The Great Cooling that began around 10,000 AA ravaged societies across the Earth, but few were hit harder than that of the native humans of Hyperaustralis. As the rain turned to sleet and then snow, their crops failed and their fields froze over, the people of Earth's southernmost continent faced the same problems the Hyperboreans did on the opposite end of the planet - namely, that there were far more Hyperaustralians than they could hope to feed, in a classic Malthusian collapse scenario - and at first responded by descending into an increasingly desperate and murderous frenzy, attacking their neighbors and rival tribes for resources and even turning to cannibalism. After many years of this madness, some of the more far-sighted Hyperaustralian witch-kings living on the coast reached the same conclusion that the more clever Hyperborealic kings did: instead of ripping each other to shreds over a dwindling pool of resources that they couldn't replenish anyway, it would be wiser to band together, build enough ships to transport their people and sail for greener pastures, which they could then take from whichever unfortunate natives stood in their way per Hyperaustralic tradition.
| A Hyperaustralic tribe hauling in prisoners from a rival tribe for consumption, c. 10,010 AA |  |
The first target of the Hyperaustralic migration that began around 10,050 AA was the large island that they called Abyar, or 'sanctuary'. It wasn't actually that much better than the homeland they left behind, but in a storm as great as the Great Cooling, any port would suffice. Or so the first arrivals (who quite rapidly and totally destroyed the Sebi'Awi colonies already present here, with such speed that they were unable to send any warning back home of what was coming) had thought - soon more and more Hyperaustralians had landed on their shores, having heard of this paradisaical island where they could find salvation from the ghosts of famine and social collapse, and the Malthusian collapse that drove them from the shores of Hyperaustralis threatened to repeat itself. A great war was fought between the Abyari, as the first Hyperaustralians to settle the island were called, and other Hyperaustralians between 10,100 and 10,125 AA: recovered artifacts and remains show that this was not a war defined by epic clashes between large armies, but a vicious struggle for survival fought chiefly between small landing parties and the populations of coastal settlements, with many such towns razed to the ground and mass graves filled with war-damaged skeletons & bloodstained iron weapons found everywhere across the Abyari coast. In the end however, it appears the Abyari won, because after 10,125 AA it seemed that the non-Abyari Hyperaustralians turned their migratory focus to two other regions: Iwatoa to the east, and (more pertinent to this entry) Midija to the north, only stopping at Abyari ports to regroup and resupply (likely the consequence of whatever peace agreement made between the Abyari & non-Abyari, which has unfortunately been lost to history).
The bulk of the Hyperaustralian migration was ultimately redirected to the Midijan subcontinent, which was closer to Abyar than Iwatoa. The oldest Hyperaustralian artifacts on the subcontinent are dated back to 10,135 AA, so it is presumed that this was when the first of their parties made landfall. What is certain is that they were, even by the low standards of the time, extremely brutal: mobs of men from an already savage cultural background, maddened by hunger (owing to limited supplies, the Hyperaustralians would only pack just enough food onto their ships to keep themselves from starving before making landfall, and would have to go days without eating if anything happened to delay their voyage), disembarked from their crowded ships with iron weapons in hand and rampaged through coastal Sebi'Awi lands, putting town after town to the torch and wreaking indiscriminate murder and rapine upon everyone they found. More than that, they also ate everything: crops, mushrooms, cattle, wild game, grass and leaves, human prisoners...all these the starving Hyperaustralians devoured, only bothering to cook to avoid disease. These first arrivals have been described as monsters or locusts, but they can be more accurately compared to a horde of driver ants: columns of almost mindless, ravenous warriors that destroyed and devoured everything in their path to clear the way for their less martial workers and leaders. The Sebi'Awi may have had greater discipline and a caste of magically empowered priests, but the Hyperaustralians brought to the table iron weapons, raw numbers and mass psychosis driven partly by starvation, partly by the need to secure a new homeland and partly by their own savage traditions, and that was enough to carry them to victory over a good chunk of Midija.
| What the first Hyperaustralic warriors to land on Midija would have looked like, c. 10,125 AA |  |
There did not seem to be any attempt at negotiation or even peaceful communication on the part of the new arrivals, at least not at first. From the Sebi'Awi point of view, it would have looked as though strange ships reached their subcontinent's southernmost point one day, from which packs of crazed tattooed cannibals emerged - and started to kill and eat everyone, all without rhyme or reason. And that's when they heard of a Hyperaustralic advance: especially early on in the invasion, the Hyperaustralians - unencumbered by heavy equipment, overly large numbers, supply trains and consciences - moved with such speed and ferocity that to an outside observer it would have seemed as though entire villages were simply disappearing into thin air, utterly swallowed up by the shadow of their advance with scarcely a survivor to tell tales of the horrors visited upon them. As far as the Hyperaustralians were concerned, the humid tropical region they just found was heaven on earth compared to what they'd left behind, but it was teeming with life; and to claim it for themselves and their descendants, they had to bring hell to heaven's native dwellers. As engaged as they were in this whirlwind of bloodshed and mass psychotic break, the Hyperaustralians expressed no understanding of or care for Sebi'Awi cultural norms, and had no issues with massacring upper-caste Sebi'Awi alongside their social inferiors.
| Depiction of Hyperaustralic warriors pursuing a Sebi'Awi noble and his wife in anachronistic armor |  |
Once the initial insane rage and hunger of the Hyperaustralians had burned out, they could take a moment to actually study their new surroundings - and the Sebi'Awi they had overwhelmed, but not yet eaten. Despite the shock of their initial invasion and the mass casualties they inflicted, the Hyperaustralians soon found that they were still heavily outnumbered by the locals. Due to a lack of records (especially written ones) it is unclear what exactly happened in the next few centuries, but within about 400 years they seem to have gone the way of the Mudmen who founded the Union of Chik'a to the north: that is to say, they imposed themselves upon the existing caste system of the Sebi'Awi, reordered it to their liking, and were in many ways assimilated into Sebi'Awi society - though without totally losing their alien roots. In the long term, it seems that the chaos and devastation brought by the invaders most severely adversely affected the upper class of the native Sebi'Awi, as upper-caste elements were largely exterminated or driven away and the survivors subsumed into the invaders' own nobility (well, what passed for one in the brutish Hyperaustralic society, anyway).
| Late Midijan Hyperaustralic helmet: made of coconut, decorated with grass dyed red (with blood?) |  |
While the bulk of the Hyperaustralian migrants quite rapidly disappeared into the lower castes through a combination of top-down pressure, settlement plans and intermarriage, becoming physically indistinguishable from the people their ancestors were driving away out of fear of cannibalism a few generations ago, the opposite occurred within the upper orders of society: those were 'darkened' with the replacement and/or absorption of the native Sebi'Awi nobility and priesthood by the descendants of Hyperaustralian witch-kings and champions. The Dzlieri brought over the sea by their Hyperaustralic masters were also formally organized into a under-caste set below even the slaves, the 'slaves of slaves'. These new, southern people - neither truly Sebi'Awi, nor truly Hyperaustralic - called themselves the Medhaṅdassi, or 'middle people', positioned between the rest of Muataria and their old homeland to the far south. They evidently were no longer cannibals, and in fact tried quite hard to ignore that their ancestors absolutely did eat people; if records to be believed it seemed, the Medhaṅdassi actually stood against later waves of Hyperaustralic migrants and raiders from Abyar.
| Map of Hyperaustralic conquests by 10,500 AA | 
Red - Medhaṅdassi
Green - Abyari
Olive lines - Mudman presence |
| Medhaṅdassi society | In the lands of the Middle People, the castes of warriors and priests switched places in prominence, with the warriors (naturally, this was where the Hyperaustralians and their descendants fit in) reigning supreme over their subjects by the one true god, force of arms; their cities were ruled not by councils of Magi from the priestly caste, but by singular kings from the ranks of warriors, raised high on the shields of their followers. Even high-status Hyperaustralians with magical abilities preferred to identify as warriors rather than mages, allowing them to perpetuate the tradition of witch-kings. The priests were confined to an entirely religious and advisory role, while warriors ran each Medhaṅdassi kingdom.
Curiously, priests kept praying to the same Sebi'Awi gods as before, though the cities in and around the southern tip of the peninsula also added some Hyperaustralic gods to the already diverse Sebi'Awi pantheon in their rituals, or else merged them with existing Sebi"Awi deities to which they were similar: for example, the dark war god Ulaƫ appears to have been conflated with K'Uta, the Sebi"Awi's own war god. It can be surmised that the Hyperaustralic gods were forgotten entirely further north.
| The temple and palace complex at Narahari, a ruined city of the ancient Medhaṅdassi |  |
Under the Medhaṅdassi, a measure of de-urbanization took place in southern Midija. While the cities remained inhabited by priests, bureaucrats, craftsmen and traders (freshly permitted to move into the cities by their new overlords) the heirs of the witch-kings of the far south preferred to live in palatial countryside estates, directly overseeing the masses of peasants tilling the surrounding fields, hunting in the rainforest and fishing in the rivers & seas. Their nobles and retainers, to whom land was allotted, did much the same thing, ruling from the countryside rather than the urban centers newly damaged by war and the occasional plague. However, climate change had relatively little effect on southern Midija compared to every other region in the world - even northern Midija - and it remained, largely, a tropical rainforest; rather harder to live in than the cleared grounds of the cities, and often host to even more dangers. As a consequence, and combined with the strong pre-Hyperaustralic social organization of the Sebi'Awi around city states, the process of de-urbanization in southern Midija wasn't quite as severe as it had been in, say, the 'Awali Riverlands.
| Ancient Medhaṅdassi farmers, c. 10,500 AA |  |
Another factor in the de-urbanization of the south was an uptick in 'Mudman' attacks from the interior jungles of Midija, where even the ferocity and iron weapons of the Hyperaustralians failed to make much headway against the forces of nature and those she protected - namely, these mudmen. Early on in the invasion, Hyperaustralian tribes that went too deep into the jungle (no matter how psychotically fearless and/or numerous) never re-emerged; and later on, as those Hyperaustralians gradually morphed into the Medhaṅdassi, their kings found two sources of frustration with the mudmen - firstly that they would never accept the imposition of the Medhaṅdassi yoke over their necks, and secondly that these mudmen were a constant danger to the countryside of their domains, raiding and pillaging frontier villages before melting back into the trees ahead of the Medhaṅdassi lords' response. By moving their seats of power into rural fortresses (really, practically castles) much closer to the front-lines of the unending, low-intensity war with the mudmen the Medhaṅdassi did two things: one, it allowed them to spot and muster a response to mudman incursions much more quickly than if they had still been holed up in the cities; and two, it allowed them to indulge themselves in their favorite sport - war - on a weekly or even almost daily basis, owing to the high frequency of mudman attacks in this period (and for some time after). Braver Medhaṅdassi warriors would lead their troops in pursuit of the mudmen a little ways into the interior jungle, hoping to follow them into a larger battle or their home village so they could burn the foe's homes to the ground and nail their skins to the trees as a warning to other mudman raiders. Still...by 10,500 AA, even the most successful and foolhardy Medhaṅdassi knew better than to give chase for too long, or to stray too deep into the jungle.
| Quick response: Medhaṅdassi nobles in a chariot and elephant lead a strike force to counter a Mudman raid |  |
There remained a greater degree of meritocracy in Medhaṅdassi society than that of the Sebi'Awi, yet another remnant of their past where the mighty ruled in all things and could seize power from entrenched interests by simple force of arms. They had an odd twist on the Sebi'Awi principle of adoptive succession, where (as Rash'If Tanki Mul'Arn's adopted heir Tul'Ark demonstrated) it was possible for a king to adopt his successor: among the Medhaṅdassi, whenever a king seemed to be dying (of illness, old age, war wounds, or he was simply going to war with no guarantee of victory or survival) the mightiest and cleverest of his sons and followers would compete for the glory of being named his heir. And by 'compete', obviously they actually meant 'engage in a vicious battle-royale within a closed arena, with the entire royal family watching, until only one man remains standing'. Naturally, that lone survivor was automatically named the king's heir. Magic seemed to have counted for less under the Medhaṅdassi than it did with their ancestors: you no longer needed magical powers of your own to stand in a royal succession challenge, for if you can win without magical powers - well, that's good enough, and certainly makes you better than any mages you killed in Medhaṅdassi eyes.
| Reenactors portraying a pair of Medhaṅdassi nobles dueling for the right of succession |  |
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| Medhaṅdassi religion: Enahimatavenga, the Way of the Open Palm | The Medhaṅdassi largely followed the Sebi'Awi pantheon by 10,500 AA, their own gods largely forgotten except in the far southern reaches of Midija (and even there they were worshiped alongside Sebi'Awi deities). However, several new cults and religions had emerged by 10,500 AA as well, the most famous and enduring being the Way of the Open Palm - or as the Medhaṅdassi themselves called it, the Enahimatavenga. This religion, which (especially strangely considering its roots in perhaps the most bloodthirsty and viscerally barbaric newcomers to Midija) stressed pacifism as the highest virtue, can be best defined as a Populist religion with a Proselyte mentality.
| Symbol of the Enahimatavenga: an open hand reaching out from a lotus (here seen with an Enlightened meditating on the palm) |  |
According to the Charyas, as practitioners of the Open Palm call their scriptures, the religion was founded during the later stages of the calamitous Hyperaustralic invasion of Midija by a man named Ar-Tulu, the youngest son of the Hyperaustralic witch-king Tulu. Ar-Tulu was raised to be as bloodthirsty and merciless a warrior as his older brothers, but was so traumatized upon killing and attempting to eat his first man - a Sebi'Awi farmer who had the bad luck of being in his village when the Hyperaustralians attacked, or in other words, the wrong place at the wrong time - that he fled into the wilderness in shame. For a decade he wandered the land, a nameless vagrant in a roughspun robe who wore no clothing and carried no jewels that could give away his princely birth, and witnessed yet more horrible atrocities: pretty much everything his fellow Hyperaustralians did, of course, but also the oppression inflicted by the higher castes of Sebi'Awi society upon those beneath them and the atrocities they themselves perpetrated. His fellow Hyperaustralians and the gods they revered may have been monsters, he decided, but embracing the gods and lifestyle of their foes wasn't an option either.
Ar-Tulu thus retreated into solitude for a time, living for another eight years as a hermit: meditating, eating nothing but vegetables and fruits, and helping out those he found to be in need but otherwise keeping well away from other human beings, civilized or not. When he emerged from his hermitage, he simply called himself Karu ('teacher') and proclaimed to all who would hear that he had the solution to Midija's problems. This solution came in the form of the 'three enlightened principles':
- Pacifism: One of the three great roots of all the world's ills is violence. To oppose it, those who would walk the Way of the Open Palm had to embrace pacifism and not harm any other living being, to the extreme of not even hurting insects and subsisting on an entirely vegetarian diet (in which even root vegetables, such as onions, were exempted; the bulb or root's ability to sprout was considered indicative of a living being). If someone else attacked a believer, that believer was expected to not fight back, but rather 'turn the other cheek' literally and figuratively.
- Asceticism: Greed and love of luxury are yet another root of the world's problems. Believers were expected to only possess as little as they needed to get by, and not want for more. The more zealous practitioners of the Open Palm would follow in the monastic tradition that started with Karu and isolate themselves from civilization, living in austere conditions as hermit monks and nuns.
- Egalitarianism: There are to be no divides between the faithful; indeed, inequality is the third root of all evil, for it moves the empowered to oppression and spawns envy in the hearts of the oppressed. All who walk the Way of the Open Palm must do so hand in hand with each other, with no regard to earthly status.
Karu further elaborated that he did not believe in the Sebi'Awi or Hyperaustralic gods, deeming any god that would call for or tolerate the shedding of blood to be an evil demon and unworthy of worship. Instead, he argued that the Earth had always existed and would continue to always exist; that there was presently no afterlife, neither a heaven nor hell (or as he put it, 'the only Hell is the one we are living in now'); that mankind was trapped in a vicious cycle of reincarnation; and that the embrace of his Three Principles, along with copious meditation, was the only way to shake oneself free from that cycle, get the lesser half of one's mind (the part that succumbs to vices) under control, and attain enlightenment.
| A painting depicting Ar-Tulu/Karu as he attains enlightenment |  |
The souls of these 'Enlightened', rather than continuing to reincarnate into unborn vessels on the earth, would ascend to the stars and be free to build paradise off the mortal plane with their new godlike powers, and also be able to guide believers who have yet to reach enlightenment from beyond the 'Veil' separating the material and spiritual planes. Those who die as gluttons, agents of violence and oppression would also be unshackled from the cycle of reincarnation, but become demons - mistakenly revered as gods by humans who see in them reflections of their own vices, and/or have been deceived by their abilities - and just as the Enlightened can guide humans to achieving paradise, so too can they compel mortals to worship them and damn themselves to becoming more demons in the process. Where Paradise would be a world of perfect harmony where the Enlightened lived alongside one another in eternal peace and prosperity, each demon lived in absolute isolation in a hell of their own making, their twisted minds and vices warping these mini-Hells to reflect the worst in themselves.
When Karu came to tell these truths to his family, they didn't even recognize him at first, and wound up laughing him out. Still, he was not dissuaded and went around the subcontinent barefoot, preaching to all who would hear. In so doing, he built up a significant following - especially among the lower castes who were enthralled by the Open Palm's emphasis on equality and opposition to the violence that had ruined so many of their lives, as well as refugees (of all classes and ethnicities) fleeing from the wars consuming the subcontinent and 'broken men', veterans like himself who had had more than their fill of mindless violence. Seven years after he began preaching, Karu was confronted by the son of the farmer he had killed so long ago: in keeping with his own teachings, he allowed the man to kill him with a dagger, exhorting his followers not to avenge him and telling his murderer that he hoped his death would bring him peace with his last breath. This heroic martyrdom further energized Karu's followers, elevated him to the status of Ai-Karu ('Great Teacher') and sealed the Enahimatavenga's status as one of the subcontinent's major religions.
By 10,500 AA, the Way of the Open Palm remained a widely popular religion, though it is strongest in the countryside and among the lower orders of society. The religion was primarily spread by itinerant karus who preach the truth of the Open Palm to the masses and subsist off the charity of believers, though several monastic complexes have sprung up in the south of the continent and serve as meditation retreats for the faithful. Under the pressure of constant harassment by raiders and warlords of all stripes & sides, the community had split in twain: they were now divided into the sects of Tanatahine, more radical practitioners who went around naked (as part of their belief in absolute asceticism) and still believed in absolute pacifism, and the Fafinahine, the moderates who would wear simple brown or white robes, believed fighting (but not killing) in self-defense was acceptable, and allowed the consumption of animal products such as cheese and milk. While the Tanatahine were so poor and so resolute in their beliefs that over time they faced less harassment - in part because even the Hyperaustralians/Medhaṅdassi came to respect the strength of their conviction, and also because they tended to have nothing worth stealing - the Fafinahine had gathered more followers, probably due to their beliefs and expectations of believers being less demanding & more accessible, and were noted for both setting up a bevy of monasteries across southern Midija and for the formation of large religious communities around these monasteries, often operating with autonomy from and agreement with the Medhaṅdassi kings, with bamboo-wielding self-defense militias.
| Depiction of a monk of the Tanatahine meditating to commune with a pair of spirits |  |
| Artist's imagining of an ancient sage of the Fafinahine |  |
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| Early Medhaṅdassi military | The Medhaṅdassi, true to their Hyperaustralic roots, put great emphasis on and had great pride in their martial prowess. The disorganized warbands of the early Hyperaustralians had all but vanished by 10,500 AA (around the same time that the Medhaṅdassi identity had solidified itself), replaced by a much larger and better-organized war machine called the auha'ne system after its largest unit.
Having adopted the Sebi'Awi caste system and integrated themselves as a new warrior caste, the Medhaṅdassi warriors or kau'ane took pride of place. They divided themselves into infantry, archers, chariotry and the elephant corps; each Medhaṅdassi warrior trained to fight from as soon as they could walk, was assigned a specialization on their tenth birthday, sparred at least once a day and participated in martial tournaments on at least a semi-annual basis. The sweltering heat of the southern jungles made heavy armor impractical, and so these elite fighters (regardless of their particular specialty) went into battle with the heaviest practical armor they could find: iron helmets (worn over a light cap for comfort, and under a second decorative cap with crest to denote rank) coupled with woven vests and skirts of rattan and coconut fiber, with a brightly-colored cloak of feathers to finish the ensemble. They definitely didn't skimp on iron for their weapons, though: iron javelins, stabbing spears and swords were their primary melee weapons, while foot archers, chariot-archers and elephant riders also wielded bows with iron arrows. Headhunting was a proud tradition among the kau'ane, no doubt passed on down from their Hyperaustralic ancestors, and competition to see who could collect the most enemy heads was always a fierce affair. After a battle, each warrior would proudly present a collection of all the heads he managed to gather to his commander and/or king, who would be expected to reward him with an amount of bullion or even land equivalent to the glory he had showered himself and his liege with.
| Elite kau'ane warriors in ornately-patterned, brightly colored cloaks and crested helmets, c. 10,500 AA |  |
The majority of the Medhaṅdassi army however would have been composed of the ugahee, or levy. These were men from the lower castes who were either pressed into service by their betters by their masters during times of war (which is to say, all the time, considering the civilization under discussion) or who volunteered. They would have fought with whatever weapons they could afford or make on their own - chiefly spears, axes, clubs and maces, slings, bows and machetes, coupled with shields of bamboo or rattan - and would have largely been entirely unarmored save for their coconut-helmets; affordable and easy enough to make (just hollow out any sufficiently large coconut, maybe cut some larger holes for your eyes, and you're done), these would have been a nearly universal sight among the lesser soldiers of a Medhaṅdassi army, except among the archers who needed completely unhindered visibility to attain maximum effectiveness. The occasional rattan skirt was also not all that uncommon. Their primary advantages over the better-equipped kau'ane were their numbers, mobility and social mobility: true to Hyperaustralic tradition, there was one way these lowborns could change their caste and with it, their family's fate - any member of the ugahee who manages to bring back the heads of ten foes in a single battle can be promoted to the ranks of the warrior caste, and be rewarded a slice of whatever territory they help conquer to start with.
| A mass of ugahee warriors (unarmored save for their coconut helmets) on a night raid, c. 10,500 AA |  |
Two things made the Medhaṅdassi military stand out in comparison to their rivals and, indeed, most other Iron Age armies, which were already frequently divided along class lines. Firstly, there was their organization to consider: as mentioned above, the Medhaṅdassi fought in a much more organized and regimented manner than their ancestors. The most basic formation in their armies was the w'ane or 'ten', which as the name suggests, was a squad of ten men: nine warriors (all ugahee or kau'ane), led by either one kau'an officer who wore a green crest and cloak - the sign of an untested youth, probably between thirteen and sixteen years in age, who had been schooled in the art of war since he was a child and may have even already killed someone but had yet to fight a real battle - or another kau'an whose colors matched the highest-ranking warrior in the unit, respectively.
Ten w'anes made up a hu'ne or 'hundred', a 100-man formation that was still comprised of only one type of soldier (infantry/archers/chariots/elephants) and answered to a blue-crested kau'an: a veteran of at least one battle, considered a full member of the brotherhood of elite warriors that was the kau'ane.
Ten hu'nes comprised a ha'ne or 'thousand', a thousand-strong combined-arms formation (the Medhaṅdassi standard seems to have been four parts infantry, three parts archers, two parts chariotry and one part elephant corps) led by a red-crested and cloaked kau'an: a hardened veteran who had seen at least five battles and taken more heads than any of his surviving peers after one of those engagements. A ha'ne was expected to be capable of operating autonomously when required, and in fact, many battles have been won and lost by the discipline or lack thereof of each ha'ne's commanders; as reckless and hungry for personal glory as the warrior-nobles of Medhaṅdassi society could be, they would sometimes charge into obvious traps or overreach as they pursued some fleeing foes - and at other times, they proved to be more audacious and decisive than a vacillating or overly-cautious commander.
Finally, one or more ha'nes formed the great auha'ne, or royal army led by a king in a multicolored crest and cloak. The strength of a Medhaṅdassi kingdom was measured not by its territorial borders or material wealth, but by the size and reputation of its auhane.
The other distinctive factor were the weapons the Medhaṅdassi used. Sure, their weapons were forged from iron rather than bronze, but that would become true of most other military forces around the world sooner or later. The first weapon that really set the Medhaṅdassi apart was the laminated longbow: made of bamboo and recurved, these powerful bows could send an iron-headed arrow much farther and with greater force than a shortbow ever could, giving their wielders a tremendous advantage in range and armor-penetrating power over most contemporaries. The bow could be strung and unstrung at will, making it possible for Medhaṅdassi archers to get around the debilitating effects of rain on their tool of war. However, these massive bows (as tall as a man according to many sources, including virtually every Medhaṅdassi source on the subject) were notoriously heavy and difficult to aim, meaning that they were best fired in massed volleys where the archers were bound to hit something.
| A common longbowman of the ugahee, c. 10,500 AA |  |
The second great Medhaṅdassi weapon was the war elephant. First mastered around 10,200 AA, elephants from the dense jungles of southern Midija were originally used as beasts of burden, but soon enough enterprising Medhaṅdassi rulers were deploying them to play a more direct role on the battlefield. Covered in red and black war-paint, carrying up to five men (including the driver and at least one archer & pikeman) on their backs, sometimes armored with iron plates and scales and always with tusks slathered in a deadly poison made from the combined extracts of certain trees, snakes and fungi, these war elephants were always a horrifying sight for the enemies of the Medhaṅdassi (including other Medhaṅdassi...) on battlefields. They could shatter shield-walls and cavalry or chariot charges alike with ease, trample panicking and ordered foes alike, and shrug off arrows and slingstones unless struck in the eyes. Of course, if made to panic by a blow to the eyes or fire (among other things - according to legend, the Medhaṅdassi king Turatha defeated one of his rivals by driving an entire town's worth of mice into the way of his elephantry) they could very well turn and devastate their own side's ranks, which was why their drivers were always armed with a hammer and large nail with which to kill their elephant should it go out of control.
| Two war elephants, for comparison: one from early Midijan Hyperaustralic times (c. 10,200-350/400 AA), and one from the Medhaṅdassi period (10,400 AA onward) |  |
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[ANW - Civilization] The Medhaṅdassi
