The Great Cooling spelled disaster for the Yahg, even if it what they faced wasn't quite as bad as what the Hyperboreans and Hyperaustralians had to deal with. Camping under the night sky was no longer an option for a quarter to half the year, as winters grew longer and much more severe the further north one went. Yahg herds thinned with the grass, and many nomadic clans faced starvation or hypothermia as they fruitlessly wandered from one devastated grazing ground to another in these dark times. Modern archaeologists have even found evidence of cannibalism in Yahg graves dating to the period around 9,900-10,000 AA, showing both the desperate measures that the Yahg resorted to in order to survive (while holding a more cavalier attitude towards eating fellow men than many more 'civilized' cultures would be comfortable with, the Yahg don't seem to have taken to the practice nearly as well as the Hyperaustralians) and that the Cooling affected their corner of the world ahead of many other peoples, as can be expected from their northerly location.
Naturally, the Cooling thus resulted in the migration of many Yahg tribes and clans southward...directly into the lands of the more peaceful Suuvulk. Starved, desperate, and newly armed with chiefly iron weapons - the copper and tin deposits of the north having been abandoned as the Yahg drifted south - they fell upon their neighbors, whom they'd previously at worst only raided and at best actually developed somewhat cordial relationships with, like wolves upon sheep. The darkened Yahg gave and expected no quarter as they advanced, wiping out any Suufulk tribe that lived in the vicinity of decent pasture & failed to get out of their way quickly enough or which happened to have enough food to make them a worthwhile target for looting. Even Golga were neither spared nor avoided, should they try to save their friends or otherwise get in a Yahg tribe's way; many a tale was spun and sung of Yahg men throwing themselves by the dozens or hundreds at a single Golga, trying to shoot the titan down with arrows from their saddles or hopping up on as much itükhade juices as they could ingest without killing themselves and charging the giant with blades in their hands. Essiq Khulliq-kili ('Essiq, son of Khulliq'), an early Yahg warlord who led his Yallıg tribe on the first mass migration onto traditional Suuvulk lands around 10,000 AA and was said to have been the first Xan-Xibyt-ana-Tänma (or avatar of the Yahg war god), slew three giants who were friends to three Suuvulk tribes in one day with three iron arrows according to Yahg myth.
| Essiq Khulliq-kili directs his Yallıg Horde on the way out of a Suufulk encampment they just rampaged through, c. 10,100 AA |  |
Speaking of saddles: some of the first proper framed saddles in Muataria date back to this period, and were of Yahg make. It is considered quite likely by many modern historians that the Yahg invented the saddle (alternative candidates including the Suuvulk and Mun'umati), and certainly it proved instrumental in revolutionizing their military doctrine by both enhancing the effectiveness of the traditional Yahg horse-archer and making it possible for them to start fighting as mounted lancers. But that is a topic that will be discussed in greater detail further below...
After several decades or centuries, the Yahg appear to have ceased expanding westward and southward - the complete lack of Yahg written records, or indeed any evidence of a Yahg writing system at all, in this period makes it difficult to discern when exactly their advance ground to a halt - but regardless of when it happened, the reasons why it happened are fairly well-understood. Many Yahg tribes had found fields that was good enough to sustain their herds in perpetuity, at least with careful management, and the Suuvulk that they'd been pushing around had also sufficiently militarized to more effectively fight back against their invasions & general marauding; those Yahg tribes that failed to migrate for whatever reason also had less competition for the limited resources of their now-taiga homeland. An unstable equilibrium appears to have settled over the eastern steppes of Muataria in this time, as Yahg tribes continued to migrate - sometimes intentionally or unintentionally crossing onto the grazing grounds of Suuvulk tribes - and extensively raid and war with both the Suuvulk and one another. With that said, the range of Yahg artifacts from the 10,000-10,500 AA period was definitely conclusively limited by 10,200 AA at the latest, indicating that any later wars of expansion they waged towards the waning years of the Early Iron Age were unsuccessful or failed to secure any territories in the long term.
| Extent of Yahg presence, c. 10,500 AA |  |
| Changes to Yahg society | Easily the biggest and most obvious alteration to Yahg society post-Great Cooling was a limited process of centralization, by which individual tribes began to gather into larger and more dangerous confederacies - so-called 'hordes', or Uyğüz (singl. uyğü) - headed by a Yantâsh: the nomadic warlord who, by a combination of charisma and brute strength, managed to pull and hold together these tribal hordes in the first place. Yantâshi were not elected, nor did they inherit their position (though their sons were accorded greater respect than most as Yantirs, tribal princes, so long as they lived): oh no, they had to fight for it, for every time a Yantâsh died his horde would splinter as the various tribal warlords under his command battled one another for the right of succession, ensuring that only the fiercest, most cunning and most brutal of the Yahg could emerge as leaders in society. Yantâshi were also wholly unrestrained despots who wielded as much authority as they could get away with: they could hoard as much food and mare's milk for themselves, take any woman in the horde, order the Horde to pack their things and migrate elsewhere at will, declare themselves & their followers above what passed for laws in their wild tribes and kill just about anyone they liked for any reason or no reason at all - if their people wanted to put a stop to their excesses, well, the Yahg way demanded that they revolt and violently overthrow him, or at least assassinate him if they didn't have the stones/muscle to take him on head-to-head. If the rebels succeeded, then all was well, for their strength had proved greater than that of their oppressor; and if the tyrannical Yantâsh prevailed, that too was fine, for the brutally Darwinistic morality of the Yahg recognized the right of the strong to do as they pleased to those weaker than they until someone stronger comes along to put a stop to it.
| Eliq Öqer-kili, a Yantâsh of the Elman uyğü or 'Horde', engaged in a recreational hunt, c. 10,155 AA |  |
All this said, smarter and longer-lived Yantâshi restrained their baser urges, not because any law or shaman told them to, but just to retain the loyalty of their followers. These more reasonable rulers still governed with the consent of nothing and nobody but their lance-arm and warriors, but they did accept the support and counsel of a circle of tribal shamans and elders, tried to judge cases fairly (though the Yahg had no concept of the rule of law and legal precedents, so there was no problem if a Yantâsh should make completely contradictory rulings in two or more similar cases unless those affected wished to challenge him to single combat) and keep their warriors from engaging in uncontrolled pillaging, at least of their own people.
Among some Yahg tribes and hordes, the Yantâshi also tried to ensure a more orderly succession, so that their people didn't just fragment and start murdering each other before their bodies turned cold; these measures ranged from designating a Yantir as successor and calling on anyone who challenged his right to succession to present themselves before the reigning Yantâsh, who would then engage them in a duel to the death and thus try to preemptively clear out his favored heir's competitors (as practiced by the Yeri and Yubu), to having one's counselors elect one of the Yantirs as his designated heir and then killing anyone who disagreed (as practiced by the Yallıg and Ulwars), to sending all who were interested in being named heir on dangerous quests assigned by the tribe's oldest and most venerable shaman, with the first to successfully return being designated the Yantâsh's heir (as was done by the Elmans).
Within these new hordes, life didn't change too much from the pre-Cooling days - the Yahg still chiefly lived as nomadic pastoralists, riding from one pasture to another to pitch their yurts, feed their herds of horses, goats and cattle, and supplement their diet by engaging in hunting and gathering - but they were noticeably even more militarized than they had been before the Cooling. When there was raiding to be done (and there was always raiding to be done), the Yantâsh called on volunteers to assemble into mounted war parties (which had the privilege of selecting their own leaders, by having anyone who volunteered to lead the warband fight one another to first blood) and strike out against his designated targets for as long and as viciously as they could, with those who returned getting to keep a fraction of the spoils for themselves and certainly showering themselves in prestige. In times of full-blown war, every man in the tribe over the age of twelve was required to ride out to destroy the enemy under the Yantâsh's command; anyone who couldn't ride a horse and fire a bow while moving by that age was considered hopeless, and practically a woman. Men who proved their worth in battle and/or raids, or had the good luck to be related to or to have befriended the Yantâsh, would be offered a place in his Kurzum - a retinue of elite warriors, who were fed and housed and equipped at his expense & granted first choice of the spoils of war.
| A humble Yahg family's yurt on the tundra in the late spring or summer, c. 10,000 AA |  |
| Recreation of the elaborate yurt of a Yahg nobleman or Yantir, c. 10,450 AA |  |
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| Iron Age Yahg warfare | As mentioned under the 'society' tab, Yahg society was both better organized and better militarized after the Great Cooling. Every able-bodied man (defined as males over the age of twelve) was required to fight for the tribe/horde in wartime, leaving behind the women, elderly and infirm to tend the herds and keep the hearths burning at home. Yahg armies were loosely organized into tribe-based warbands, with each constituent clan's warriors being led by their patriarch (or his eldest and closest male relative by blood, in case the patriarch was too old or sickly to fight) and those clan patriarchs in turn were led by the tribal chief, who then answered to the Yantâsh. The larger tribal and multi-tribal warbands generally had three divisions of warriors: the 'screamers', the lancers, and finally the horse-archers who made up the bulk of the Yahg fighting ranks.
| Yahg warriors on the offensive - from left to right: a horse archer, two Kurzum lancers, and a screamer ('Shahg') |  |
The Yahg screamers (Shahgui, singl. Shahg) were, essentially, mounted berserkers: a mix of slaves and foolhardy volunteers between the ages of sixteen and twenty-six, these men consumed enormous amounts of itükhade juices on the eve of battle while shamans prayed and sang and danced around them, calling on all the gods (even Karash) to strip away their reason and compassion and even base humanity, and to instead turn them into ravenous monsters in human skin who knew nothing but victory, death and how to achieve both. The screamers would then be trotted out in front of the rest of the Yahg army, bound in ropes and tied to their saddles; there, slaves deemed especially worthless and expendable would cut their bindings (save the ones keeping them stuck in their saddles), present them with their lances and swords or axes, and then try to get as far away from them as possible. With any luck, the screamers will then thunder towards the foe without murdering the hapless slave assigned to free and arm them, faces warped and mouths open as they shrieked insensible battle-cries like the complete maniacs they've become. After breaking their long but brittle lances in the initial charge, each man would wield a weapon in each hand, one given by the slave and the other stored in a scabbard hanging from their saddle, to be drawn when they got close enough to speed up to a full gallop; from there the screaming largely stopped, as these berserkers needed to bite down on their reins to steer while their hands were occupied with hacking and slashing into enemy bodies.
Delirious, extremely violent and unable to feel much (if any) fear and pain, these men were lightly armored - if at all - and expected to all die fighting, or at least take heavy casualties, as they stormed on towards the enemy's lines, where they'd hopefully terrify - and terribly bloody - the foe before dying; any Shaghui who actually survived their battle and wasn't driven so mad that they had to be put down by their fellow tribesmen afterward was guaranteed a place in their chief's Kurzum. Slave Shaghui who survived were also granted their freedom and adopted into the tribe that once owned them, for the respect they won as berserkers was considered to outweigh the weakness that landed them in slavery in the first place.
| A shirtless Yahg screamer about to charge ahead of his peers, c. 10,120 AA |  |
The bulk of the average Yahg army were not these insane screamers, of course, but rather horse-archers. Most Yahg fought unarmored, or at most wearing an iron helmet reinforced with boar's tusks or goat's horns and/or an iron disc over their hearts, as highly mobile mounted skirmishers. Riding small but hardy steppe horses, they could ride circles around their foes and fire the infamous Yahg recurve bows from their saddles while keeping their steeds' reins in their teeth, or keep their distance and blanket the enemy with arrows while the screamers and lancers did most of the up-close-and-dirty-work. Yahg archers have been known to even fire into melees involving their comrades among the screamers and lancers under particularly ruthless and uncaring Yantâshi, trusting in the lancers' armor and the screamers' drug-induced fear/painlessness to let them survive the friendly fire while remaining in fighting shape. Should these men find themselves in melee by chance or simply their chief's orders, they had axes and lassos to fall back on; the latter could be used to entangle an enemy warrior, pull him from his saddle and strangle or drag him to his death, or else to take an opponent alive so that he can be held for ransom or sold into slavery after the battle's conclusion.
As the Yahg practiced horsemanship and archery (both critical to remaining mobile and hunting on the cold northern steppe) since they could walk, or even before that, virtually all Yahg men could serve as proficient horse-archers with little need for extra 'official' training when called on to serve their tribe. Being speedy and skilled marksmen, these men were also the primary killers of any Golga that tried to protect a targeted Suufulk tribe; not the savage and insanely fearless screamers, nor the elite lancers in their heavy armor, but the mass of lightly or un-armored horse archers loosing scores of arrows per minute (against Golga, primarily targeting the eyes, heart, armpits and groin) proved to be the most effective force the Yahg had to field against the giants of the eastern steppes.
| An unarmored Yahg horse archer opening fire while on the move, c. 10,300 AA |  |
Neither the horse-archers (at least not entirely) nor screamers were considered the best the Yahg armies had to offer, however. That honor went to their lancers, drawn from the ranks of the tribal nobles, their sons and their retainers, as well as the Yantâsh's kurzum: the advent of the saddle made it possible for mounted men to effectively fight in close quarters, rather than just sticking to scouting and skirmishing, and the Yahg took full advantage of this fact. Suited up in helmets and lamellar armor made of part rawhide and part iron plates or scales, these elite warriors thundered onto the battlefield atop the tallest, strongest and most fearless horses in their tribe's herds, wielding a massive two-handed, iron-headed lance that ranged between 3-4 m in length. Their role was brutally simple: form up into either a dense block (four to six ranks deep) or a wide but 'shallow' square (two to three ranks deep), charge into the enemy with their lances, and then start carving up any survivors with their axes.
Being both more heavily armored and disciplined than the rest of the wild Yahg forces, these lancers presented an iron fist capable of decisively winning battles with a single charge. In the wars between their tribes, a Yahg lancer onslaught - inevitably following the first rush of the screamers and a couple of volleys from the lesser horse-archers - could easily scatter and crush anything but another mass of Yahg lancers, and against foreign peoples only rival heavy cavalry, especially tireless horse-archers who could also afford to take on the Yahg's own mounted archers at the same time, and/or disciplined masses of armored infantry would have had a prayer against a charge of these formidable steppe warriors.
| A lancer of the Yeri Horde, c. 10,500 AA |  |
The chieftain or Yantâsh's kurzum presented a special cut of lancers, clad in iron scales and equipped with a bow and arrows of their own addition to the lance & ax. Accompanied by retainers chosen from the ranks of the general horse archers, the kurzum lancer first moved towards the enemy at a trot while firing arrows, and only tossed the bow to his retainer in return for the lance when they got close enough to start galloping: at which point, naturally, they sped up to a gallop to close in on the enemy with lance in hand.
| A kurzum warrior, c. 10,500 AA, with three lesser retainers |  |
Now all this said, most of the time, Yahg warfare revolved around raiding, pillaging and ambushing; not grand set-piece battles, in which the lancers would shine, and which really only happened when an entire Horde was migrating into some already-occupied territory. No, most of the time, the Yahg hordes sent forth small but speedy parties of screamers and horse-archers to ravage an opposing tribe's camps and pastures, looting their stores, torching their tents, stealing from their herds and carrying off their sons and daughters as slaves. Anything that couldn't be taken was put to the torch; anyone who presented a liability to the Yahg raiders - the elderly, the infirm, and the overly willful - were cut down rather than being dragged off in chains and ropes. These raiding parties naturally preferred to flee from any pursuers rather than fend them off, but when flight was not an option, they would attempt to find favorable ground for an ambush, attempt to surprise said pursuers, and then try to break through past them rather than stick around to achieve a proper victory; loot and slaves could even be left behind. Almost needless to say, it seemed the Yahg only considered bravery a virtue when a horde was mounting a proper invasion with the intent of seeking out and engaging enemy armies: or as they themselves would say it, 'a brave raider who'll stick around to fight is a stupid raider, and will probably be a dead raider soon'.
| Yahg raiders making off with their plunder, c. 10,300 AA |  |
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[ANW - Language Family] The Yahg
