THE UNION OF IRTHIRON
Part II: The First Peoples and The Arrival
(NOTE: much of this text is taken from the works of one Afrid Tharsan, a historian from 11th Century Hamhyre. Although by contemporary standards his words lack some political correctness--and this has been reflected in some of the elements within the text--his is the summary of ancient history that is taught most often across Irthiron to this day.)
First Peoples: Concerning The Waaruk, or Brunassoes
Looking over
a map of Irthiron, two formats become abundantly clear in naming conventions. Many places have very straightforward, easily-understandable names:
Hamhyre just means "river-town",
Cordayle "silver-valley",
Hoswayne "ostrich-fields",
Brontheorra "bridge-fort", and so on. Comparable names are found in Wyniskooer, Markeneird, even Borjella on the mainland. But then there are other names, similar-sounding but with no apparent meaning:
Backaparry,
Ongunissa,
Parryorny,
Tentunica. These are not the names of the Irthironians. These names belong to the
First Peoples.
There does not appear to have been a unified name for these folk. Each tribe had its own name, related in some way to the world around it. The Odal, the Warntal, the Onortal, the Ajookertal, the Mentekertal…each of these and ten others had their own corner of the island, and they seem to have spoken related languages if not dialects of the same language. If they called themselves anything, it was probably *
Waaruk--the Tribes, to distinguish themselves from the *
ntyakngiipirril--the Men from the Ocean. A few still remain, stubbornly refusing to mix with these invaders; they go by the name
Brunassoes [brʉ'næsɔ:ʊz] now, singular
Brunas ['brʉnə], meaning "Aborigine" in Irthironian. They mostly seem to be tall, as tall as Irthironians proper, with brown skin like old burnt umber and eyes and hair of gold. Living full lives as Irthironian citizens, a number nevertheless refuse to worship the Five, instead keeping to their older traditions. They are lucky to have survived; in elder days, they would have been forced to recant their beliefs before an inquisition, and if they refused then they would be sent to burn in the Straw Men.
For the Brunassoes, everything in the world is connected by music and words. Every living thing has its secret name, every river, every mountain. Know the right word, sing the right song, and you can make the world come to you. No wonder, then, that they also call themselves
ukŋatyal, the Listeners, who must move with the beat set by the Source of Songs, the god
Aarntuluunga worshipped across the northeast of Ambalira. A sky god, to be sure, but where else does sound travel most clearly? Also present are the lesser spirits: the gods of the suns and moon and and planets, the
nurtaatyal or nymphs of the sea and rivers, and the
urnimul or Dancing Men underneath the ground. The rainbow serpents--ancient spirits known across the continent (and indeed beyond)--were of special interest in the west, where they were said to hallow the limestone caves and fill them with heavenly light. Every animal is but one animal, with his own name and star, and if you know how to call him you will catch him--and then you must let him go by burying his skull in the ground, so he may return to the Deep Land where Aarntuluunga can remake him. Death is a tricky concept in Ambalira generally, and mostly they believe spirits will hang around for a while, giving aid when you call them--until they choose to be reborn, and suggest their old name to their new parents.
The Brunassoes had no metalworking before the arrival of the Irthironians, bar some simple copper-smithing and gold-work. (Iron is more common on Irthiron in any case.) No great astronomers were they, as the natives of the Inland Sea were. They hunted and gathered, and farmed rabbits and herded blue-roos. They had a fondness for the tubers of the chocolate lily, but picked it up where they wished and did not sow or reap. Their songs were long and rich in detail, passed from bard to bard; they had no writing of their own. Shamans would choose a star to guide them, and the animal associated with that star as their totem; it was customary for babies of the tribes they stayed with to be named in some way after that animal. (If, for example, your tribe's shaman used the spirit of the leviathan--
aarnu--you might name your baby Liipmanaarnu, Leviathan-Song, or Uurtnaanaarnu, White Leviathan, the first element often passed down in families for generations.) They fought amongst themselves with weapons of copper or hardwood; they built houses of wood and turf, and towers and circles of stone for security and ceremony. Their families were matriarchal and matrilineal, buildings passing down the female line and herds down the male. And everywhere they went they painted, with ochre on cave walls replicating etchings in woad and chalk on the body during times of ritual importance.
The Brunassoes seem to have lived on the island for something approaching 110,000 years, not far off the time it took to actually reach Ambalira from the savanna of Potamia in the first place. (Note that years are a bit shorter on Ajjamah; the approximate Earth time is only about 70,000 years.) Civilization, as the Irthironians would put it, has only been part of the island for the last five millennia.
The Arrival: Concerning the Tharons and Their Glorious Arrival
Around five thousand years ago, as empires around the world made their expansion, so too did a people from the Inland Sea expand to control the entire northeast of the continent. Avoiding the western desert as much as was possible, instead the
Gingay-Murra expanded into the rich lands to the north and east. They established a colony on
Baliron, the smaller island between Irthiron and the Continent, but never got much further than what is now the city of Hamhyre. Even their religion had relatively little sway, as they took Aarntuluunga as a representation of their own sky-god
Irli-Kawna (modern Irthironian
Elecone). The Gingay-Murra brought ostriches and geese with them, and took back rabbits and blue-roos; they planted apple-berry trees and imported chocolate lilies. Best of all, they brought iron-working with them, and in isolated settlements the practice took on almost a mythical bent, with techniques from the mainland being taught and improved upon in new kilns across the south. Pottery, too, became more common, as opposed to the wood or reed articles from before. Baliron--then called
Lanja-Dandjaw, the Opal Island--still hosts many from that race today, speaking their own dialect and preserving strange but not unuseful customs.
Eventually, the Gingay-Murra Empire fell into stagnation, as empires do, and a third race enters the picture--the
Tharons, from the great peninsula on the west side of the continent. Living as nomads on land and sea, theirs was a culture devoted to warfare and glory. On great triremes they came, galleys rowed by trained slaves loaned by their masters to the war-effort--and row they did, for partaking in conquest could guarantee them their freedom, and much profit besides. They landed on Baliron, which they then called Bran or "bridge-land", first under
Sæwinu I (called
Seawine the Frightful in modern history books) in the early 10th Century BU (Before the Union--this is ), and started a colony there at the expense of the Gingay-Murra, whom they promised to defend "against the savage northern raiders". These were men and women of the
Brynnoc Tribe; it would be the
Sar Tribe, led by Carnosan I, who would make the first real incursions into Irthiron. Originally the island was called
Mirdere /'mɪ:ædɪɜ:/ or "green place", and the united lands of Mirdere and Baliron together would be
Irthiron, the Archipelago; later, as the Sars expanded inland, this name would be given to Mirdere foremost, with Baliron simply becoming "the south island"--hence its modern name.
(NOTE: the more astute readers will note certain unusual features of the Tharonic language family, namely the presence of sibilants and indeed full fricatives. Deviation though this appears, it is not uncommon in the western languages of Ambalira to have both fricatives and a greater number of vowels, possibly due to the demands of the milder climate. The presence of labialized velars is somewhat more confusing; no other language family on the continent possesses them. Scholars have postulated two theories: first, that the Tharons had their origins not in the west but in the far east, as cousins of the Trancers and Botantists; and second, that [s], [z], [k], and [g] are all that remains of a palatal sequence similar to other families, and [kw] and [gw] the older velar consonants. The latter has some support in the similarities of place-names in the west--the Kamic word
tyarnu against Irthironian
cairn "bow", for example--but this could simply be a result of a
sprachbund with local reinterpretations of sounds. We may never know.)
The first kingdoms, from the 9th to the 5th Century BU, were modelled after the fashion of the Tharonic warrior-culture: knights (
hosony, singular
hosonu, literally "ostrich-man") were beholden to their liege lord (and he to the king), but themselves were free to establish new territories inland. In this manner many ended up becoming allied with local clans, marrying into the "towers" and producing daughters who would own the land, but enforcing monogamy over the previously polyandrous society and sending their sons to be squires to other knights. Slowly but surely, the lands of Irthiron were overtaken, and the native language almost forgotten bar a few strange names and a turn of phrase or two.
What of Aarntuluunga? The Irthironians did not mind the presence of local nature deities, but they themselves followed a stronger pantheon. Known as the
Bether (from Old Irthironian
bether, bethri) or the
Five, these differed from tribe to tribe, clan to clan, and even person to person at times, but each individual pantheon had to contain five beings. The first represented the cosmos as a whole (usually a sky or earth-deity, but with some stake in honour or glory); the second, the warrior spirit (but this was often supplanted by a love goddess, as courting was considered a battle of sorts--and yes, both parties could bring weapons into it); the third, wisdom and understanding (sometimes replaced by a crafting deity); the fourth, the cycles of life (sometimes of the sea, sometimes the land, sometimes the rivers); and the fifth, the spirit of death, mostly to be propitiated rather than feared. Within the bounds of the Betherian Pantheon many variations were allowed; some of the oldest gods do date back to the Discovery, but many go back further still, repurposing older nature gods and animal spirits as gods of the human condition. (Thus did Aarntuluunga become
Anton, one of the more popular deities in the still-largely-native northwest.)
It is this emphasis on the mind--what humans could do instead of what nature would allow them--that proved to be the greatest blessing and most terrifying curse of the Tharons. At the mercy of the minds of some of the most powerful thinkers among them, no longer were secret names needed; terrifying things, things from nightmares made real, came to life across the island. The rainbow serpents that guarded the heavens and collected the dead now became monstrous dragons, wingless and yet airborne, breathing poisonous fumes as they erupted from the deep. As stories reached the communities in Backample and Ursabby of great multicoloured monsters, so the belief in these monsters grew--as did their accuracy, thanks to the rainbow serpents morphing into terrible creatures. The Brunassoes call this period
The Losing Time, when their old gods seemed to desert them for the enemy, or else morphed into terrible demons. As paranoia grew, so too did the landscape become more and more frightening.
It would take the whole of the Era of the First Kingdoms to establish the Sar-Brynnocian language and culture across the island of Mirdere, and centuries more before the ancient beings could be calmed or tamed--or slain, as was the case in many a valley and hillside (though they seemed to keep coming back for some reason). Iron-working became ubiquitous across the island (all the better to slay monsters with), as agricultural tools imported from the Inland Sea. The secret runes used by druids and witches, themselves derived from the Gingay-Murra abjad, became standardized as a way of communicating across settlements, compiling information on the dangers within and the treasures to be found. Irthiron had started as an easy way to gain glory, but dragons and monsters and hill-people...this was more than glory, now. This was
personal.