The coming of the Suufulk and Oriental Hyperboreans completely upended the traditional lifestyle and pacifist beliefs of the Bronze Age Akesai. Violent disputes and raids were known to them, of course, but rare and often averted by the soothing words of their elders; as a people, they could not have been less prepared for the arrival of these foreign invaders, who neither spoke nor cared to understand their language and were hellbent on conquest & enslavement. The Akesai living in the western Tipak Tidi were mostly subjugated or exterminated in astonishingly short order without putting up much of a fight, the only free survivors being the ones who had the foresight and luck to flee to the eastern half of the mountain range. While the Suufulk migrated into Midija through the mountain passes, the Kikogani were determined to push further east, continuously devastating Akesai villages, uprooting refugees who thought they were safe and routing whatever club-and-bow-armed rabble dared oppose them head-on with their iron weapons and horses as they went. Against such ferocity, the elders and monks of the Akesai were forced to find ways to deal with this rude awakening to the outside world and organize proper resistance to the invaders, even if it meant killing in large numbers.
| A Kikogani warlord and his sherikani trample the snows of the Tipak Tidi, c. 10,205 AA |  |
The result was the ascendancy of a Brjid Yangdrung sect called the Shenpo Khag S'oi, or 'School of Overwhelming Harmony', around 10,212 AA. A Heretical sect of Clerical soul and a Bastion-of-the-Faith mentality, Shenpo Khag S'oi was founded by a man called the 'Ever-Harmonious One' or Tsang-Shen-Dab, said to have been a once-peaceful monk who killed for the first time when he caught a straggler from the raiding party that had destroyed the village which supported him. Tsang-Shen-Dab taught that while violence remained deplorable and should be avoided where possible, peace should not be sought at all costs, and it is acceptable to fight back or even kill in self-defense and the defense of others. In the first demonstration of the power of his teachings, he led an Akesai militia to victory over invading Suufulk and Kikogani armies in the semi-legendary Battle of Ba Pass, ambushing the invaders while they were busy fighting one another and letting the enemy warlords retreat only after burying most of their warriors beneath a landslide and breaking all of their limbs with his fists, feet & iron-tipped quarterstaff.
| The 'whole wheel', standard of the Shenpoist Order |  |
Outside of the Tipak Tidi, Tsang-Shen-Dab is best remembered for founding the Akesai martial art of S'ai-jo, a highly acrobatic style that stressed the use of fluid, lightning-fast strikes to subdue opponents (non-lethally or otherwise) while also remaining balanced & on one's feet at all times, and which incorporated the usage of quarterstaves for two reasons: firstly, it was thought to spill less blood than bladed weapons, and secondly, its reach and bluntness made it more effective against the iron armor of the Kikogani than daggers and swords. When he died by becoming a sangha at the age of 88, having defended his growing monastic complex atop Mt. Ba from all adversaries for 40 years, it was said he had amassed 100,000 disciples (believed by most historians to be a gross exaggeration, but one that hints at the sheer scale of the Akesai abandonment of pure pacifism), and his oldest students - who had become S'ai-jo masters and teachers in their own right - came to believe that if the Akesai were to survive these harsh times, they had to unite all of their people beneath their departed master's banner and teachings.
| Modern depiction of a S'ai-jo master, or even Tsang-Shen-Dab himself, wielding a quarterstaff, c. 10,230 AA |  |
The practitioners of S'ai-jo accordingly went out of their monastery complex on Mt. Ba, determined to weld the Akesai into one nation. By 10,385 AA, they seem to have mostly succeeded, for a good chunk of the eastern Tipak Tidi mountains all answered to the commands of the Sagra Sanghi Pon or 'Living Sagely Master' - the title of the order's leader, said to be the reincarnation of Tsang-Shen-Dab (on account of being born in the exact moment of his previous vessel's death), who was raised from infancy/whenever he or she was found by the Shenpoists to command them and who was consequently venerated as almost a living god. The Sagra Sanghi Pons would go on to lead this first united Akesai nation in defense of their remaining lands, with an eye on eventually counterattacking into the western Tipak Tidi, while other Akesai tribes lived to their east in blissful harmony, sheltered from the ravages of the Iron Age by the Shenpoist order's vigilance.
| Map of the Shenpoist Order's territories relative to the Kikogani (orange lines: frequently contested peaks & valleys, red dot: Mt. Ba) |  |
| Organization of the Shenpoist Order | The territories where the Shenpo Khag S'oi exerted both temporal and spiritual dominance were commonly represented as the 'Shenpoist Order' on maps, but as far as the Shenpoists were concerned (at least early on), they were not rulers in the traditional sense - merely stewards of the Tipak Tidi and the protectors of those native Akesai who lived in its shadow, who may at times have to 'gently' 'persuade' their traditional leaders (the clan leaders) to see things their way for the greater good of the Akesai. The Sagra Sanghi Pon or 'Living Sagely Master', head of the Shenpo Khag S'oi, never claimed kingly dignity and was theoretically overlord of nothing & nobody but the students, practitioners and monastic complexes of the school, and Akesai who were not formally part of the order lived pretty much the same way they had before the arrival of the northern invaders and the ensuing rise of Shenpoism; in return for the protection provided by the order, all that was expected of the clans enjoying said protection was to pay a small seasonal tribute to keep the Shenpoist forces fed. In the first century or so of their existence, the Shenpoists even tolerated other schools of Brjid Yangdrung on their territories, so long as they did not try to proselytize to initiated members of the Shenpo Khag S'oi or attack sites under Shenpoist protection.
| Artist's impression of the Shenpoist fortress-monastery on Mt. Ba, capital of their order, c. 10,500 AA |  |
Things began to change with the ascendancy of Nanam Nang, the 10th Sagra Sanghi Pon, around 10,410 AA. A more ambitious and ruthless man than his predecessors, Nanam Nang felt that the sacrifices his order was making to guarantee the safety of those beneath them were not being properly appreciated - a sentiment shared by many in the Order - and he also felt that the caste system he had witnessed in his travels to Midija as a youth would instill order and obedience within the 'backwards' but more egalitarian Akesai society. After turning back the simultaneous attacks of a Kikogani sordan from the west and a K'Uta king from the south only to be repaid with a smaller tribute than he had expected, he easily turned his fanatical army on the very people he was supposed to be protecting, forcing scores of clan elders to resign from their positions and dispatching trusted disciples of his to rule over the Akesai villages as his 'stewards' or phyags. Each phyag had a troop of Shenpoist warrior-monks (often that village's own volunteers, now long since trained to follow the order's leaders and commands unquestioningly) on hand to enforce his will, which meant collecting taxes in the form of a share of the clan's crops and animal products; conscripting laborers for the order's larger-scale projects; punishing lawbreakers, usually with imprisonment or a public caning; and hunting down rebels. Since not even the Shenpo Khag S'oi endorsed the death penalty, those who were caught trying to undermine the order's new, much more draconian rule were either enslaved or blinded and had one hand and one foot amputated rather than being executed outright. Practitioners of non-Shenpoist schools of Brjid Yangdrung were also increasingly persecuted.
To keep at least some of the people on their side, and as part of a greater project to introduce a Midijan-like caste system, Nanam Nang ordered his phyags to differentiate between the clansmen who immediately supported their entry and those who were ambivalent or showed signs of dissent. Fawning sycophants in the village they were tasked with ruling were to be elevated to the status of 'householder' (de facto landlord), or mupang: they were issued a wax seal denoting their hereditary ownership of their own home and some of the land in & around the village, and all the other villagers living on that newly granted land were to become their tenants. Mupangs were expected to meet tax quotas of rice, barley, buckwheat, milk, cheese and meat, to identify troublemakers so the phyag could keep an eye on/preemptively arrest them, and to assist the phyag in picking out the strongest and healthiest of their laborers for conscription whenever the order wanted to build a new fort or monastery. Everyone else in the village was reduced to, essentially, serf status. Former clan elders could very well find themselves working the fields with the people who once deferred to them while another of their former subjects exhorted them to work faster with a rattan cane in hand.
| A mupang's traditional dress, c. 10,500 AA |  |
This was the new social order enforced by the corrupted Shenpoists by 10,500 AA: a harsh theocracy in which they reigned supreme from stone fortress-monasteries in the mountains, overlooking masses of serfs with the assistance of landlords they'd raised up in centuries past for demonstrating sycophantic loyalty. Local phyags, so called 'Red Hoods' by the serfs they lorded over for the color of their robes, had effectively supplanted the role of clan leader and more often than not ruled their little fiefdoms with an iron fist, answerable only to the Sagra Sanghi Pon and their nearest overseer or Laspon: the 'Blue Hoods' who were in charge of supervising up to half a dozen villages & phyags at a time, and ensuring they all met their production/corvée quotas and taxes on schedule. The Shenpoists effectively combined the role of the priestly, bureaucratic and martial castes of Midijan society in themselves, left the mupangs in the role of the peasant and artisan castes, and reduced the rest of their population to an equivalent of the caste of lessers - the only difference between a common Akesai serf and a slave was that the latter could be straight up killed with no consequences. To further entrench their position and make it harder for the new underclass to unseat them, the Sagra Sanghi Pon also mandated that only Shenpoist monks could bear weapons; anyone else caught with an iron-tipped staff, sword, war bow or any other weapon of war was fined and flogged on their first and second offense, and had a hand & foot removed on the third.
| Ü-Lüng, a smaller Shenpoist fortress-monastery where a phyag lived overlooking his subjects |  |
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| Akesai warfare under the Shenpoist Order | Where the Shenpoist Order ruled, they were not only the government and law enforcement, but also the military. Nobody outside of the order was permitted to bear weapons, much less practice with them. For their own part, the Shenpoists once only took volunteers, but from the times of Nanam Nang onward they began to conscript children into their ranks (ostensibly to shore up their numbers in the face of continued Kikogani and Suufulk/K'Uta aggression), to be trained into skillful and unquestioningly obedient warriors. Under the terms of their infamous 'child tax', all orphans and runaways were declared to belong to the order by default, and in times of need the local phyags also reserved the right to draft one child between the ages of 4 and 14 from every family under their dominion into their order.
Shenpoist monks were shaped into killing machines through a lifetime of constant meditation and training. Their S'ai-jo training comprised of being instructed to meditate to remain calm and unemotional, to clear their minds of any thoughts except for the purpose of serving others by defending them and in unarmed martial arts, the usage of weapons (typically iron-headed quarterstaves, bows and post-Nanam Nang, glaives, with the front-rank warriors often also bearing tall wicker shields) and an assortment of general techniques to maintain fighting condition: breathing exercises, balancing (to the extreme of carrying filled water jugs while walking across a narrow stone fence or balance beam) and endurance-building through squats, jogging, cliffside marathon runs in padded clothing and swimming in lakes and rivers. The ideal result was an acrobatic and unflappable warrior with lightning-fast reflexes who could never be swept off his feet; keep infantry and cavalry alike at bay with a quarterstaff or glaive; strike hard enough to bruise and break bones through armor; outshoot the average Kikogani archer; defeat adversaries even when armed with only their fists and feet; and obeyed orders without a moment of hesitation, no matter how cruel or nonsensical they may seem. As most Shenpoist monks fought unarmored save for their padded clothing, they were essentially an army of extremely versatile and deadly light infantry, at least in theory.
| Shenpoist warrior monk wielding an iron-tipped quarterstaff, c. 10,500 AA |  |
The wisest and mightiest of Shenpoist warrior-monks were those who had attained the rank of Master, or Pon. They were the field commanders of the order, commanding armies in the thousands, and noticeably the only armored fighters in a Shenpoist army alongside their personal guards, the 'Byas or 'Select' whom they handpicked from the lower ranks for demonstrating great courage, loyalty and strength at arms. Unlike the Hyperboreans, the Pons of the Shenpo Khag S'oi did not usually fight in the front-line of their armies, instead holding themselves and their retainers back in reserve and directing the flow of battle from the safety of the rear lines; only when they were needed would these elite fighters finally cut loose and engage the foe. Garbed in bronze or iron helmets and nearly ankle-length lamellar coats, and armed with more exotic iron weaponry such as long-hafted maces, three-part staves, meteor hammers and longbows, they were a bizarre and imposing sight to their adversaries.
| Heavily armored Shenpoist Pon with long-hafted mace, c. 10,500 AA |  |
The Shenpoists virtually never fought mounted, as most of their battles were waged in forbidding mountains or forested valleys where cavalry was not particularly useful (and could easily be menaced by the wolf-dogs of the Kikogani). Yaks and donkeys were used for the transportation of supplies and higher-ranked warriors from fortress to fortress or battlefield to battlefield, but little else, and the few horses their order was known to possess were first and foremost status symbols of the most prestigious monks.
The hierarchy of the Shenpo Khag S'oi went as follows:
- Sagra Sanghi Pon: 'Living Sagely Master', supreme leader of the order and reincarnation of Tsang-Shen-Dab. Distinguished by their golden conical hood and cloak over black and white robes.
- Sagra Pon: 'Living Master', one of the order's sixteen high elders who advised the Sagra Sanghi Pon in military, administrative and diplomatic matters and rarely fought on the front-lines themselves. They uniformly wore black and gold robes with a dark blue sash.
- Pon: 'Master', the field generals of the order. They wore black robes with a crimson sash outside of battle. Their civil counterpart, the Laspon, wore white robes with a dark blue sash.
- I-Pon: 'Lesser Master', commanders of formations of up to 500 Shenpoists and a single fortress-monastery. They wore black and white robes with a bright red sash outside of battle. Equivalent in rank to the Phyag, lower-ranking civil administrators.
- Yong: 'Warden', the average fully-trained members of the order. The uniform color of their robes were dictated by the local I-Pon. Older and more experienced yongs who have not yet attained a higher rank are awarded white or red sashes and brevetted the rank of 'Gya-Yong' and 'Saru-Pon', respectively 'Great Warden' and 'Almost Master', respectively elevating them to command of units of ten and 100 Shenpoists.
- Sarba: 'Novice', those who have been initiated into the order and are of age to start fighting but have not yet completed their training. They wore white robes with a yellow (saffron-dyed) cloth belt and sash.
- Dhug: 'Initiate', those who have been initiated into the order but are still too young (below the age of 8) to begin learning how to fight. They wore simple white robes.
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[ANW - Language Family & Civilizations] The Akesai & their civilizations
