled the heads of the noble families - men grown rich on the produce of their slave-run villas. In a second assembled the priests - of Navéh, Peóni, Laráni, Ágrik, Sávè-K’nôr, Môrgath and two local deities. The third hall held a new class of men - the merchants and craftsmen who earned their position by paying for the construction of the entire capitol. There was no pretence that everyone in the hall had a vote, but the arrangement virtually guaranteed that the interests of all three groups would be considered. Upon its completion the Kàruían writer Éscalos el Résha wrote an enthusiastic description for his friends in Livélis.

“Those who work are here heard alongside those who fight and those who pray, giving full wisdom to the one who must be responsible for all. A more perfect assembly could not be imagined.”

But Éscalos would outlive the object of his enthusiasm. Just ten years later the Îrkárgai Capitol would collapse in a deadly earthquake. In the aftermath the discredited government would be swept away by Môrgáthan zealots, and Îrkárgai would become synonymous with barbarism. The capitol’s fate was a fitting marker for the end of an age. The Summer of the Classical Age was over. Behind it came a brooding winter that tested every fibre of the cultural fabric.

Chronology (BT300 - TR1)

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c.bt380-250 First Emélan-Táneri Wars

c.bt350-200 spread of mouldboard plough across Venârivè

c. bt320 Ámys al Tourástis travels amongst the Táneri

c. bt315 Ámys Tourástis writes the Annals of the Atáni

c. bt300 Àgríkan and Navéhan faiths have spread all across Venârivè

c. bt300 rise of Târgan Cults (Pyârvir, Târga, Áranu, and Orgûrl)

bt292 Bésha plunder Târgan city of Prâtha; this is repeated in bt286

bt290 Péch plunder Târgan city of Pârlóra; this is repeated in bt284

bt280 Bésha sack and destroy Târgan city of Rezân, which is abandoned.

bt277 foundation of Târgan Empire (Dalkésh)

bt270 ‘Time of Darkness’ in Emélrenè (to bt264)

bt259 Beginning of the Vásinir Dynasty in Emélrenè;

creation of an idealised feudal state begins

c. bt250 written description of the use of hydraulic cement in the harbour of Belán, Árlanto

c. bt250 Isýnen (Hèpekéria) sacked by Númec

c. bt250 traditional date of the foundation of the Church of Môrgath (Ázeryàn)

c. bt230 foundation of Kázeria (Xêria, Hèpekéria)

bt228 Five Kingdoms period on Mèlderýn (to tr1)

c. bt220 Playwright Ménekrata of Livélis writes ‘The Dèsmédeans’

bt220 Foundation of the Enclave of the Silver Orb college of heraldry, Emélrenè

bt200 Royal Edict restricts armorial bearings in Emélrenè to the nobility.

c. bt200 worship of Áranu begins at Temple of Mârkor (Mánquideh)

bt180 Târgan Empire sacks H’anvúchè, Tuvâra

c. bt150 Composition of the Bjâri’s Sagas by Bjâri Threehand

bt140 Târgan colonies on coast of Býrios (to c. tr1)

c. bt100 Bjâri’s Sagas have been translated into at least nine languages across Venârivè

c. bt100 Kàruían states and Hácherian towns manage to put themselves beyond the reach of the Târgan Empire

bt72 Pilgrimage of Chéka the Wanderer to Aráka-Kalái, Hârn

bt60 Birth of Pytâma Rylátha, Târgan Weaponmaster

bt47 Destruction of the Târgan navy by a mixture of storm and Kàruían attack; islands of Hepónia now beyond Târgan reach.

bt47 ‘Black Wind’ destroys Yelástrys (Jéltrè), Hârbáal

bt9 Construction of the Capitol building of Îrkárgai;

Éscalos el Résha documents the government of Îrkárgai; Eón of Réshan laments the ‘depravity of the world’

tr1 Kingdom of Mèlderýn founded

Crisis and Depression

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Chronology (TR1-TR150)

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The Imperial Age

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Chronology (TR150-TR450)

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The Imperial Cults

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The Imperial Autumn

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The Red Death

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The Modern Age

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Afterword: The Curse of Modernity

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Index / Gossary

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Chapters and Sections

to UPDATE: with Chapters (breakdown) by each Heading type (list Font Name/Type (Italic, Bold, etc.), Size, and Key for description). All this will breakdown and make things easier later on when it comes time to figure out the wiki layout, templates required, and code for special additions like Headers & Foots and so on.

• Book Title: Albertus-Bold 96pt
  • Credits: AmasisMT,Bold 14pt
  • Chapter Title: Korinna-Bold 18pt (Header Title Name: Korinna-Bold 14pt/Header Section/Page#: Korinna-Bold 18pt)
    • Chapter subheading: Korinna-Bold 14pt
      • Chapter section: Korinna-Bold 12pt
        • Chapter Text Intro: AmasisMT-Regular 12pt
          • Chapter Text: AmasisMT-Regular 10pt

• Chapter sidebar Header: Korinna-Bold 10pt
  • Chapter sidebar Text: AmasisMT-Regular 9pt

• Place these in layered bullets lists and add font to code, possibly even a template for each font making a wiki system for Styles (as in MS Word).
• Add a "Template:{{Infobox game}}" & "{{Primarysources}}" from HârnMaster at wikipedia.
• Add Header and foot style to each page via templates.

Name & Dates List

Note: ADD a proper/seperate page for this all as a table. Once broken down into the Book Style like Kanday's split page style, can then add Category for each section part so that a complete list then gets made for all the pages for "said name". The once this is done, can then add this comprehensive list to "that" Index Section for "Category". In the end the aim is to create a complete "Name & Dates List/Index" so all the LINKS for names can then not only be categorised, but also interlinked between ALL articles and books, especially for DATES as this will be required to create a comprehensive Chronology Timeline and quick inter-referencing of the subject link(s).

Note: ADD links to each Name & Date within the Tabled Index, these should also include Eras & Periods for dates.

Note: INCLUDE all these into the Template (Sidebars & other data) Tables and so on.

Note: Example: Mercenary Companies would not only have a template for the Company, but be interlinked with that Type as a Category reflecting and showing Country, Shire, Hundred, Leader, Associated to/Sponsor, Location/Region and all other manner of data links within the design of the template and interact automatically with other templates, catergories, and index link lists.

Note: Example: A river would have a sidebar template that includes it's source length and so on, but also show not only the Catergories & Names, but be reflected within each of those Categories & Names Listed together. Basically internested Data, Links, Catergories, and so on to save redoing all links again with new pages or modifications, it automatically gets updated once interconnected correctly.

Notes

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