Year 50,000: Exile Of The Swift Hand Tribe

Previous history

     Year 0: The Uman's six-fingered child is saved
          Year 30,000:  The Mannut discover mining

(To give the players the proper background for this scenario, I gave them The Tale of Uman the Hunter and the Feast of Four Stones.)

The tribes of Mannut have mined the original veins of copper for thousands of years, off and on.  One tribe or another attempted to extract useful ore from the site until the lode was played out.  That location is now long abandoned, because the clan, now called the Evanu, haven’t the technology to remove copper from ore.  They did learn the basics of mining, which taught them how to search chalk beds for flint, and how to mine for salt.

Salt, of course, has many uses, and must be found everywhere that humans settle.  These tribes use salt as a meat preservative, and use salt to consecrate the graves of their dead.  It is, however, much easier to gather salt along the sea, for the sea also provides food.  The tribes gradually moved away from the mountains and onto the plains.

The priesthood class has become powerful, backed by the warriors — the two classes which received the gifts of the necklace and the spear-point, and told to guard the secrets of the tribe.  Now they must deal with the changing environment, as the seas rise, and old hunting grounds vanish.  As the plains of the north become ever warmer, game becomes smaller, and the larger game moves to higher (colder) elevations in search of food, and many tribes follow behind.

A small tribe of hunters, the Swift Hand clan, has encroached upon the salt mine of the Spirit Fox clan, who are righteously horrified.  You were extracting minerals without a medicine man?  Are you trying to cause earthquakes?

The Spirit Fox clan, mighty and numerous, has decided that the Swift Hand clan must be punished for their crime, and exiled.  They are given two choices:  we will exile you into the Stony Pass, where only the phantom trees grow, or we will seal you into the Tomb of the Silver Serpents, where the caves go on forever and only the suncap mushrooms grow.  Each of you will be allowed to take one animal of your choice, male or female. 

The Locations

In the Stony Pass, high above the plains (and therefore out of the hair of the Evanu miners) grows the phantom tree.  Phantom trees are magic-wielding plants that, during the blooming season, use illusion to project delicious fruits, fragrant blossoms, brilliant colors, and whatever else it can do to attract bees, birds, insects and the like.  When it is not in blossom, the illusions disguise the trees so they cannot be found, either projecting false images of trees or shielding the trees to appear as stones.  They are fruit-bearing and surprisingly nutritious.

In the Tomb of the Silver Serpents, caverns deep under the mountains, grew the suncap mushrooms.  Suncaps are thaumovoric fungi that consume ambient magic and produce heat and light as waste products.  They only grow in areas of high magic concentration, and they can be toxic to any magic-dependent creature such as the silverhead, a snake that hibernates inside solid rock, near geothermal vents, by transforming itself into a a vein of silver.  The light produced by suncaps is sufficiently close to the brightness and cycle of sunlight that surface plants can grow in it — in fact, many plants already grow in those caves.

The Animals

Keerfoxes are small, black-furred canids that hunt at night.  Their fur gives off a faint magelight, about equivalent to bright moonlight, visible only to those who have Magery.  It is quite intelligent.  Generally they eat small prey, such as birds, rabbits, rats, and vermin (plentiful everywhere).

Rock goats are large, slow-moving goatlike beasts with thick, almost metallic wool.  They are difficult to hunt with bows or spears, have almost no nutritive value, and few predators.  Their use to the tribe is as a pathfinder, because they possess the ability to turn the inedible edible.  Rock goats graze on sand and gravel, but their droppings are almost pure rich loam, perfect for frming.  Within days, often, plants will grow from the droppings, seemingly spontaneously.

Slime boars are tusked pigs that excrete their waste through their skin as a foul-smelling, slippery goo.  Not surprisingly, few predators try to bite them.  The slime boar’s wonderful trick is to cause a rapid healing effect in the things it eats, animal or vegetable; it can graze for days on one small patch of plants, which regrow only to be grazed again.

There are five offenders:  two men and three women.  Their names are not important here, except that there are two with Magery (one man and one woman), two (or three) hunters, and a toolmaker (or two).  The Magery-talented woman also hunts; the Magery-talented man also makes tools.

I presented the players with two questions:

1.  Where will the people be exiled to?

2.  Which animals will they take with them?

What The Players Decided  

The first thing the Players wanted to know was whether I was asking them to pass judgment on these people.  Were they guilty?  How could they possibly argue against a tribe that had been caught red-handed?  What were the rules of law?

I clarified:  the offenders had already been declared guilty, and all that remained was to decide upon their punishment.

They then turned to various ways they could break the rules, and offer the offending Swift Hand tribe a little extra help.  They could sneak some additional animals into the caves later, perhaps.

It occurred to them that perhaps after all the trouble they'd had to introduce mysticism back into this tribe, perhaps it would better serve the culture to enforce the rules fairly.  They then turned to ways they could merely bend the rules.

"Do we have to send five of the same animal?" they asked.

 No, you could mix and match.  One animal for each exile, that's the rule.

They talked it over and realized that, at best, they could send two species:  a male and a female of one, and a male and two females of another.  Even then, the breeding would be pretty thin.  Two males and three females of one species would be a stable enough breeding population.  Even more genetic diversity could be squeezed out of the animals (bad metaphor!) if they sent in females that were already pregnant.

The keerfox, the Players said, would be useless underground.  Its primary benefit was to cast light for those people who already had magical sight; in the caverns, light was already provided by the suncap mushrooms.  The mountain pass with the phantom trees didn't appeal.  By elimination, they ended up exiling the Swift Hand clan into the caves in the company of five rock goats.

Joe the Leader had one final trick up his sleeve.  "So they got exiled for mining without the company of a shaman, right?"

Yes, that's true, I said.

Joe nodded.  "Then I ordain one of them.  They've got to have a priest."

Results  

The most immediate result for the exiled Swift Hand tribe was that they would easily survive the supervolcano explosion in Round 4.  If they took on any adaptation from animals, as the half-human half-aguen did, that animal would be the rock goat.  In the tiny confined spaces of the caverns, where their suncap lighting was limited to high-magic caves, they would be able to grow crops on a limited scale.  Their religion would be perpetuated, in some form, because Joe had made certain to ordain one of them as a new shaman.  If only they hadn't been so enthusiastic about prosecuting the letter of the law and reinforcing the tribal custom of exile...

The Tale of Uman the Hunter and the Feast of Four Stones

Before the sun was made and all the Earth was snow and ice, Uman the Hunter led his people down from the mountains, and there in the plains they met a tribe that was bewitched by an evil serpent.

And the Serpent told his people that he craved the son of Uman, for the Serpent said that none of six fingers shall live.  And the Serpent said he would eat the son of Uman, and the tribe that was bewitched did call for blood.  But Uman saw the wicked enchantment upon that tribe, and he called upon the Four Spirits to destroy the serpent, and the earth shook, and the people of the serpent were killed, and those who were not killed were scattered in fear.

And even as Uman drove away the Serpent People who had been not killed, there was a man named Tukla the Fox, and he was a wily warrior.  And Tukla saw in the serpent’s fallen cave that his people had hidden away a glimmering stone that men call kuplar.  And Tukla did raise up this stone and say, “This stone was granted to us by the Four Spirits, and it is a Sign.”

And then Nutah, the Wise Woman, said that it is a sign, and with her great magic she called upon the Four Spirits, who shared the secret of the stone with her, and taught her secret spells, and they said to her, “All who follow you must guard well the sacred trust of the stones of the earth, for they hold mighty secrets.”

And Nutah said that she would, and all who came after her.

And the Four Spirits said to her, “And you must watch well the people of the tribe as they bring forth these stones, lest the magic of the stones become wicked and slay your people.”

And Nutah said that she would, and all who came after her.

And one of the Four Spirits reached into the stone, and he did pull from it a glimmering spear that glowed like a sunset, and he said, “Where is Uman?  A mighty warrior must have a mighty weapon.”

But the people did say, “Uman has fallen!  He has chased away the great Serpent of the wicked clan, but the Serpent in its last did bite him, and Uman is no more.”

And so the Four Heroes gave the glimmering spear to Tukwa, saying, “From this day forth, you will be the leader of Uman’s people.”

Tukwa the Fox then did lead Uman’s people to a great hole in the Earth, and he did say, “Here we will guard well the secrets of the stones, and here we will leave the body of Uman.  We will return him to the Earth, where the stones will keep him secret.”

And Tukwa’s people did lay the body of Uman inside the hill, which is now called the Hill of Four Stones.  And there was a great feast, the first Feast of Four Stones.

After they had their feast, they raised four stones in honor of the Four Spirits.  The first stone was white, and the people did cook with it; and the second stone was gray, and the people did carve it; and the third stone was black, and the people did make fire with it; and the fourth stone was the glimmering stone of orange and green that men call kuplat.

And ever since then, Tukwa’s people have dug for the four stones, and they have been called Evanu, which means Stone Seekers.

Round 4

The previous round had seen a period of warming, leading to a retreat of glaciation.  This round, the glaciers came back with a vengeance.  Beneath a lake created by a widening tectonic rift, a supervolcano erupted with colossal force, sending ash plumes into the sky and darkening the sun for a decade.  The precarious temperature cycled back down into a cooling period, bringing back the glaciers.  All around the globe, the seas retreated, the glaciers crept across the tundra, and the winds shifted.  Large animals migrated down from the mountains, back to the colder plains.  Smaller animals migrated south to warmer temperatures.  Food supplies for humans became hard to find.  Large populations, human and animal, dwindled to tiny populations.  Some went extinct.

It's not far-fetched.  DNA evidence suggests there was a genetic bottleneck in human history, some 70,000 years ago, Lake Toba in Sumatra, Indonesia, erupted with — some say — similar results.  The evidence is far from conclusive that humanity was nearly wiped out by this particular volcanic event, and the winter which proceeded from it, but the Toba Catastrophe Theory makes for an interesting read.

I am getting ready to add in Round 4 and 5.  Watch this space!

Players  

Joe the Leader

Dave the Artisan

Connor the Mystic

Year 106,250: The Ascent Of Chamandra

(Just to keep the players on their toes, I started them off with a piece of mythology that was surprisingly ... accurate.  This was The First Pilgrimage, the tale of the people of Cha.)

We return to the eastern continent.  The Ovron sorcerer tribes are the most advanced civilization of the plains, possessing mathematics, currency, a code of laws, bronze, and drama, but they are by no means the only civilization.  There are others.

First, the Drogol.  They have adapted to life on the unpredictable tornado-swept plains by becoming nomads.  They plant ground as they find it, abandon it just as easily, and harvest from whichever fields seem to have survived the stormy season.  Their agricultural methods are slipshod, as they spend no more effort than necessary — their philosophy is, “Why bother?  The winds may come north this year.”  They carry most of what they need on the backs of donkeys.  The Drogol are a polytheistic culture just barely out of the Stone Age; they have and can work bronze, but they rarely mine it themselves.  Like the Ovron, their southern neighbors, they believe in a demon-filled world where forces of nature are wielded against helpless humanity.  The Drogol, however, have given up trying to appease them.  “Why bother?” they say.  “There is always another demon.”

The only city of note among the Drogol is Olghoq, a semipermanent camp and bazaar, usually found in the same general area but prone to moving every year.

What the Drogol have become, living on the fringes of Ovron society and taking what they can to survive, is very skilled raiders.  The Drogol have inherited the fatalism of the Ovron and converted it into a daredevil code of machismo.  Tempting fate is not sufficient for the Drogol; they must poke Fate in the eye and call him a pansy.

It isn’t any wonder that the Drogol developed the arts of magical camouflage and of swift movement, for their lifestyle depends on fast strikes, attacks from ambush, unseen reconnaissance, and quick retreats.  Surprisingly, their culture is accepting and egalitarian, unlike the Ovron; in a world where a downtrodden lower class can simply ride off to the next hilltop and start his own rival clan, laws and castes are not strictly enforced.  The mark of a good leader is solving his clan’s problems with diplomacy, and fighting other Drogol as little as possible.  “Why bother?” they ask.  “You never know how many you’re fighting.”

The Drogol commonly raid their more settled neighbors to the north, the Ototek.  The Ototek are mired in the Stone Age, but they live in well-built cities for all of that.  They have observed and learned from their southern neighbors; the best-traveled among them know what the Ovron cities of the plains look like, and they have done their best to imitate them.  The walls of Bihotinep are stone, their buildings are stone; and the impressive ziggurats that serve as temples are also made of massive, cut blocks of stone.  All was built by hand, for the Ototek have few beasts of burden available to them, and with the little magic that they know.

The Ototek still recall the stories of Chamandra and the sacrifice to the sea god, although in their more modern adaptations, Chamandra is the god Monka, the sun god, and humans are sacrificed for his pleasure.  The Ototek use their Stone-Aged weapons for gladiatorial combat, taking the ancient survival-of-the-fittest habits of the Brun to grisly new heights.  Elaborate combat arenas have been set up for the Ototek’s enjoyment; the competitors are sometimes Ototek criminals, or captives from other nearby cultures, the Drogol raiders especially.  The fight is always to the death; only the winner has the honor of being sacrificed to Monka.  Sometimes the Ototek release prisoners into the arena with wild beasts for blood sport.

This shockingly primitive culture had the ill fortune to arise in a region without copper, without tin, and without even gold; the only metals at their disposal are erratic iron ores that can be found on the surface, and silver — which, for the most part, they haven’t the tools to extract.  They are the survivors of a prehistoric line of Brun tribesmen that crossed the land bridge without any surviving magic users.  As a consequence, their magic rituals are entirely their own, developed independently as magical talent arose among them.  Their spells often involve ritual sacrifice, blood, entrails, flame, and boiling skulls.  Berries smeared on the face, only in season.

The third culture north of the Ovron lives on the Gulf of Dawn.  The Cha are far advanced in technology and culture beyond the Ototek and the Drogol, but they are not numerous.  Their society is conservative and ancient, but fragile.  They have advanced bronze working and metal casting, silver currency, mathematics, and music.  They are the only culture on the eastern continent to possess both horses and cattle; they have cotton from Sathad, rice from Thos Ophos, and skelt from Skeltern.  They sail in the Gulf of Dawn using boats reminiscent of the Bazik catamarans; they write their stories and draw maps using an alphabet derived from the Jorannian cuneiform.  Their advanced technology is a patchwork, as if they had drawn at random a selection of inventions the world over, each from a different period in history.  The Cha seek to understand their technology as best they can, but their people are relatively few, only twenty thousand or so, and they cannot by themselves reproduce and improve upon the efforts of all the inventors of the world.  At best, their understanding of technology is a synthesis of the work of others.

The leader of the Cha is Chamandra (M; ~56,250).  He and all his people are immortal.  They are his descendants, and have inherited from him the ability to reincarnate.  Technically, this means they are all related, although the relationships are usually more complex; a reincarnated spirit may be reborn into a different family than his previous incarnation.

Prior to death, the people of Cha perform rituals that they have developed over the years.  The rituals encourage the reincarnated spirit to be reborn close to home, often within their own village.  If the departed person cannot be reincarnated within the village, he or she is born into a different race somewhere in a nearby culture.  The child is then raised in the new culture, and upon reaching adulthood he or she makes a pilgrimage back to Shezy.

The people of the Gulf of Dawn are avid star-watchers and have named a great many constellations in the heavens.  The stars help guide them back to their native lands when they become reborn in a far corner of the globe.  They know many languages, for as they are reborn they learn a new native tongue; and they study maps to help them return home.

Once every few lives, a Cha will die without benefit of ritual.  This is sometimes deliberately done, and sometimes the result of accident or misadventure.  The departed Cha will become reborn in any distant culture in the world, living his life among other people and learning their technology, before eventually finding his way back.  Some Cha are gone for generations, unable to get back during one life, and forced to wait until the next.  The period between death and eventual return to the city of Shezy is known as the Pilgrimage, and it is through these Pilgrimages that the Cha have acquired such a potpourri of useful knowledge the world over.  Some enterprising Cha heroes even managed to bring back breeding pairs of livestock, crop seeds, and ships.

The Cha are facing no immediate danger; there is no crisis on the horizon; there is no prophecy of disaster.  The people are, after all, effectively immortal — sometimes people don’t come back from death — but otherwise there are few earthly threats that worry the Cha.  All things can be overcome in time, and Chamandra has had more than enough time.

That, in fact, is the problem.  Chamandra, the leader, has summoned the gods privately, apart from his people, to demand an answer to his existential crisis.

“Great gods,” he says, “I do not know why you have put me here on this Earth to be born again and again, and to die again and again.  I have lived for more years than I can remember:  one year for every day in a hundred years, or even more.  I have lost count.

“I have seen every corner of the earth, I think, and I have been born under every star, and met every king of this earth.  I am tired of being reborn, great gods, when I do not know my purpose.

“When I was younger, I enjoyed my immortality.  I had been cleansed at the hands of the Four Warriors, personally blessed by the spirits, and sent on my way, and I was deathless.  But I learned to be not so rash, and to protect my people as I swore I would do.  I have tried to keep my people safe, and teach them the Pilgrimage, and show them the world.  My people look up to me.  I am the Eldest.

“But I implore you, Four Warriors—” here he looks at Temu— “and this goddess of foreign lands whom I know not, please tell me my purpose on this Earth.  I have gathered knowledge here in Shezy.  I have seen the Earth.  I have lived for tens of thousands of years.  There are those, whom I have seen, who live in lands to the south, and they worship the name of Chamandra as if I were a god.  I am no god.  I have not the power of the heavens to save mankind.  My only power is to die.  Tell me, great gods, teach me my purpose on this earth, or take this burden away from me.  I can go on no further.”

What The Players Decided  

At first, hearing the story of The First Pilgrimage, the Players gloated to hear that finally, some civilization somewhere didn't revere Chamandra or treat him as an all-knowing savior.  The Chamandra of The First Pilgrimage was arrogant, cocky, boastful, and was humbled by the things he had experienced.  I'm sure the Players were pleased to see their arch-enemy brought low, even as they were curious where this Event was going.

Then we came to the actual civilization that Chamandra had built, despite being surrounded by barbarism.  They heard Chamandra's plea to release him from his burden of immortality.  They saw the repentance and the humility.

"He's repenting now, I like it," said Connor.

"I know," Dave cried.  "It sucks.  I kinda feel sorry for him now, all those years he had to live."

 "What did we do to him?" Jack asked.  He had been present for the original cleansing ritual, way back in Year 50,000.

"Somebody made up a ritual," Joe said darkly in Connor's general direction.

"Was he immortal before that, though?  He said he was immortal.  He probably already knew," Connor said.

Chamandra had said that the Sea God had promised him that he was immortal, I reminded the Players.

"So what do we do with him?  Can we take him up to the afterlife* with us?"

"He's one of us," Connor insisted.

"He's not one of us," Joe said.  Joe had had enough of Chamandra for all these centuries.  So had I, frankly; that's why I wrote this scenario.

"We have to take him with us," Connor insisted.

"Are you saying if he's tired of coming back," Joe said, "he has to ascend and come up here... with us?"

"He'd be the new guy," Dave said.  "He'd get to do all the crappy jobs."

"He's not going to be one of us," Joe said firmly.

"Even if we get rid of him, there's a whole city full of Chamandra," Connor said.  "They're all Chamandra.  We can't get rid of him completely."

"They're not Chamandra.  Maybe they just have a culture that really believes in reincarnation," Joe said.

Then how do they keep coming back from all over the world, with everybody else's inventions? I asked.

"That's how the painting got down there!" Connor said, realizing what it all meant.  He was referring to the pictographic representation of the Cleansing Ritual that had been painted on the cliff walls on the island of Joranne.  That had puzzled them mightily at the time; how did the Jorannian people find out about Chamandra?  They had their explanation.

"Chamandra probably painted it himself," Jack said.

"They're still not all Chamandra," Joe said, getting back to the town of Shezy.

No, I agreed.  They're descended from him.  At some point he had a wife, or wives, who gave him sons and daughters.  Some of them were reborn in nearby tribes, the Drogol or the Ototek or the Brun, and they walked back.  That's how their culture has grown over the centuries, and why they have such a diverse racial stock.  They're literally made up of every race on Earth.  Some more than others, of course.

"What are we going to do with him?" the Players asked each other.

"We'll tell him that his work is done," Dave said.  "That his purpose was to build this civilization, and now he can rest.  We'll take him to the afterlife.  He can sit down with Dytoclanes and play chess with him, or something."

"He'll have to choose a successor," Connor said.

"No," Joe said, putting his foot down.  "Let them worry about that.  That's not our job.  If Chamandra had wanted to pick a successor, he'd have given us three people to pick from, or something.  We take care of him and we're done."

"I still think he's one of us," Connor said.

"He's not coming with us," Joe said.

"What do we tell his people?" Connor asked.  "That he died and went to heaven?"

They're astrologers, I said.  Point up at some stars in the sky and say, That's Chamandra.

"I like it," Connor said.

Results  

I won't know the results of this round until I have prepared for the next round.

*Earlier in the evening we had become diverted into a discussion about the Afterlife, and how it might appear in this world.  Dave's suggestion was for a tiny little place for the good people to go, and a tiny place for the bad people, and a vast cosmic space in between known as the Weaselly Middle Ground.  On a more serious note, the Players did wonder what it was that their god-characters might be doing in between the times they were summoned to the planet.  Was there an afterlife? they wondered.  A Mount Olympus, a Valhalla?  What do we do in between crises?  "If there is an afterlife, and we have anything to say about it," Dave said, "I'm going to make sure that philosopher, Dytoclanes, is set up.  Nice summer place, the works.  Every time you give me a hard time about the Weaselly Middle Ground, I'm gonna quote that guy at you."

The First Pilgrimage

Back in the beginning of Time, the gods fashioned the Earth.  They shaped it round, like a fruit, and they scattered it around with stars, and they hung over it a sun and a moon.  At the north of the world, where on a fruit might be a stem, and on the south where might be found a blossom, the gods placed ice.  And they shaped the Earth into mountains and rivers and lakes and islands, and they placed the People upon it.

Now the People all came from one place in the beginning, for all tales start there.  And over the years the People did move in all different directions, separating, rejoining, marrying, and making war.  And so it came to pass that the People did live in every corner of the Earth.

Some of the people in those days were crossing the ocean, and the oceans were rising, though know man today knows why.  And there was one among them who was named Chamandra.  And Chamandra was young and foolish in those days, and he believed that he could stop the rise of the oceans and save his people, and he taunted the gods with his foolishness and he dared them to cast him into the flames of sacrifice.  And Chamandra boasted that although he might die, he would be reborn, and thus it was so, for Chamandra was the first Immortal.

Now Chamandra was reborn at the will of the gods, but he did not return to his people on the ocean.  He was reborn first in a faraway land where men and horse were one beast.  He lived there, and died, and was again reborn.  And each time he was reborn, he became less a fool, and he began to understand the grand creation of the gods, and he began to repent his previous ways.

So Chamandra began the First Pilgrimage, and he walked and walked and walked, until he died and was born again.  And when he came of age, he again walked and walked, until he reached the place where the land fell away into ocean, and from there he sailed, until he died and was reborn.  And when he came of age again, he sailed and sailed until he reached the place where the Four Gods had cast him into the flames of sacrifice.  And when he saw that island, which he knew of old, he knew that he had been a fool, for he had not been sacrificed, and yet the oceans had fallen.

And Chamandra regretted his boast, and he renounced it, and he decided his Pilgrimage must be over.

It was then that the women of the sea whispered to Chamandra, “Your Pilgrimage is not at an end.  Have you not learned?  Are you not wiser?  Do you not recall that you swore to protect your people?”

Then Chamandra knew that the real purpose of his Pilgrimage had been to remind him of his duty to his people, and thus he set off to follow in the footsteps of Windstrong Ravvy and Copperdawn Dainar, who last he saw, a hundred years ago, had talked of sailing for the mainland.

Year 106,170: The Rise Of The Salt Men

(To give the proper sense of dread and impending doom, I started the players off with the myth The Curséd Light.)

The difficulties faced by the Zefari Empire do not have much effect on the people of the Nutar Valley.  They have lived and farmed the valley near the ancient Skeltern for untold generations.  The people live happily atop ruins of previous settlements, and in some cases even blissfully unaware of those ruins; it has been over six thousand years since their ancestors first came up from the caverns below the mountains to try their hand at surface agriculture.

Further up the Nutar Valley, they have encountered iron deposits, and have just begun to make use of them.  Through their trade they have encountered the use of iron in weapons and tools, and they see the promise in such a hard, versatile metal.  Their valley culture, much more confined than the Zefari of the open plains, has encouraged a great deal more intermingling between the various races.  Unlike the Zefari, there is no culture of stone-shaping magic, because the Avadi and Fentan intermarry as they please, and that particular talent was bred out generations ago.  No one race is ascendant.  The affairs of the Empire are as distant and disregarded as the Phoenicians were to the Celts.  And for its part, the Empire had long ago ceased to concern itself with the lands which had given birth to it, and the policies of distant Emperors never intruded on valley life.

Not that the Nutar Valley was entirely peaceful, for there were occasional wars and skirmishes.  As there was plenty of fertile land north of the Copper Mountains, these were infrequent occasions at best — that is, until the arrival of the Kallko.

The Kallko began to emerge at night from the caverns along the Nutar River and farm the rocky soil.  They were infrequently seen by the Fentan people because they never emerged during daylight hours; and the lands they chose to farm were among the poorest, steepest, rockiest lands fit only for the grazing of goats.  It was, in fact, due to missing animals that the Kallko caught the attention of the surface-dwellers at all:  goatherds reported some of their goats had gone missing in the hills.  Expeditions to search for them led only to strange stone shelters near waterfalls, where spattering water caused strange luminescent mosses to grow on the nearby rocks.  Primitive shrines were found in the hills, too:  regular blocks of stone, possibly shaped by magic, arranged in a ring around obscene, dancing statues created expertly in obsidian.  These shrines were often decorated with rusting or rotting sacrifices left by the primitives who shaped them.

It was thought that the Kallko must be some tribe of barbarians or savages that had moved into the hills; the people of Fentan were well aware of the existence of Neolithic Peoples that the Bronze Age had left behind.  That made their first encounter all the more surprising.

The Kallko were underground people, pale-skinned, about five feet tall.  Most of the males had a sparse coating of a thick, metallic fur; all had horns, although the females’ horns were often larger and straighter, sometimes as long as a human’s hand.  Their eyes were large, their hearing excellent, and their language surprisingly sophisticated.  The Kallko people were very swift and sure-footed — some of the Fentan believed that the Kallko had hooves, rather than wearing boots as men do —as well as tireless and very good in the dark.

What was most terrifying about the Kallko was not their visage, nor their sudden appearance, but their war machines.  The Kallko were primitive in many ways, lacking art, a written language, an organized priesthood, and even the barest understanding of the sun, sky, and seasons.  In other ways, they were the equal of Fentan:  they had surprisingly complex music, a deep understanding of mathematics, and a sophisticated knowledge of weaving and knot-tying that the Kallko used in place of written letters.  Knots and beads and loops on strings could be manipulated in the dark with one’s fingers; no light was necessary.  But in one key way, the Kallko were terrifyingly advanced:  their war machines.

The Kallko did battle underground, and their war machines were designed specifically to shake down caverns or destabilize galleries.  They understood the casting of metal, especially iron and steel, and they had already developed the pulley, the geartooth, and the wormscrew.  The Kallko had mining carts on rails that extracted soil from the tunnels, powered by a water wheel; they had compact gear-aligned battering rams designed punch holes in stone walls; and most frightening to the Fentan, they had a six-foot screw press which they used on their defeated enemies.  Water, you see, is scarce in the caverns, and the Kallko were not about to let a valuable resource go to waste.  Often the bodies of their defeated enemies — at least those they did not eat — were used as fertilizer.

Within months of the Kallko’s discovery in the valley, the pale-skinned goat-men were using sorcery to extend the caverns.  Large parts of the valley were being enclosed in artificial tunnels to serve as habitat for the Kallko.

King Iden V (M, 49) of Skeltern has called together his advisers to consult on this matter.

Councilor Antharam (M, 43) is a guentar stallion from an aristocratic family.  His line made their name in long-distance trading, establishing a firm foothold in the olive groves and bartering much with his supplies of olive oil.  “They are impossible,” he says.  “We have spells to comprehend their language, but they do not seem to understand the nature of buying and selling at all.  They won’t take our bronze coins at all.  They say bronze is worthless.  And you can’t reason with them.  I bring them good merchandise, good olive oils, good cork, woolens and onions and flax, and they insist on touching it all.  And not one of them offers any better price than any other.  It’s like they’ve all agreed to buy my wares at one single price, no matter what I do.”

“You mean,” says Councilor Quag (M, 60), “you can’t lie to them.”  Quag is a traditionalist, ex-military Avadi.  His place on the King’s advisory council came from his service in the wars, routing barbarians in the north to keep them away from Fentanese settlements.  “They have strange ways, to be sure, but I’ve seen stranger.  They live in the dark.  Of course they’re not going to look at your wares.  They can tell more by feel and shape and size how much you’re offering.”

“But how do they always offer the same price?” says Antharam.  “Why do they never bargain with my men?”

“Who knows?” says Quag.  “Some barbarians have never heard of haggling.  I’ve seen it.  You’ll have to learn to do business their way, or teach them to do business your way.”

“It’s impossible,” says Antharam.  “And if they continue to take up the valley floor with their stone walls, they’re going to block off the entire valley.  Our communication and trade with the Aquilus Republic is going to be cut off.  Merchants won’t be able to get through.  We won’t be able to get vancium, or sell our merchandise there.  Your Majesty, I recommend in the strongest possible terms that you send an army up the valley to rout these goat-men.  They cannot be permitted to occupy the valley upstream of us.”

“Nonsense,” says Quag.  “You’re only worried that they’ll close the trade routes.  There are two rivers that come into Skeltern.  I’m not going to send good men up against those monsters until they become a threat to our safety.  I don’t have enough soldiers to squander any on protecting a few fat merchants from getting less fat.”

“What do you propose, Councilor Quag?” asks King Iden.  He is a man of mixed Avadi and Fentanese blood, and an amateur dabbler in magic.

“First, we must find every cavern we can and block it up,” says Quag.  “We’ll fill those caverns with stone if we must, and shut down our mines.”

“Shut down the mines, are you mad?” asks Antharam.  He can see the profits dwindling already.

“They come from underground, and our hills are riddled with mines,” says Quag.  “They may come up behind us, or through some old forgotten shaft.  Attacking them in the valley is a fool’s mission, and I am not a fool.  But we don’t have to let them attack us on their own ground.  They hate the surface, and they hate the light, so let’s make them fight on our terms.  We block up all the mines and fortify our western city walls against their devilish war machines.  We put spells in place to flood the valley west of us with bright light.  If ever they attack, we’ll shoot them down with bows.”

“That’s as good as closing down the Valley,” cries Antharam.  “You propose to make a pauper of me?  Then, your Majesty, allow me to make my recommendation to the Aquilus Republic.  Perhaps if we coordinated an attack from both sides—”

“Yes, the Republic,” agrees Councilor Quag.  “We should at least send a runner to warn them that goat men have arisen in the hills.  Perhaps they have already encountered them, but they deserve to be warned in advance.”

“That is your advice?” asks King Iden.  “You both recommend attack?  If it must be so.  But first we must consult the gods.  If they are sending goat-men of the deeps to destroy us, we should at least know why we are being punished.”

What The Players Decided 

As soon as Jack read out the part in the myth The Curséd Light where the god was named Toklokmok, Connor lifted his arms in victory.  That was the name of his character, and how he had signed the graffito he had left in the Salt Men's domain all those years ago.  His elation went downhill from there, as it became evident that the Kallko didn't really like Toklokmok, and in fact resented him for imprisoning them under the mountains.

The Players listened with apprehension as I described this warlike culture of engineers, builders, miners, and machinists that had sprung up right between the already-embattled Zefari stone shapers and the Aquiline Republic.

Connor wanted to investigate the salt men, to go talk to them, to find out what motivated them.  I think he was somehow proud of his hellish creation that was about to come down on civilized society like a hammer.  I wasn't keen to have the players try to speak with the Kallko, primarily because I felt it was more dramatically interesting to have one culture on the planet that they didn't directly control from the inside.  Unless the Kallko came to worship the players as gods, they would have no influence over them.

The Kallko were worryingly advanced in many ways, but I reminded them that they weren't superior.  They don't have literature and writing and culture, I pointed out.

"Which is exactly what I'd expect of a civilization created by Connor," Dave observed.  "Sorry, man.  It's funny 'cause it's true."

Joe was in favor of making the Fentan people solve their own problem.  The Fentanese had been, fifty thousand years ago, the very people who had exiled the Kallko into the darkness.  They weren't to remember that, of course, but Joe still felt it was their own mess to clean up.  "Take responsibility for the sins of your fathers," Joe said implacably.

Sins of the father?  Interesting.  That little phrase could come back to bite him someday.

"Besides," Joe went on, "blocking up the mines on this side wouldn't do any good.  It won't stop these guys.  They've got the same stone-shaper magic that the Zefar have, I'll bet.  They could just part the stone and walk right through, maybe pass through solid rock without stopping.  War isn't the answer here."

Dave and Connor, too, were all for finding a peaceful solution.  Perhaps the Kallko could be taught or trained in the art of barter, or the Fentan merchants could learn to handle things the Kallko way.  "How do they all pick the same selling price?"  Dave asked curiously.  "Is there any suggestion that there's some kind of telepathic link going on?"

Let me put it this way, I said.  They're engineers.  They live underground and they hardly ever use their eyes.  They're really good at determining things by size and length and volume, and they're not fooled by presentation.

Jack was opposed to any attempt to tame or civilize the Kallko.  "They're going to get taken advantage of," he declared.

"They've got deadly war machines," Dave objected.

"I know," Jack said.  "That's all the more reason not to let them get taken advantage of."

The ultimate decision was for peace and trade.  The Fentan were responsible for banishing the Kallko in the first place; they should be responsible for welcoming them back to the light.

Results 

I won't know the results of this round until I have prepared for the next round.

The Curséd Light

In the beginning the world was blindness and light, and the god Toklokmok created the first Sound.  And with that first sound he brought with him the first Echo, and he created the soothing darkness around us.

And in the cool, deep places of the world he placed the People, and he gave them ears to hear the Sounds of the earth, and he gave them steady feet, and he said to them, “This place in the world is to be yours, for you are unworthy.  Go you now into the darkness and find sustenance, for until you have proved yourself honorable in my hearing, you shall enclosed by the Earth.”

And the people went forth, and they tamed the mighty beetle kiklata, and they tamed the slithering snail lexita, and they found the silverhead serpent and put it to their own uses.  And the people ever resented the god Toklokmok for imprisoning them in the darkness, and they resented their neighbors above who lived in the terrible shallows.

Gonkol the leader said, “Toklokmok has placed in the shallows a fungus which contains the light of Creation, and it absorbs our enchantments, and it weakens our spells.  He placed the fungus there to keep us out.”

“Destroy it!” cried Gonkol’s people, and they tried, but into the light they could not go, for it burned their eyes and their skin.  And his people retreated from the shallows.

“Toklokmok, why have you punished us?” cried the people in their hurt.  “Why do you forsake us to the darkness?”

“The darkness is no curse,” said Gonkol.  “The darkness is our blessing.  It is cool and comforting and it does not burn our skin.  Here in the darkness we have everything we need:  metal for tools, stone for building, coal for eating, moss and insects for nutrition.  We have our hands and our ears, which Toklokmok has given to us.  With them, we will create a mighty empire such that Toklokmok must declare us honorable.”

And since that day, the people have embraced the darkness as their friend and guide, and dream forever of the day when they may show Toklokmok the powerful works they have built.