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Thread: [ANW - Civilization] The 'Awali

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    Default [ANW - Civilization] The 'Awali

    The 'Awali Peoples
    The fertile riverlands lying between the Muataric Sea and the Great Sand Sea were home to one of the earliest human civilizations on the planet, and may even be a candidate for the cradle of agriculture. The many rivers flowing down from the mountains, combined with the warm and wet currents blowing over the region, made it tremendously fertile when the first nomads began to settle down into a sedentary lifestyle and grow deepwater rice close to the mouths of these rivers. Closer to the coast, the more salt-resistant barley was cultivated over rice. Peas, lentils, watercress and water spinach soon joined rice and barley as staple crops in the region. In due time, the populations of these first settled villages exploded and began to urbanize, congregating into city-states protected by palisades or mud walls & surrounded by rice paddies and/or barley fields & smaller herds of domesticated animals from sheep, to chickens, to cattle. Flax too was cultivated, as linen became the go-to fabric for clothing material in the region: its coolness and water-absorbent qualities made it quite handy for working in the hot and humid environment.

    A group of Awali peasants harvesting a rice paddy, c. 2000 AA

    The first people of this area called themselves the 'Awali, or simply 'The First' in their tongue. 'Awali, therefore, is the name of that language as well, which used a hieroglyphic writing system. Their culture was characterized by decreasing social egalitarianism and mounting stratification as they grew in numbers and urbanized: tribal chieftains and elders evolved into a hereditary upper class lording over a majority of common farmers and herders, with a tiny middle class of specialized urban artisans in between, over the first few thousand years after the advent of agriculture. The upper class dwelt in houses with stone foundations and walls of mud-brick, while artisans appeared to live in wooden homes and the peasantry had to make do with reed huts that mostly lay outside of any given settlement's walls. Furthermore, the tombs of wealthy citizens have been found to contain numerous luxury items, from ornamented mirrors to jewelry to golden or silver cups & vessels, while the masses seemed to have to make do with small, simple clay pots. The organization of early 'Awali armies, too, show a clear gulf between the budding nobility and the commons: in war steles, the former were depicted riding onager-drawn chariots and wearing helmets, while the latter were universally depicted as unarmored mobs fighting with clubs, spears and slings.

    Modern wargaming figurine depicting a Chacolithic 'Awali king, c. 4-5000 AA

    Speaking of steles, this form of art appears to have been used by the 'Awali to record their city-state's great achievements. The 'Victory Stele' of the city-state of Isiniqul depicted the victory of its king Munu-etteh over a rival called Meshuniqul, whose king Nukku-bah was shown having his head struck off by the victors. Wars between the 'Awali appear to have been brief and generally inconsequential affairs where the combatants chose a field of battle, clashed, and then went home with the losers ceding small amounts of turf or paying tribute (in precious metals, cattle and/or slaves) to the winners: total wars where one kingdom completely destroyed another were unheard of among the 'Awali. Other steles depicted events decreed to be of import by their makers, from royal weddings to animal sacrifices to the 'Awali gods and natural disasters (usually, riverine flooding).

    Stele depicting a sacrifice to Uruvenneh, the avian 'Awali god of the winds, c. 5850 AA

    As metallurgy advanced with the emergence of bronze (as both copper/arsenic and copper/tin alloys) and the decline in the popularity of pure copper tools, one 'Awali city-state in particular - an 'Ubeizan' - emerged as a major force in the region, breaking the 'Awali tradition of simple low-cost and low-consequence wars to actively conquer several of its neighbors and vassalize those neighbors' neighbors. But that story is best left for another day...

    Map of the extent of the 'Awali language family by the dawn of the Bronze Age (~6000 AA?)

    Location of Ubeizan, at the same time as the above

    'Awali language
    The 'Awali language does not appear to be related to any of its Bronze Age neighbors, though it certainly influenced them as time passed and the 'Awali civilization itself grew mighty. As previously mentioned, the 'Awali used a hieroglyphic system, and the logographic writings of their scribes and sages remain one of the best ways for the modern world to look into and understand the world they lived in.

    Modern speech 'Awali
    Man, men Gil, gili-ni
    Woman, women Ne, ne-nu
    Rice Šim
    Water Tiš
    Bronze Dů-kug

    The 'Awali religion
    The ancient 'Awali faith can be defined as a Mainstream religion of Statist soul with an Ancestral mentality. It was polytheistic, recognizing hundreds and eventually thousands of deities who were essentially anthropomorphic personifications of cosmic and terrestrial forces from rain to soil to lightning, and revered local kings as unquestionable avatars of their respective cities' most favored deity: while the 'Awali recognized and worshiped the same gods, one or two gods were prioritized above the rest as a patron deity or deities by each city-state. Religious services were carried out in temple complexes, originally simply consecrated one-room structures which gradually developed into grander terraced buildings reflecting attributes of their city's patron god (for example, temples of the water god Zabu-Zabu had a sacred well and a pool of blessed water, while those of the wind god Uruvunneh had no roof), by priests with kings leading especially important religious celebrations. To preserve their divine essence, kings frequently married their sisters and first cousins. Their priests were invariably mages, and would apply their talents to fields favored by their patron god.

    Figurine depicting an 'Awali worshiper, late Copper or early Bronze Age

    According to the 'Awali, the world was once a huge primordial sea. Šabu, the lonely god of the seas, created a mate for himself by slicing himself open and draining some of his blood (salt) to give rise to Murya, goddess of freshwater bodies: their joyous and frequent coupling spawned the fish, marine reptiles and in general everything that dwells in water. High above, Šaridu - the eternal sun - grew envious of the love he was witnessing but could never be part of, and turned his baleful rays to scorch and boil away huge swathes of water so as to wound Šabu & Murya. Desperate to save at least some of their children, the water deities advised the smallest of them who had lungs to learn how to breathe out of the water (giving rise to the first amphibians) while also reaching out to Šaridu's estranged son Uruvunneh to blow cooling winds all over the world by beating his great wings constantly, a task which Uruvunneh agreed to on two conditions: 1) that Murya should lie with him for one night, and 2) that Šabu create beasts in his image to accompany him in the skies. The former resulted in Murya birthing Habu the rain god, who Uruvunneh took up into the skies to protect him from Šabu's fury and who later married his aunt the cloud goddess Urašena, while the latter was how birds and airborne insects were born, formed of clay and water heated in the sun and with life breathed into them from Uruvunneh's beak.

    Clay tablet depicting Šaridu's searing rays killing the first children of Šabu & Murya, dated to c. 3,500 AA

    Eventually the water creatures that migrated to the land, first becoming amphibians and then purely land-dwelling creatures, called out to their parents for a god of their own. Šabu and Murya could not provide what they asked for, but Uruvunneh could: by lying with a female eagle and pelican, he fathered Mušu and Dunah, the first terrestrial deities. Mušu took both his half-sister and a daughter of Šabu and Murya, Abanah of the rivers, as his wives, and fathered deities of the land (including coasts and rivers) with them. Ages later one of his daughters with Abanah, Kurin, took pity on a monkey desperately grabbing at a fruit hanging from a great tree in the riverine garden of her half-sister Ianilah and fed the creature, which - thanks to the power of the divine fruit - promptly turned into the first man: Izdubar. Kurin was instantly enamored with her accidental creation, and the two eloped. With Kurin, Izdubar would father the human race.

    Stele depicting the children of Mušu and Dunah tending to animals, dated to 4,500 AA

    But the young lovers' elopement infuriated Kurin's parents, who moved to reclaim their daughter from this mortal who they thought did not deserve her. After their first sons and daughters were swallowed by fissures in the earth or killed by conveniently felled trees, Kurin advised her husband to forge weapons of unliving stone and metal to wound her living parents. Thus did Izdubar arm himself with a sling, stones and a copper sword, and mar the flawless countenances of Mušu and Dunah when he caught them stalking his pregnant wife in preparation to kill her unborn child as soon as it entered this world. The elder earth deities relented, but cursed Kurin with mortality and stripped her of the godly powers she had inherited from them. Thus, Kurin could only ever give birth to regular humans with no divine powers until she died at the age of 108, on the same day as Izdubar - who, fortunately for the both of them, had founded the first city of Ubeizan and made peace with the gods by then, so that Kurin's grandparents would prove willing to raise the two from the dead and into godhood.

    Izdubar battling Mušu as recorded on a clay cylinder found in Ubeizan, dating back to approx. 5200 AA

    Among the deities revered by the 'Awali, these were the most prominent, revered by the largest and best-preserved of their ancient cities:

    • Šabu, primodial god of the seas, patron of sailors and those who fish in saltwater bodies. To appease him and secure calm seas, infants (almost always of lower-caste families and slaves) were cast into the ocean to drown and sate his hunger. Ruins remaining of the largest temple dedicated to him has been unearthed in Anzibul, a coastal city built on the delta of the Muryurir (southern) River named after his consort Murya.
    • Murya, primordial goddess of lakes and other freshwater bodies, patron of agriculture and fishing. As was the case with her husband, infants of lower-caste and slave families were sacrificed at sacred lakes and springs to appease her & get her to provide both good harvest and plentiful fish to the 'Awali, in effect feeding them just as they fed her. Her largest temple was found much further inland from that of her husband, near the mouth of the Muryurir River in the ruined city of Unballa.
    • Šaridu, the wrathful sun from whom the celestial deities descend and who taught men how to use fire. His temples featured many windows to let the sunlight in and sacred fires which were tended to by priests, under strict orders to never let them go out.
    • Uruvunneh, god of the winds and son of Šaridu who saved creation from his father's hateful light with the beating of his vast wings. His temples lacked roofs and were typically built on hills, with the largest being found in the hill-city of Purabira.
    • Habu, son of Uruvunneh and Murya and god of rain. He was prayed to by farmers to water their fields, but not so much so that in his eagerness he causes a flood and kills those who asked for his help in the first place.
    • Mušu, god of the earth and son of Uruvunneh and an eagle. He was especially revered by hunters and soldiers, and the sacrifice of enemy captives in his name appears to have been practiced by his priests: burnt, broken and ritually buried human bones have been found at his vast temple complex in the city of Tubal.
    • Dunah, another earth goddess and the first consort of Mušu. She was a patroness of farmers and mothers, and her temples included chambers for the keeping of oil jars to ease childbirth. The largest of these temples was found at Morah, a ways downriver from Ubeizan.
    • Abanah, a river goddess who was the daughter of Šabu and Murya & the second consort of Mušu. She was another goddess of farmers and fishermen, and river floods were thought to be manifestations of her rage. Her biggest temple was found at Umatil, a city sitting at the delta of the Abanarir (northern) River that carries her name.
    • Ianilah, daughter of Mušu and Abanah. She was a goddess of fruit and vegetables, and accepted animal sacrifices as evidenced by the lamb and goat bones found at her best-preserved temple in Girbal.
    • Yannu, daughter of Mušu and Dunah, and patron goddess of cats, material prosperity and the crafts. She was not an especially prominent deity in the early days of the 'Awali, but as the patron of Zaba-Tutul, she would overshadow the rest of the pantheon when that particular city-state became the most powerful of the 'Awali.
    • Izdubar and Kurin, father and mother of the human race, who both died as mortals and were resurrected as gods by the latter's divine grandparents. As the forger of the first weapons and founder of the first city, Izdubar was the patron of kings and warriors, while Kurin was considered a goddess of love for having defied her parents and witnessed the murder of her first children at their hands just to remain by Izdubar's side. They were the joint patrons of Ubeizan, which went on to found the first empire in the 'Awali Riverlands.

    Worship of the 'Awali pantheon was conducted through rituals led by a specialized class of sorcerer-priests, who could directly commune with these gods and offer up sacrifices on behalf of their people in return for divine favors. As noted above, exactly what sacrifice was expected differed with each god: some were satisfied with burnt offerings of animals or crops, but others could only be sated by the blood of humans. However, while these priests were typically far more powerful than their usually-mundane kings, they never did dare to overstep their bounds and claim their overlords' masters without the express blessing of the god they & their city were dedicated to: for reasons beyond the comprehension of their mortal followers, 'Awali's gods took the notion that the kings were their top representatives on Earth very seriously. They would only ever possess them, and always seemed to tip off a King who was in danger of being ousted by his circle of priests & advisers.

    Aside from serving the gods with sacrifices and rituals, 'Awali priests and priestesses also put their magical talents to use in fields favored by their divine patrons. For example, the clerics of Šabu frequently doubled as ship captains and navigators, ensuring their charges would safely get from Port A to Port B and doing their level best to calm tempestuous waters and storms, while also subtly guiding the fish of the seas into fishermen's nets; those who served Murya exerted themselves to minimize flooding and maximize the bounty of the annual harvest; those of Yannu were expert mage-smiths, never lacking a foundry in their temples and able to work any metal known to the 'Awali from gold to copper & tin at higher temperatures and to finer degrees than any mundane blacksmith; and so on, so forth.

    First of the First: The Ubeizani Empire
    Six thousand years after the Agricultural Revolution transformed human societies around the globe, tools and weapons made from the copper-tin and copper-arsenic alloys known as bronze were quickly surging in popularity. The new metal was stronger than its base components, and dovetailed quite nicely with the developments in social stratification, a hieroglyphic writing system and city-states with coherent borders & administrative systems in the fertile 'Awali Riverlands. But none of these fledgling statelets took quicker and better to the new metal on the block than Ubeizan, an 'Awali city (by Izdubar, father and patron of humanity in 'Awali mythology, or so their story goes) built around the fork of two rivers known to the 'Awali as Muryurir in the south and Abanarir in the north: 'Murya's River' and 'Abanah's River', after two of their water goddesses. Thanks to the twin rivers and constant rainfall, the land Ubeizan built on was extremely fertile even by 'Awali standards, and its population exploded until by 6000 BA it was one of the largest cities on the planet with a population of 5,500. Its kings traded shares of their plentiful crops to the upriver cities for copper and tin, which its artisans used to make bronze in larger and larger quantities, and it was not long before the aforementioned rulers felt they may as well put their large population and bronze-filled armories to good use in subjugating the other 'Awali living outside of their borders.

    The Ubeizani king Shurubar laid down the cornerstone of his people's empire with his conquest of the neighboring city-state of Morah, downriver on Muryurir from Ubeizan, around 6020 AA. Following 'Awali etiquette, Shurubar sent a formal declaration of war to Morah's king Patigurri, and the two monarchs settled on a predetermined site for their armies' clash. Outside of a riverbank hamlet called Uppak, Shurubar and Patigurri met in a battle immortalized in an 'Awali poem known to modern readers simply as the Epic of Shurubar. The first of the clay tablets it was written on goes as such:
    Quote Originally Posted by The Epic of Shurubar, first clay tablet out of ten
    Who was he that forged the first blade?
    Of heavenly iron* his soul was made.
    Popiburi was the name his parents gave him,
    but Shurubar was what he was called in these days.
    Izdubar's blood coursed violently in his veins,
    and called for the blood of Izdubar's other spawn.

    *'Heavenly iron' probably refers to star-metal from the east.
    The poem speaks of Patigurri's army numbering 'eight hundred thousand warriors and six thousand chariots' and Shurubar's being twice as numerous, which is considered a ridiculous exaggeration by all modern scholars. However, the Ubeizani force is accepted as being larger than its Morahite counterpart, and Ubeizan's victory in the battle is not in doubt. Patigurri was felled by an Ubeizani chariot archer and his army put to flight, but instead of halting and offering terms like the 'Awali were accustomed to, Shurubar pursued the Morahites to their gates and laid siege to their town. After a month and a half, he stormed Morah's walls with ladders & a battering ram, sacked the city-state and forced the survivors to swear allegiance to him as their king on pain of death by dismemberment. This total conquest was unheard of among the 'Awali, who were used to wars being decided by a single battle with terms not including annexation being dictated by the winner immediately afterwards, and Shurubar's heirs would continue his conquests down the Muryurir and Abanarir rivers until his grandson Adahabat reigned over the river deltas nearly a century later. Thus was the Ubeizani Empire, one of the first proper empires in human history, born.

    An alabaster sculpture of Shurubar with lapis-lazuli eyes, dated to 6037 AA

    Map of the Ubeizani Empire at its height, 6200 AA


    The maroon circle = the location of Ubeizan itself.

    Ubeizani society
    Ubeizani society was little different from those of the rest of the 'Awal Riverlands. It was a highly stratified society where the king reigned at the top as an avatar of the city's patron deity (in Ubeizan's case, the mortal-turned-god Izdubar), a class of priests and nobles bound to the ruler's clan with oaths of fealty and marriage supported his rule with words & spears, and an underclass of urban artisans, rural peasants (the majority of the free population) and slaves taken in wars sat at the bottom rungs. It was taught that the King of Ubeizan was a physical manifestation of Izdubar himself, and so to defy his will was to commit sacrilege - a capital offense, made doubly worse by the fact that it was also treason, for it was said that the King was Ubeizan too. This was no empty boast, either: in times of great crisis, the priests of the city could indeed channel Izdubar through their overlord, turning the latter into a nigh-unstoppable avatar of the god of kings.

    Relief depicting a governor coming to pay obeisance and tribute to King Mulku, son and successor of Shurubar (reigned approx. 6044-6060 BA)

    Ubeizan's labor surplus (due to its large population) meant that its rulers were able to build a grander dwelling for themselves and their gods than ever before: thus, on a small island sitting at the fork of the Muryurir and Abanarir, a great step-pyramid or ziggurat was constructed to serve as a combined temple-palace complex and finished around 6100 AA, a natural evolution of the previous designs of terraced temples adopted by the 'Awali in the late Chalcolithic and early Bronze Age. Hieroglyphic reliefs depicting the creation of the world and the deeds of Ubeizan's monarchs were carved into the ziggurat's inner walls. At the peak of the ziggurat was a shrine to Izdubar and the palatial chambers of Ubeizani royalty, while the city's priests lived and the other 'Awali gods were worshiped in only slightly less luxurious rooms below. The ziggurat was further surrounded by the brick homes of the Ubeizani aristocracy, descendants of the younger brothers and cousins of past kings.

    The ziggurat of Ubeizan

    Outside of this ziggurat, soldiers and commoners lived on the banks of the rivers around the King's Island. With its resources Ubeizan was able to maintain a higher number of professional soldiers, mostly chariot drivers and archers, than many other 'Awali cities, which was an obvious advantage in its wars. The urban population of Ubeizan were artisans and traders who lived in wooden and mud-brick homes with stone foundations, the former forging tools of copper or bronze and sculpting figurines of bone, clay and occasionally marble in their workshops while the latter peddled their goods and crops or fruits from outside the city in the marketplace. Finally, outside of Ubeizan's walls - made of stone blocks, a rarity even among advanced 'Awali city-states - the peasants continued to farm deepwater rice paddies and tend to herds of oxen, pigs and goats around their reed huts, as their ancestors had done for millennia before them and their descendants will continue to long after they've turned to dust and bones. Slaves taken in wars lived with their masters, tending to their needs whether it be helping out in the paddies or entertaining them behind closed doors, and could expect their children to grow up in slavery as well. Farmers and the unemployed were seasonally drafted to work alongside slaves in maintaining irrigation ditches, dikes and simple mud roads.

    Artist's imagining of the city of Ubeizan, c. 6300 AA

    The cities subdued by Ubeizan had a governor appointed to rule over them for life by the King in Ubeizan. Typically, these governors were Ubeizani nobles rather than locals, and were expected to live with their new subjects rather than reigning as absentee landlords from Ubeizan itself. Aside from that detail, these cities' societies greatly resembled the capital's own. Shrines to Izdubar would be built if one didn't already exist in each conquered city, so that their governors may worship their capital's patron deity too. These governors of course were expected to collect taxes in the usual Ubeizani fashion, and to send some of their subjects to Ubeizan as slaves to compensate for any shortfall in material taxes.

    Steles, clay tablets and relief-carvings were still used by the Ubeizani to depict myths and victories. However, Ubeizani kings never recorded their own defeats so as to appear to be invincible and constantly victorious. Military losses were spun into victories or simply ignored altogether, forcing modern historians to figure out that the Ubeizani had actually suffered some defeats from the steles of other 'Awali kingdoms that recorded their own triumphs over Shurubar and his descendants. Clay tablets were also used to keep accounts and record a census of the people of Ubeizan & nearby villages.

    As Ubeizan had no coinage, taxes were collected in kind by tax-farmers drawn from the noble and warrior classes, who were entitled to keep a tenth of everything they took. Ubeizani taxes appear to have been generally flat in nature, with everyone from the highest noble to the lowest peasant being expected to pay the exact same amount of crops or goods, and those who couldn't cough up an exact amount of rice (as an example) could expect to have some of their other possessions seized to make up the difference. Generally, it was expected that a farmer could reap 40-50 grains of rice for every one sown in the fertile and rainy conditions of the riverlands, and lose a fifth to a third of that in taxes. These taxes went into the king's building projects and feeding & maintaining Ubeizan's army. Those who had nothing to give, or too little, could be placed in temporary debt slavery to work off their taxes (which was an arbitrarily defined period of time, and could last from a week to a decade).

    Trade was done with other 'Awali city-states, the peoples of and beyond the mountains to the northeast, and nomads from the south and east. Ubeizani kings permitted nomads to seasonally graze their herds on their kingdom's territory in exchange for a tax on wool, meat, milk and cheese, while other Ubeizani traders brought crops and fruits to exchange for precious metals in the mountains. Again, as Ubeizan had no coinage, all trade was done via bartering.

    The Ubeizani military
    The Ubeizani army was much like any other 'Awali force in the region, differentiated only by its size and one new innovation: it comprised an elite regiment of elite nobles riding in wagon-like chariots (ever supporting only two men at most, the actual warrior and a driver) with four wooden wheels and pulled by four donkeys, a body of professional infantrymen trusted to form the front and center of the army (which is said innovation), and a mob of unarmored lower-class draftees who made up a majority of its ranks. Donkey-riding scouts existed, but singularly functioned as observers and did not fight on ass-back. Ubeizani tactics involved drawing the enemy into close-quarters battle with their infantry while the chariots circled to their flanks and wore them down with a constant barrage of missiles before running them down, at which point the foe would hopefully be put to flight. The Ubeizani army was apparently organized into hundred-strong regiments, with each regiment comprising a hundred footmen directed by one chariot-riding aristocrat (with the nobles closest to the king commanding regiments of professional footmen rather than the drafted commoners), who in turn obviously answered to the king or another noble he has appointed as his chief representative on the battlefield.

    Ubeizani chariot with crew and foot attendant

    Bows with bronze arrows and bronze-headed javelins were the ranged weapons of choice of the elite, who also carried bronze spears for close defense & protected themselves with bronze helmets and in the later Ubeizani period, vests of bone/copper/bronze lamellar. The professional infantry who formed the center and front lines of an Ubeizani formation wore copper or bronze helmets for protection and fought with bronze spears, axes or blades & wooden or wicker shields. The mobs who formed the Ubeizani and 'Awali infantry were equipped with whatever arms they could afford, typically just farming implements or wooden clubs and perhaps a better-forged weapon of copper/bronze for the artisans, and rarely if ever wore armor of any kind.

    Artist's recreation of the Battle of Uppak between Ubeizan and Morah & the wooden carvings that inspired it

    When laying siege to an enemy settlement, the Ubeizani modus operandi was simply to loot and plunder the outlying farms, divert or otherwise lock down water supplies with temporary dikes, and wait for the defenders to starve. Assaults like Shurubar's storming of Morah were rare and only done when the besieging army itself started to run out of supplies or scouts have reported reinforcements on the way. In that case, ladders and a battering ram (really just a wooden log carried by a few unfortunate peasants, who now found themselves working the most dangerous job in the army) would be quickly constructed out of any nearby wood supplies and the Ubeizani would throw themselves at the town walls until either they had been taken and the city overrun, or they had incurred too many casualties and were forced to retreat.

    Aside from its strong army, Ubeizan also dedicated significant resources to a riverine fleet to more effectively control the Muryurir and Abanarir. This fleet was initially made up entirely of boats unsuited for fighting, instead simply serving as transports for their soldiers. Later boats were wider and sturdier, and carried archers who would remain on the boat to provide fire support in addition to the rowers and transported troops themselves.

    At the apparent height of its power around 6200 AA, the Ubeizani Empire suddenly collapsed. The empire was caught in a two-front conflict where several cities along the banks of the Abanarir revolted and lynched or threw out their Ubeizani governors in protest against King Meleh's harsh taxation, while to the south, tribal nomads from the mountains sought to graze their herds much closer to the paddies than previously agreed between Meleh and their chieftains and so entered conflict with Ubeizani farmers. While Meleh led the Ubeizani army against the rebels in the north, he did summon the nomad chiefs to his ziggurat to explain themselves, only for them to be seized and put to death by his councilors (ruling the city in his stead while he was away fighting the rebels) for breaking the terms of their initial agreement. It is believed they were counting on their king to defeat the northern rebels, then turn around and destroy the nomads before they could rampage through their empire's southern half. Unfortunately for these councilors and Ubeizan in general, the Ubeizani army was defeated and Meleh himself killed by the allied rebel cities at the Battle of Evkek late that summer, and the nomads were free to swarm up the Muryurir with little effective opposition.

    The subject cities of Anzibul, Purabira, Tubal, and Girbal were plundered and many of their residents killed or carried off as slaves before the nomads came to Ubeizan itself, which they also besieged. After three months, a failed sally allowed the besiegers to pursue the Ubeizani defenders before they could close the gates and take the city at last, at which point they plundered everything they could from it, set the central ziggurat on fire to eliminate its remaining defenders and Meleh's immediate family (as well as the councilors whose executions of their elders started their rampage in the first place), and carried off thousands into slavery. Ubeizani rule disintegrated elsewhere as the other vassal cities, inspired by the example of the northern rebels and knowing that they had a great opportunity with the sack of Ubeizan, shook off their chains. Thus did the Riverlands have their first large-scale hostile contact with that group of people known to later generations as the Qormats.

    Quote Originally Posted by Words transcribed from the records of an Ubeizani aristocrat, c. 6215 AA
    Savages from the south came with fire and wood and copper...they were taller than I, and some had skin the color of mud, others black as coal...taking advantage of our weakness they pillaged and burned up Murya's River, and laid waste to our subjects, and finally laid low great Ubeizan, center of the world. I dare not speak of the myriad atrocities they visited upon our people.
    The nomads did not stay long in the Riverlands. They were 'smash-and-grab' looters, not conquerors, who were unfamiliar with agriculture. Soon after sacking Ubeizan, they made their way home to their mountains with much plunder and slaves in tow, leaving little in the way of lasting physical impact in the Riverlands. Life went on as usual in the cities that broke away from the empire, though now at least they paid their taxes to local sovereigns once more rather than a more distant king in Ubeizan. And as for Ubeizan itself, it would be rebuilt under a new dynasty, raised up to replace the slain heirs of Shurubar by the surviving priests - though it remained only a shadow of its former glory. Still, the example they had set as warlords and conquerors would remain etched into the minds of every Riverlander who knew their touch, and inspire the growth of new empires down the road.

    Artist's imagining of the Qormat sack of Ubeizan, ~6200 AA

    The Second Wind: Umatil
    After the sudden and ignominious downfall of the Ubeizani Empire, the 'Awali Riverlands reverted to being a fractious collection of bickering city-kingdoms for 500 years before a worthy successor emerged: Umatil, a major city-kingdom sitting on the delta of the Abanarir (northern) river. Its location made it a natural entrepot where crops, salt and precious metals flowed west in exchange for olive oil, wine, copper and tin (the former two goods were especially favored imports from the Allawaurë), making the kingdom fabulously wealthy. Around 6700 AA, the Umatili king Iddisham realized that he could put his riches to use in conquering his neighbors, and promptly did just that. At this point in history, both the domesticated horse & the spoked wheel had been introduced to the 'Awali through contact with the Suffulk & Mutu'mani, and when combined they created lighter, more maneuverable horse-drawn chariots that proved far more popular than the older onager-drawn solid-wheeled variety: but Umatil, by virtue of its wealth, was able to field far a far larger chariot corps than its nearest rivals. With these chariots and the numerous & varied mercenaries his treasury could afford, Iddisham rapidly overran his neighbors, and by the time of his death in 6722 had conquered as far as Ubeizan itself.

    The Umatili Empire proved less river-bound than the Ubeizani, and expanded both southward to the Muryurir and northward to the banks of the Ubu-Ravir or 'River of the World's End' (so called because the 'Awali, in their pride, believed their cultural sphere to be the only part of the world that mattered). They were more conciliatory towards those they had conquered than the Ubeizani, allowing defeated kings to continue ruling their native city-states in return for a hefty tribute (as opposed to throwing them out entirely and replacing them with handpicked governors) so long as said kings did not try to fight to the last man against their armies. The Umatili monarchs styled themselves 'Over-King of the First', and were more 'first-among-equals' figures heading a confederation of highly autonomous vassals rather than an absolute sovereign imposing their will on subjugated populations in a centralized empire.

    Map of Umatil

    Umatili society
    Umatili society itself was little different from that of the Ubeizani or 'Awali in general. The only significant differences were that 1) their patron deity was the sea god Šabu and 2) as mentioned earlier, their empire was less centralized and native monarchs were allowed to retain their thrones beneath the Over-King's rule so long as they pledged loyalty, paid tribute on time and contributed soldiers to their overlord's wars on demand. For more information, see those entries.

    Bronze figure of a servitor of Šabu, found in the ruins of Umatil and dated to 6868 AA

    Umatili army
    Unlike its conservative society, which stuck to 'Awali traditions and had changed not a jot since the time of Ubeizan, the Umatili army represented a significant departure from the Ubeizani military structure - and indeed, its innovations were the reason it managed to build the second great 'Awali empire. The Umatili army was less reliant on levied mobs than other 'Awali kingdoms, instead counting on its own great wealth to recruit thousands of professional mercenaries to form the majority of its ranks (along with a core of more traditional, also professional elite troops - mainly charioteers - raised from the upper strata of its society). These mercenaries came from all over the place: many were fellow 'Awali veterans, but some were Allawaurë or other Tawaurë, Suufulk, Qormats from the south, Munu'mati camel riders, even the rare Golga. As these sellswords were organized into units formed of their own kind (save the Golga, who were typically employed on an individual basis and thus almost never had any fellow Golga in the Umatili tanks to interact with), they retained their own traditional fighting styles and wielded their own equipment, giving the Umatili military tremendous flexibility.

    Artist's impression of a Qormat mercenary in Umatili employ, c. 7000 AA

    The pride of the Umatili, however, were their nobles' chariots. These vehicles were carried on spoked wheels and pulled by horses instead of onagers, making them far lighter & more maneuverable than the older stocky-wheeled design. Most chariots were pulled by two horses and carried two men (a driver and armored noble archer with a hacking sword for close combat), but those of the Over-King and his close relatives were larger, pulled by three horses and carried a three-man crew (driver, noble, and armored spearman). They proved to be absolutely devastating on the field of battle against the older onager-chariots with solid wheels fielded by their 'Awali rivals, to the point of rendering that design obsolete by 7000 AA. These chariots also proved instrumental in repelling Qormat invasions, crushing the same people who had laid the Ubeizani Empire low before them.

    An Umatili horse-drawn, spoke-wheeled chariot, c. 7050 AA

    Fittingly, the Umatili whose empire was born through their economic strength, also fell when that economic strength erupted. In 7062 AA, an upriver border war between the Munu'mati tribe of Enezi and a league of 'Awali kingdoms near the source of the Abanarir disrupted trade long enough to significantly damage Umatil's economy. King Dumuz-a-bil was thus unable to pay his mercenaries that year, and when a minor mutiny erupted on the streets of Umatil, he invited their captains to his ziggurat to negotiate terms. Once there, these negotiations did not go well: the captains insisted on being paid in full, on time, even as their contractor stressed that what they were asking for was impossible. When a Qormat skirmisher captain threatened to plunder Umatil for compensation he retaliated by ordering the palace guards to bar the doors and slaughter the mercenary commanders, after which directions were issued to the rest of the native Umatili soldiers to attack the sellswords' barracks, in which they were joined by several angry mobs. However, the king's strategy backfired when the mercenaries rallied and fought back more effectively than expected, routing his men and promptly running amok throughout Umatil. Dumuz-a-bil and his family were besieged in the central ziggurat, where they and several hundred civilians lucky enough to reach the palace when the street battles turned sour were heroically defended by Umatil's remaining soldiers until the mercenaries gave up and went home, having plundered the rest of the city and killed or enslaved thousands of other residents.

    Artist's reimagining of Allawaurë and Qormat sellswords attempting an assault on the walls of Umatil's ziggurat, 7062 AA

    Although Dumuz-a-bil had survived the night's events, his empire did not. Without the mercenaries, all that was left of the Umatili army was in no shape to continue asserting control over his tributaries, and the thousands of newly unemployed sellswords rampaging up the Abanarir & Muryurir weren't making things any easier. Some of the Umatili vassal city-kingdoms were sacked by the mercenaries as they made their way home, others paid the newly-made bandits to leave them alone and still a few others were lucky or determined enough to resist their sieges, but virtually all threw off any notion of fealty to Umatil. Those emissaries of the Umatili crown who were dispatched to demand these wayward vassals return to Dumuz-a-bil's overlordship were laughed out, or chased out, of the cities they visited. By the time the trade routes were reopened and wealth started flowing back into Umatil's treasury, Dumuz-a-bil had died of old age and the central 'Awali Riverlands had just finished recovering from his forsaken mercenaries' fury, the Umatili Empire having already been reduced to little more than a fading memory. Still, their charioteering innovations and their service as an abject lesson on why any power shouldn't rely on mercenaries overmuch would help the third, greatest and last of the Bronze Age 'Awali empires blaze its own trail into the history books a millennium after their time...
    Last edited by Barry Goldwater; November 26, 2018 at 11:27 PM.

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    Default Re: [ANW - Civilization] The 'Awali

    Last but not least: Zaba-Tutul
    The last and greatest of the old 'Awali empires was that of Zaba-Tutul, founded a little over a thousand years after the downfall of the Umatili Empire and centered on a city that was relatively young by 'Awali standards; Zaba-Tutul had been founded around 6200 AA, ironically starting out as a colony of Umatil, and was among the many tributary states to have broken free of its mother-city's control when the Umatili lost control of their mercenaries. In late 7062 AA, a troop of mostly Qormat and Mun'umati deserters from the Umatili army harassed the outskirts of Zaba-Tutul and threatened to besiege the city if they were not paid a sufficient ransom; the Zaba-Tutuli king Yur-eni-bil, a distant relation of the ill-fated Umatili monarch Dumuz-a-bil, elected to meet them in battle after first sacrificing his wife to the city's patron goddess, Yannu, in a desperate bid for the goddess' favor - and actually won the resulting battle, to the surprise of everyone but himself. Thus Zaba-Tutul managed to avoid the economic devastation that either being sacked or paying a heavy ransom to the deserters brought upon many of its neighbors, and Yur-eni-bil & his descendants used their position of relative strength to bring said neighbors under their rule. By 7562 AA, Zaba-Tutul had conquered its former overlord Umatil and was master of the lands between the Abanarir & Muryurir rivers. The only serious opposition they had left among the 'Awali was a league of the three next greatest city-kingdoms: Ilenga, Dagan, and ancient Ubeizan itself, the latter of which led the league.

    Yet even the combined strength of these three kingdoms, minor empires in their own right, was not sufficient to bring down Zaba-Tutul's star. At the great Battle of Igigi Plain in 7567 AA, King Tiqip of Zaba-Tutul - freshly transformed into an avatar of Yannu's - led his army to meet the gathered hosts of his three rivals and prevailed utterly, having detached a unit of engineers to destroy several major dikes south of the battlefield and flood the larger army of the Ubeizani League's positions (mostly, for much of the Zaba-Tutuli vanguard was washed away as collateral damage too). Simultaneously, with the power of Yannu, Tiqip raised up great walls of earth to block off the retreat of the Ubeizani League forces, ensuring that not only would the flood be contained before it devastated Zaba-Tutul's own farmlands but also that as few of his enemies as possible could escape. The kings of Dagan and Ubeizan were among the drowned, while King Dun-he-nuna of Ilenga survived by virtue of having also become an avatar (in his case, of Abanah) but bent his knee soon after the battle. Evidently, Yannu must have frightened the rival goddess into submission on that battlefield. By the end of the year, Tiqip was able to march his forces into Dagan and Ubeizan with little effective opposition and proclaimed himself Paramount King of the 'Awali in the ziggurat of the latter. No other still-independent kingdom among the First had the strength to contest his claim, and one by one (or in batches of up to a dozen, on the occasion that they formed a coalition in a desperate bid to stop the Zaba-Tutuli) they were swallowed up by Tiqip and his heirs until by 8080 AA, the entirety of the 'Awali Riverlands knew a single master for the first time in history. It is for this reason that the Zaba-Tutuli Empire is also sometimes referred to as the 'Awali Empire by historians.

    But dominance over 'just' their fellow 'Awali would not be enough to sate the hunger for power and conquests that had by now possessed the descendants of Yurlabil, oh no. Zaba-Tutuli armies began to assail a diverse crop of new foes, ranging from the indigenous marsh-people of the north to Mun'umati tribes at the edge of the Riverlands and the Great Sand Sea to the east to Qormat mountain men & Saurii colonists in the south, in an effort to plant the Zaba-Tutuli flag in new lands and bring more slaves, material resources and trade routes into the fold of the Paramount Kings. With their vast arsenal of acceptable-to-high-quality bronze equipment and chariots, professional soldiery, sophisticated administrative/logistical apparatus (all made possible in large part by their massive slave economy) and most importantly their formidable Kings leading them from the front as avatars of Yannu, the Zaba-Tutuli found few equals capable of slowing or halting their relentless wars of expansion out of their native riverlands.

    The Zaba-Tutuli empire shortly after the Battle of Igigi Plain, 7,567 AA


    Legend:
    Red - Zaba-Tutul
    Green - Ubeizan
    Cyan - Ilenga
    Burgundy - Dagan

    Society & government
    The Zaba-Tutuli empire followed in the footsteps of Ubeizan rather than its founder and former master, Umatil, in that it had a centralized governing structure. Native kings and chiefs who were subdued by its armies were turfed out of their seats, their subjects instead being placed under the rule of a governor appointed by the Paramount King in Zaba-Tutul. As governors had no fixed term limits and were appointed & replaced at said Paramount King's pleasure, these governors could reign for life so long as they did not offend their patron, which could be most easily accomplished by maintaining a careful balance between sending sufficient tax revenue and slaves home & preventing their subjects from revolting against Zaba-Tutul's overlordship. These governors were supported by a population of Zaba-Tutuli colonists, originally a category comprised of the soldiers assigned to a given city's garrison and their families but soon expanding to include administrators, judges and clerics sent from home; although the native aristocracy and elder statesmen were still involved at the lower echelons of Zaba-Tutuli local government as accountants, bookkeepers, tax-collectors and interpreters, all decision-making power rested with the governor and his cabal (and above them, the royal court in Zaba-Tutul's ziggurat), which was required by law to be made up entirely of Zaba-Tutuli immigrants and their patrilineal descendants.

    Above these governors and the traditional nobility, per 'Awali custom, the Paramount King was considered an avatar of Zaba-Tutul's patron god Yannu and thus considered sacrosanct, while the priestesses of Yannu enjoyed similar status on account of being thought of as their goddess' lesser spokeswomen on Earth. When sufficiently angered or frustrated, the Paramount Kings would order great sacrifices of food, wine, gold and slaves or enemy prisoners-of-war to be conducted at the Golden Temple of Yannu so as to please her and draw her into the material world, thereby making themselves into her avatar in more than just name. While few Paramount Kings survived the experience, while possessed by Yannu they could reportedly devastate the armies and homelands of their foes simply by transcribing words of power provided in their minds by the goddess, and then reading these Mandates out loud.

    Cylinder seal impression of the Zaba-Tutuli king Etaqip appointing a governor, c. 8,800 AA

    Despite this greater centralism, the Zaba-Tutuli were aware that if they didn't integrate conquered natives into their system more effectively, they could easily fall as the Ubeizani did. Thus, after one to three generations, a city that had not revolted against Zaba-Tutuli rulership would be given the status of Ebiti Zaba-Tutul (literally 'Like Zaba-Tutul'), which amounts to Zaba-Tutuli citizenship. The upper echelons of the existing native nobility were allowed entry into highest echelons of local governance and even parts of the central government in Zaba-Tutul itself, while a significant number of the local slaves were manumitted and drafted into the Zaba-Tutuli army, to be replaced with the foreign slaves these new soldiers were expected to bring in. Their families would be freed along with them as well, and for all intents and purposes, this population of freedmen could be thought of as new Zaba-Tutuli citizens in their own right. Within a generation, even if they still speak their own dialect of 'Awali at home, they could serve as officers and bureaucrats in the halls of Zaba-Tutuli power just like men born in Zaba-Tutul itself.

    Now all that said, being a low-ranking cog in the engine of lower-end governance was one of the best possible outcomes for the first and second generations of peoples placed under the Zaba-Tutuli yoke. Their empire's economy was much more heavily reliant on slaves than Ubeizan's and Umatil's, as free men were overwhelmingly required for the army or civil service and consequently someone else needed to do their work. Every time the Zaba-Tutuli army conquered a town or tribe, unless otherwise agreed upon in prior peace negotiations - which Zaba-Tutul famously always adhered to unless betrayed first, not necessarily because their kings were paragons of honor but because they knew that if they broke such agreements first nobody would ever trust their word and surrender instead of forcing a bloody last stand - anywhere between half to three-quarters of the subjugated men, women and children would be enslaved. While there exists many a lurid tale about a decadent Zaba-Tutuli king or aristocrat's harem of nubile foreign women, the truth is that the vast bulk of newly enslaved peoples were sent to do decidedly un-romantic manual labor in the farms, mines and workshops, freeing their former occupants to go join the Zaba-Tutuli army and bring back even more slaves in the future. Slaves could not marry non-slaves and any children a slave woman gave birth to was automatically made a slave; while they could be manumitted by their master, this did not appear to occur frequently, and freedmen were almost always immediately drafted into the Zaba-Tutuli army. In case they suspect a rebellion might be in the works, masters were encouraged to put on a show of force by randomly killing several of their strongest slaves to scare the rest back into line; this was no great loss, as Zaba-Tutul's constant wars meant a constant stream of replacements for them to pick out of too.

    Relief depicting Zaba-tutuli overseers and Qormat slaves, c. 8,100 AA

    As for the free men of society's lower orders...well, squeezed between the surfeit of slaves capable of doing their work for free and nobles & priests above of them whose positions in society were guaranteed, they had little choice but to join the army or civil service (mostly the former, for the latter required basic literacy & numeracy), or else starve. Thus the majority of the Zaba-Tutuli army's vaunted professional soldiers were formerly free peasants and artisans, retrained to march and kill at the command of their superiors after losing their jobs to slaves. Assuming they survive their minimum decade-long service, they would receive a severance package in the form of a plot of land and anywhere between three to a dozen slaves carved out from the territories they had helped to conquer, the size and quality of both being determined by their rank at the time of their dismissal from the army. Veterans could, of course, re-enlist and serve at a higher paygrade, and their second severance package included having their family name added to the rolls of the nobility. While men and boys were slated for the military or civil service, women and girls did what little civilian work that wasn't already being done by slaves; home-making, sewing, working pottery and so on.

    Some free men became merchants and led caravans or trading convoys westward into the cities and ports of the Allawaurë and Saurii (at least when their Paramount King wasn't at war with their destinations) to turn a profit, selling off cargoes of everything that could be found wherever the Paramount King had power from rice to gold to salt and buying whatever the 'Awali did not grow or mine themselves. Unfortunately for them, the occupation of trader - one who did not create goods, but only moved around goods created or harvested by others - had never commanded much respect in the martial/agricultural society of the 'Awali and Zaba-Tutul was not about to buck that trend, and so even merchants who grew wealthier than the traditional Zaba-Tutuli aristocracy had next to no official influence in the empire. In times of great need or extravagance, Paramount Kings and their lords were also known to seize merchants' goods without compensation to fuel their armies or wild parties, turning away even more of those who were considering taking up trade for a living.

    Artist's imagining of a Zaba-Tutuli farm, worked entirely by slaves while the owner's wife chats with a neighbor

    Outside of the 'Awali Riverlands proper, Zaba-Tutuli administration was less rigorously centralized. In the Great Sand Sea, up to a dozen Mun'umati tribes (most prominently the Enezi​ or 'Forlorn' and 'Ilmi or 'Righteous') were subjugated by the force of Zaba-Tutuli arms by 9000 AA, but as they were nomads with little to no knowledge of farming & whose homeland mostly consisted of nothing more than worthless desert, it was decided that trying to forcibly settle them and setting up an extensive administrative apparatus as had been done in the conquered cities of the Riverlands were not feasible options to deal with them. Instead, the Paramount Kings pragmatically permitted their eastern subjects to continue living their nomadic lifestyle and watering their horses at government-controlled oases in exchange for annual oaths of fealty and tributes of cheese, milk, meat and slaves (usually gathered in raids on the independent Mun'umati tribes even further out east), and to meet quotas of cavalrymen and skirmishers for the Zaba-Tutuli army in times of war. A single Zaba-Tutuli permanent envoy was attached to each tribe's chief to keep tabs on them, but beyond that, the central government more or less left the Mun'umati to their own devices, and they were not remotely assimilated into the broader 'Awali culture or governing structure. This same deal was cut with the handful of Suuvulk tribes brought to heel in the empire's extreme northeastern reaches, as well.

    A similar arrangement cropped up in the south, with subdued Qormat tribes being allowed to retain their traditional lifestyle so long as they exclusively focused on raiding the enemies of Zaba-Tutul, turned over a share of their spoils and provided soldiers to the royal army in wartime. The only Zaba-Tutuli settlements in the Great Sand Sea sprang up around oases and mines (particularly salt mines), and these were all respectively slave plantations crossed with waystations for trading caravans or slave-staffed mining operations with their only free inhabitants being the Zaba-Tutuli overseers, garrisons and merchants catering to the former. Meanwhile, in the Green-and-Grey Mountains of the south, the physical footprint of the Zaba-Tutuli Empire was limited to just mining towns, where slaves extracted tin, copper and precious metals & stones under the whips of overseers & the spear-butts of soldiers assigned to them.

    Entrance to an ancient Zaba-Tutuli salt mine in the Great Sand Sea

    How do modern historians know all of the above, one might wonder? Well, the Zaba-Tutuli had the good manners to leave behind one of the best-preserved law codes of this time period, and excellently preserved records in general. The Law of Etaqi is a great basalt stele covered in hieroglyphs laying out the laws and customs of the Zaba-Tutuli Empire circa 7,800 AA, and may in fact be the oldest preserved legal document in human history. The laws were organized in groups, with the laws judging nobility inscribed into the top parts of the stele and those for commoners and slaves further below, and transparently discriminated against the lower orders of society: for example, it decreed that should a common man or slave murder a noble he was to be executed by dismemberment via oxen, but a noble who murdered a commoner or someone else's slave would only have to pay restitution equal to the commoner's salary to his family or the slave's price to his master, and there was no punishment for killing one's own slave. People were judged by both a judge (obviously) and a jury comprised of the higher-status party's peers. The code further specified that 'all are considered guilty until they prove their own innocence', so that though both the plaintiff and defendant could present their evidence before the court, said court operated from a presumption of guilt to begin with. Finally, any non-noble sentenced to death had their execution dedicated to Yannu.

    Aside from Etaqi's Stele, Zaba-Tutuli officials were quite thorough when it came to keeping records, and significant quantities of clay tablets and papyrus scrolls on which annual censuses (recording the age, gender, ethnicity, patron deity, job and length-of-residency of every one of the respective city's permanent residents), tax records, imports and exports, monthly visitors to a given city, the number of travelers passing through the city & ships docked in its harbor, and other bureaucratic minutiae have been discovered in the archives of ruined Zaba-Tutuli ziggurats.

    Etaqi's Stele, now preserved in a museum

    Speaking of the executions newly dedicated to Yannu...this particular goddess, once a fairly inoffensive and oft-overlooked one, catapulted to prominence among the Zaba-Tutuli, and began to usurp the roles of the other deities in their pantheon as well. The Zaba-Tutuli still worshiped these other gods, of course, but they revered Yannu above these others to the point of borderline henotheism. Gold (for the upper classes) and bronze (for everyone else) statues of cats were placed in every household so that she might watch over them as they slept, a hundred dogs were ritually killed on her altar upon the autumnal equinox to honor her, and she demanded sacrifices at increasing rates - bullion and gems for her temples' treasuries, exotic perfumes and spices from abroad, choice cuts of meat and finely aged wine, and finally even the occasional human sacrifice. The first four were expected by her worshipers, for she had always only been receptive to the best of offerings, but the last of these was something she'd never asked for before Zaba-Tutul achieved greatness. Her demands for blood, as communicated through her priests, never touched the Zaba-Tutuli themselves and thus didn't give them cause for rebellion: she only ever asked for the blood of their enemies, sometimes the hearts of strong enemy prisoners, at other times those of their most beautiful women and children.

    An 'Awali noblewoman makes a material offering at one of Yannu's shrines, c. 9,600 AA

    The Zaba-Tutuli obliged, every time. She was the reason their empire grew mighty and prosperous, after all. And of course, it was dangerous to fail in satisfying a goddess who demonstrated her power regularly. In her most sacred place, the sanctum of the Golden Temple atop Zaba-Tutul's highest hill where even the doors and pillars were gilded, Yannu's main statue stood: a great golden cat with onyxes for eyes and a crown of pure silver, with a hollow in its chest housing the very first statue the founders of Zaba-Tutul found of her - an ancient wooden cat statuette that could fit in a man's palm, again with onyxes for eyes, preserved over countless ages on account of her spirit dwelling within it - with smaller statues of silver, ivory and ebony depicting the rest of the Zaba-Tutuli pantheon circling it. Curiously, all of these other statues have always remained prostrate before Yannu's, even despite the efforts of the occasional non-Zaba-Tutuli rapscallions who slip (or rather, are allowed to slip) past the temple guards to lift them upwards. As far as Yannu's faithful were concerned, their goddess allowed fools to pull stunts like this from time to time just so she'd have another opportunity to show off her superiority over the other gods.

    As Zaba-Tutul grew mighty, Yannu also empowered her priestesses well in excess of the other gods of the pantheon. No longer would they be the glorified bean-counters and smiths of the 'Awali priesthood: no, by receiving the touch of their goddess, they gained the power to deftly manipulate matter, particularly the minerals of the Earth. A middling priestess of Yannu could now turn lead into gold (though reportedly their goddess, being more aware of the effects of inflation on an economy than even the keenest of the Paramount Kings' bureaucrats, explicitly warned them against doing this without her express permission, which she issued with extreme rarity, and punished those who didn't heed her warning by turning them into gold), sand into bronze for weapons & armor, dust into glass, and so on. While the main consequence was that Zaba-Tutuli citizens enjoyed a degree of prosperity unparalleled in the rest of the world for most of their empire's existence, as mage-smiths capable of working materials with a precision no mundane could match, the clerics of Yannu were also responsible for ensuring the Zaba-Tutuli army was one of the best-armed and armored fighting forces of the Bronze Age.

    A priestess of Yannu in resplendent scarlet robes and a golden headdress, c. 9,890 AA

    The Zaba-Tutuli military
    While the Zaba-Tutuli administration was instrumental to holding their empire together, to achieve any conquests in the first place they needed an army. Fortunately for the Paramount Kings, their heavy usage of slave labor in virtually every sector of the imperial economy meant that they had a ready supply of free but unemployed men and boys with little to no economic prospects but to join the military! Thus Zaba-Tutul was able to raise a large and professional army, composed entirely of free citizens who signed on for a duration of ten years at minimum. Just as crucially was the degree of meritocracy employed in the army's lower and middle ranks: while aristocrats still monopolized the topmost echelons of the military, enlisted veterans were promoted to ranks up to Ene-bali ('leader of many', translating to command of up to 500 soldiers) based solely on their personal fighting prowess and command ability, and virtually all Zaba-Tutuli drill sergeants (who were expected to train fresh recruits for a period of three to nine months, depending on their role) were enlisted commoners themselves. The imperial administration and the priesthood of Yannu took care of the procurement of military equipment, ensuring that their numerous soldiers were equipped with bronze armor and weapons of a quality and standardization that no other Bronze Age state was able to match.

    Relief depicting a Zaba-Tutuli infantry recruits marching in formation, dated to 8,428 AA

    Now, as to the composition of the Zaba-Tutuli army: that was decidedly less innovative than the previous 'Awali empires. As expected from an 'Awali fighting force, the majority of their soldiers were archers or infantrymen, who despite being more professionally trained and better-equipped than the men in their predecessors' armies were still too poor to afford horses and chariots. The bowmen fought entirely unarmored and formed the first ranks of the average Zaba-Tutuli force, always exchanging projectiles with the enemy's own missile troops or peppering the front ranks of their army with arrows before retiring to allow the infantry to advance. Most of the footmen were armed with bronze or copper-headed spears, tall square-shaped tower shields made of wicker, and a knife or club for close combat, while senior units were outfitted with one-handed bronze axes or maces used in conjunction with a solid wooden shield and appear to have served as shock troops. If the steles depicting soldiers are to be believed, all Zaba-Tutuli infantrymen were outfitted with a copper or bronze conical helm worn over a soft cap, with the elite shock troopers and officers also wearing a circular bronze disc-shaped protector held over their hearts with leather straps. These soldiers did not have to buy their own gear: in a sign of Zaba-Tutul's martial professionalism, they were equipped at state expense with weapons and armor produced in state-run foundries by slaves directly owned by the government.

    Zaba-Tutuli spearmen in tabletop wargame miniature form

    Zaba-Tutuli infantry tactics appear to have been nothing special, only distinguished from the armies of older powers by their superior discipline. Spearmen were organized into phalanxes, typically eight men wide and six ranks deep, and invariably formed the center of a Zaba-Tutuli battle line. Most of the time they would advance to meet the enemy head-on, presenting a wall of wicker shields bristling with spears, and lock the opposing center into a push-of-spear contest while the ax- and mace-armed shock troops mustered behind them would split into two groups and advance from behind the phalanx in a bid to flank the opposition. In other cases, the shock troops formed the front ranks of the infantry and rushed forward to engage the enemy first, with the spearmen following up to add numbers & force to their push. As mentioned above, the real advantage held by the Zaba-Tutuli infantry over their rival counterparts was in discipline: their regiments advanced in a more orderly fashion than most contemporaries of this period (with soldiers rarely marching out of step), were less likely than their adversaries to break and rout under the pressure of a prolonged melee engagement, and even their spear phalanx was able to turn to face a threat on their flank with surprising speed (the lightness of their equipment probably helped in that regard). Infantry armor, though of excellent quality, was fairly light compared to what the chariotry was packing: a conical bronze helmet, little different from earlier 'Awali designs, was standard-issue for everyone but the unarmored archers & skirmishers, and the heaviest infantrymen only received the addition of a round bronze chest-protector fastened to their shoulders with leather straps and a protective cloak of bronze flakes sewn onto a fur or leather backing.

    The main killing arm of the Zaba-Tutuli army remained its aristocrat-manned chariotry, as with all the other 'Awali states. The most popular design in the Zaba-Tutuli ranks was a spoked-wheel chariot supporting a crew of three: a helmeted driver, a shield-bearer of low birth (usually a trusted servant of the nobleman in charge), and a heavily armored nobleman. The shield-bearer was usually unarmored and naturally carried a shield with which to protect the chariot crew (hence his job's title), and also wielded a spear for close defense and to assist his lord in charges. The nobleman was armed with a bow and bronze arrows for ranged combat, a 3-4 m pike for the charge (its length giving them a greater reach than the conventional spear, which made for a lethal combination when put together with the speed of an onrushing chariot) and a khopesh (a bronze sickle-bladed hacking sword that appears to have evolved out of the socketed battle-axe design) for close defense, and further wore a bronze helmet and an armored coat of bronze scales or flakes sewn onto a leather backing for protection. These chariots were heavier than the 'Awali standard popularized by the Umatili Empire a thousand years prior to Zaba-Tutul's own rise and sacrificed speed for stability, shocking power & fighting 'elbow room', making them just as brutally effective in headlong frontal charges as they were in flanking maneuvers. The Paramount Kings and their corps of 100 bodyguards rode on three-horse chariots made of gilded copper or bronze, and uniquely wore coats of bronze scales sewn onto to a linen backing.

    A regiment of Zaba-Tutuli chariots prepares to charge at full gallop, c. 9,000 AA

    Zaba-Tutul had learned not to rely overmuch on foreign mercenaries and auxiliaries after witnessing the downfall of its former patron Umatil, but that didn't mean its army was totally bereft of foreigners. As mentioned under the 'society' section above, the Paramount Kings required tributary Qormat and Mun'umati tribes to send auxiliaries to join the royal army in wartime. Qormat auxiliaries were typically light infantry, unarmored skirmishers who fought with javelins and axes or clubs and were deployed alongside the archers at the frontmost ranks of a Zaba-Tutuli army; the Mun'umati auxiliaries in highest demand, on the other hand, were horsemen and camel-riders who chiefly functioned as outriders and mounted archers, for the existence of only very simple saddles (a wide fringed pad secured onto the rider's mount with a breastcollar, cinch and cruppers) and a lack of stirrups & specially-bred large warhorses made mounted melee combat difficult and riding while wearing any more armor than a simple helmet impossible. Various mercenaries from around the Muataric Sea and further inland to the east - Allawaurë, Saurii, Suuvulk, Golga and even the occasional Omete - were also employed, but their numbers (combined with those of the subject auxiliaries) were never allowed to exceed a quarter of the Zaba-Tutuli army in total and they were closely watched by Zaba-Tutuli liaison officers.

    An Enezi dromedary auxiliary in Zaba-Tutuli service, c. 9,000 AA

    Unlike the sudden and unexpected downfalls of the preceding Ubeizani and Umatili empires, Zaba-Tutul's fall was more protracted, and there were some definite warning signs along the way. Starting around 9,000 AA, the global climate shifted for the worse - snow fell for the first time in the empire's northern reaches that year - and worldwide cooling increasingly hurt crop output. Unfortunately for the 'Awali, no magic of theirs could shift the weather, not even that of Yannu's most powerful priestesses. In the east, expanding desertification chewed up the previously arable lands at the old border between the Riverlands and the Great Sand Sea, while many of the oases within Zaba-Tutul's zone of control in the western parts of said Sand Sea shrank or dried up with no replacement to be found; adding oil to the fire, the Zaba-Tutuli government imposed heavier taxes in slaves and horses on their subject Mun'umati tribes in exchange for permitting continued access to those few oases they still controlled, obviously aggravating said Mun'umati who now found themselves increasingly forced to choose between getting water & food and selling their own children into slavery in order to meet the price for oasis access. Zaba-Tutul's wars of expansion ground to a halt as soldiers were sent back to the home front to suppress increasingly frequent food riots & slave revolts and to help collect taxes at spearpoint, as the masses - long used to abundance and prosperity - were not in the least inclined to give up even a fraction of their meager crops under the dire circumstances.

    In 9,730 AA the major towns of Zaibali, Henematil and Quya-Qumil along the Muryurir threw out or lynched their Zaba-Tutuli governors and launched the Revolt of the Three Cities. This uprising, the largest in Zaba-Tutuli history at that point in time, took eleven years to suppress and ended with the three cities destroyed utterly - but not before the rebels devastated the Riverlands' southern irrigation networks, further worsening the food situation. Matters were not helped by the growth in numbers and rapidity of revolts and desertions among the still-enormous slave population, who sensed a shot at freedom as their masters' chains rusted, and Zaba-Tutul's Qormat and Mun'umat tributaries, who were upset that their patrons were doing little to nothing to alleviate their own climate-related suffering and sensed opportunities to break free amidst Zaba-Tutul's decline.

    Still, the empire lumbered on with increasing frailty for nearly three hundred more years after the Revolt of the Three Cities. It was only around 10,000 AA that the beginning of the end finally arrived at their doors: two of the most powerful tribes of the Great Sand Sea, the Shamshi and Taibani, had buried their millennia-old hatchet to form an alliance out of climate change-induced desperation and were now riding west at the head of a vast confederacy of fellow Mun'umati tribes, united by a desire to escape their searing desert homeland where most of the last few oases known to them had dried up. The nearly all-cavalry armies of these desert nomads, including a previously unseen innovation in the form of camel-mounted lancers, proved to be quite a challenge for the infantry-and-chariot model of the 'Awali. Taking advantage of Zaba-Tutul's preoccupation with putting down yet another uprising among its northern cities at the time and aided by rebellious slaves and entire tributary tribes of their fellow Mun'umati who were defecting to their side in record numbers (indeed the 'Ilmi tribe was the first to defect, and not a man among them remained loyal to Zaba-Tutul when their chief & elders announced their decision), the Mun'umati invaders rapidly overwhelmed Zaba-Tutul's eastern defenses, wiping out the badly undermanned forces of local governors and sacking city after city: by the time Paramount King Muš-eni-bal was prepared to march south to finally deal with them, they were nearly at the gates of Ubeizan.

    Fortunately for Muš-eni-bal, he had succeeded in keeping the Enezi tribe on his side by taking their chieftain Daydan bul-Wazzah al-Dhadh's son hostage at the same time that some of the Mun'umati confederates had grown too confident from their triumphs & peeled away from the main confederate army to settle down in their conquests, allowing him to inflict a string of significant defeats on the disjointed and victory-drunk confederacy as a whole starting with the Battle of Ubeizan in 10,003 AA. The Mun'umati had speed, numbers and a barbaric ferocity compounded by the knowledge that they and their families would surely die if they were forced back into their desolate homeland, but the superior discipline and equipment of the Zaba-Tutuli allowed them to carry the day in most of the post-Ubeizan engagements of the war. Within two years, Muš-eni-bal had succeeded in expelling the invaders from all Zaba-Tutuli territory save for the western edges of the Great Sand Sea. Feeling he needed to complete his victory, recover his empire's pre-invasion borders in full and utterly break the power of the Sandmen rather than give them any breathing room to recover and menace his lands in the future, the Paramount King made the fateful decision to continue his counteroffensive into that great eastern desert on the eve of summer, 10,005 AA: the first domino in a chain of events known to modern historians simply as his Desert Campaign.

    Artist's imagining of Muš-eni-bal and his shield-bearer outside of Ubeizan after saving the city from the Mun'umati, early autumn of 10,003 AA

    Critical to the outcome of this desert campaign was a feast thrown by Muš-eni-bal a week before its official beginning, where he and his nobles celebrated their latest victory over the Mun'umati in the smaller Battle of Tuntubalit. The Paramount King's only son Ulath-eni-bal, a dissolute and spoiled gentleman, guzzled far too much rice-wine for his own good and raped the Enezi chief Daydan's daughter, having first beaten her unconscious when she tried to fight back. Muš-eni-bal was unwilling to punish his heir for this crime and instead tried to browbeat Daydan into falling back in line by reminding him that his son was still a hostage in Zaba-Tutuli hands, further enraging his only remaining Mun'umati ally; the only concession he would make was ordering Ulath-bal to stay home while he campaigned in the east, and he gave that partly out of the fear that the Enezi would try to murder the debauched young man in revenge. The Paramount King's fears turned out to be fully justified, as it didn't take long for Daydan to initiate secret communications with Harith bar Hassur al-Medya and Murrinat buth Makarib ul-Athir - the supreme leaders of the Shami and Taibani, respectively - and agree to betray his overlord to the Mun'umati league. He and his Enezi guided the Zaba-Tutuli deep into the Great Sand Sea, carefully directing Muš-eni-bal away from any known oasis and arranging for the Mun'umati to throw small easily-defeated detachments their way to maintain the illusion that he was leading them to victory, until finally the entire tribe up & deserted (pun intended) under the cover of a late-night sandstorm two months into the campaign. Muš-eni-bal woke up to find all his guides and cavalrymen had vanished, and the guards he'd assigned to keep an eye on Daydan's son had had their throats slit and their charge similarly disappeared.

    Realizing the danger they were in, the Paramount King's officers advised him to turn back, which he agreed to. But they were stranded in an unfamiliar desert with no idea of where exactly they were, no tracks with which they could retrace their steps (those had been buried by the previous night's sandstorm) and the unforgiving sun constantly beating down on them. On the flipside, the Enezi who had just abandoned them knew this desert like the backs of their hands, and were gladly giving that knowledge over to their new allies. The Zaba-Tutuli army had to wait for the sun to set again before they knew which direction was west, and exhausted their remaining water supplies - which they had failed to replenish on account of having been subtly steered away from any oasis by the Enezi for the past two months - within two days, suffering constant harassment by Mun'umati raiding parties almost every hour as they marched. Finally, the day after the Zaba-Tutuli had run out of water, the Mun'umati descended upon their exhausted and dehydrated ranks as they limped between two great sand dunes: the Shamshi emerged to block their westward progress, the Enezi and 'Ilmi came down from the north with most of the lesser Mun'umati tribes behind them, and the Taibani closed the trap from the south, all while the sun seemed to burn especially hotly above them. Retreat into the east, back the way they had just came, promised certain death for any of the 'Awali who tried it. Modern estimates peg the number of Mun'umati present at as high as 35,000, of whom 20,000 are thought to have been cavalry or dromedary fighters.

    The ensuing Battle of the Dunes was lost by the Zaba-Tutuli before it had even begun. Their soldiers and horses alike had experienced significant attrition and were thirsty, exhausted & demoralized, but even worse they had no time to reform from a marching column into actual battle ranks before mounted Mun'umati warriors began to pour down the slopes to their north and south. The Mun'umati foot followed behind their few chariots and far more numerous cavalry/camelry while their archers, slingers and javelineers hung back to rain death on the surprised and weary Zaba-Tutuli from all sides. Though more than a few of his armored officers had succumbed to sunstroke by this point, Muš-eni-bal managed to arrange about half of his chariots into a wedge and led them in a desperate effort to break through to the west - yet the Shamshi were too numerous and too ready for this gambit to work, while his own men and horses were too tired and too thirsty to effectively execute his strategem. Within a little under two hours, the once-proud host of Zaba-Tutul - estimated to have numbered around 25,000 at the onset of the desert campaign, and including up to two-and-a-half-thousand chariots manned by the cream of the 'Awali nobility - had completely disintegrated, their famous discipline having been worn down by betrayal and weariness and thirst and the scorching heat before finally collapsing in the face of the three-pronged Mun'umati assault.

    The bulk of the Zaba-Tutuli infantry, 'Awali and Qormat and mercenary alike, routed and fled east in disarray after putting up only token resistance in many cases, with several of the regiments on the extreme edges of the marching column breaking and fleeing even before the Mun'umati made contact; but, overwhelmed by thirst and the stinging arrows of Mun'umati archers, nearly all were killed by their pursuers throughout the day while the rest presumably died, alone and dehydrated, deep in the shifting sands, as evidenced by the discovery of skeletons with preserved 'Awali-style armor and weapons in the area. The chariots that weren't taken out early on were annihilated over the course of a dozen frantic and poorly-coordinated attempts at breaking out in every direction, along with the two Golga mercenaries brought along for this doomed campaign. Muš-eni-bal himself had died very early in the battle, felled by Harith bar Hassur (in what was probably a premonition of the decline of the chariot in favor of proper cavalry, the Shamshi warlord was fighting from atop a stallion when he struck down the chariot-riding Paramount King with the sun at his back), and the entirety of his heavily-armored guard had been overwhelmed and destroyed with him. Not a soul of his army would return home, save as skulls on Mun'umati spears, while the Mun'umati themselves experienced comparatively light casualties. This annihilation of Zaba-Tutul's largest field army at the Dunes all but ensured the eventual destruction of their empire and with it, the 'Awali people.

    (Of course, this battle was not recorded by Zaba-Tutuli chroniclers, who followed 'Awali tradition in not recording any defeats for propaganda purposes. As far as Zaba-Tutuli records were concerned, Muš-eni-bal and his entire army simply fell off the face of the planet one day. All information on the Battle of the Dunes was pieced back from the oral and recorded histories of Mun'umati elders, wise-women and chroniclers from the early Iron Age onward, though the complete collapse of the Zaba-Tutuli Empire soon after the battle's purported date does indicate that the Mun'umati were telling the truth about it)

    Mun'umati warriors swarming the 'Awali chariots as they attempt to break out of the Dunes, summer of 10,005 AA

    Ulath-eni-bal formally succeeded his father as Paramount King of Zaba-Tutul and its dominions after word had reached the capital of what had transpired in the Dunes, but by then the Mun'umati had retaken almost all of the territories previously recovered by Muš-eni-bal and were gearing up to march on Ubeizan for a second time. Worse still, Yannu's priesthood found their powers suddenly greatly diminished after the disaster at the Dunes; a sign that either Yannu had abandoned her people in their hour of greatest need, or she had been possessing the late Muš-eni-bal and either died with him or was gravely weakened by his death. Either way, this meant that the 'Awali could no longer count on easily producing stashes of high-quality equipment to outfit any replacement recruits they trained, ensuring that any new army they fielded would be less effective than the one lost at the Dunes.

    As Ulath-eni-bal was hardly the picture of a capable or even interested war leader himself, the task of rebuilding the 'Awali army and stopping the invaders fell to his uncle Marad-ani-nud, who was the true power behind the throne on account of his nephew's preference to waste time in debauched parties over actually ruling. Marad-ani-nud achieved a few small victories and one major triumph, routing the Mun'umati vanguard and avenging his brother by slaying Daydan of the Enezi in the Battle of Chunanibi in early 10,006 AA, but the Sandmen just kept on coming. Even Chunanibi only won the Zaba-Tutuli Empire a year's respite before Harith & Murrinat returned to decisively defeat Marad-ani-nud at the Battle of Hawarnibi, and soon after that Ubeizan - the key to the western 'Awali Riverlands - fell. Further worsening matters, in Marad-ani-nud's absence a faction of Ulath-eni-bal's courtiers convinced him that his uncle was plotting a coup against him and cared more about seizing the throne than protecting the empire, resulting in the Paramount King putting a hit out on his own uncle. Thus did the 'Awali lost their best remaining commander to a bout of petty palace intrigue at the worst possible time, with the Mun'umati exultant and on the verge of overrunning the rest of the 'Awali Riverlands.

    And overrun the Riverlands, they did! Marad-ani-nud's army, with which he had been planning to counterattack before an assassin relieved him of his head at his own nephew's orders, promptly disintegrated with the loss of their leader; the majority of the host simply went home with their weapons, but some nobles and common soldiers alike were so disgusted at Ulath-eni-bal's treachery and the corruption within the royal court that they actually defected to the Mun'umati. Indeed, entire cities laid down their arms and threw open their gates to the Mun'umati advance rather than fight, both out of disillusionment with their overlord's evident inability to defend them or delegate to those who were willing to defend them and out of fear that they could not stop the Mun'umati themselves. More armies were levied out of the 'Awali populace that had remained loyal, but demoralized, hastily trained and poorly-led by the newly dominant court faction's toadies, these forces were but a shadow of the army that Muš-eni-bal had led to the Dunes. One by one, these patchwork collections of feuding nobles, embittered veterans and ill-prepared commoners were crushed by the ever-advancing Mun'umati until their army was at the gates of Zaba-Tutul itself, which they began to besiege to in the fall of 10,011 AA. The desperation of the 'Awali cities caught in the path of the Sandmen must have been palpable, as evidenced by this recovered letter from the governor of Andunanit, a city that fell to their advance in 10,009 AA:
    Quote Originally Posted by Zebbab, Governor of Andunanit
    My lord and my god, Yannu-made-flesh,

    The sand-skinned and salt-blooded barbarians from the east have come. When Ahayen-Pulu went forth to confront them, he was crushed and his skull mounted on a stake along with those of his officers. The barbarians did evil things in the countryside: they murdered old men and young boys alike with impunity, tore infants from their mothers' arms, built a ziggurat out of the heads of priests and defiled priestesses, and [illegible] and furthermore they drove thousands behind Andunanit's walls, far more than we could hope to feed. I have directed the men to break out three times and three times, but [illegible]

    Today the worst has come to pass, despite our prayers and [illegible, probably 'sacrifices']. The [illegible] scaled a section of the wall we lacked the strength to sufficiently garrison before the dawn, when nobody was able to spot them. They have killed the sentries and thrown Andunanit's gates open. They are storming through the streets on their filthy horses and camels, cutting down warrior and citizen alike with no mercy, and some of them have made it here. I can hear them downstairs and they sound like rabid dogs the size of a mighty thunder-beast, shouting and fighting with fury. I write this to you now not to beg you for your aid, for we are lost, but to beseech you to send reinforcements to Bensi and Inabi before t

    *Note: Bensi and Inabi were the 'Awali towns nearest to Andunanit. Both sites exhibit signs of having been sacked soon after Andunanit. As this increasingly frantically-written letter was unfinished and partly stained with dried blood, modern historians can safely assume that Mun'umati warriors broke into the solar where the tablet was discovered and killed or wounded Governor Zebbab before he could complete it.
    In early 10,012 AA Ulath-eni-bal sobered up enough to attempt to negotiate a peace treaty, and managed to buy off the Mun'umati with the total cession of the eastern & northern Riverlands to the tribes making up the Mun'umati alliance; a quantity of gold and silver so vast he had to strip his ziggurat's temple's decorations to contribute to it; and a thousand of the fairest boys and girls of good birth in Zaba-Tutul. For three years these terms sated the Mun'umati and gave Zaba-Tutul a respite, but tensions within the Sandman coalition resulted in its breakdown and the Taibani breaching the peace to conquer what was left of the 'Awali nation - an eventuality for which the typically decadent Ulath-eni-bal had failed to undertake adequate preparations. The Taibani and their allies annihilated a smaller 'Awali army thrown out to stop them in the Battle of Abermammu, laid siege to Zaba-Tutul near the end of summer and took the city after discovering a negligently-unlocked gate in the winter, all before any reinforcements from the remaining southern provinces of the empire could reach them. Ulath-eni-bal was killed along with all his sons, brothers and officials, his capital was plundered and razed to the ground, and those among his people who survived the sack (including most of his sister-wives, concubines and daughters) were carried off in chains. Without Zaba-Tutul, the remaining 'Awali cities of the western and southern Riverlands were left leaderless and adrift in the face of continued Mun'umati aggression. Thus did the Zaba-Tutuli Empire come to a miserable end shortly before the end of 10,015 AA, marking the dawn of a fundamental shift in the demographic makeup and geopolitics of the eastern Muataric Sea in the process.

    Artist's imagining of Zaba-Tutuli soldiers preparing for their last stand at Abermammu, c. 10,015 AA

    Zaba-Tutul immediately before the great Mun'umati invasion, c. 10,000 AA


    Red - Zaba-Tutul
    Brown lines - Loosely controlled territories (inhabited by tributary Mun'umati chiefs, few if any permanent settlements)
    Dark circles - Territories frequently contested with regional rivals (incl. the Allawauric kingdoms and Saurii leagues)

    A gasp from beyond the grave: Chelanibibi
    Despite the collapse of the Zaba-Tutuli Empire in 10,015 AA, some remnants of the power that they once were lingered for a while longer like angry shades. One of the most mysterious of these remnants (on account of there being so few records of anything, from daily life to taxes, written by their hands surviving the passage of time) was the so-called 'Realm of Chelanibibi', situated in the Spring of Three Rivers on the former empire's old northeastern borders with the Suuvulk grasslands and centered on the eponymous market-town of Chelanibibi in the shadow of a mountain the 'Awali called Nunirai. This area was secured by Zaba-Tutuli armies in the late 8000s as one of their last conquests, and owing to the greater fertility of this 'mini-riverland' relative to the endless stretches of desert and grassland making up the rest of the 'Awali Empire's eastern frontier, it attracted a not-insignificant number of settlers from the overpopulated cities of the hinterland who joined the garrison in making Chelanibibi and its environs a more properly 'Awali land. Of course, this meant that the Suuvulk who already lived there had to be forced away from the choice lands at the banks of the rivers the 'Awali called the Three Little Sisters: Menarir, Chelarir and Ilunirir from north to south, respectively. These natives were either punted out into the eastern grasslands entirely, or allowed to linger within the borders of the Chelanibibi Governorate under the same terms as their kin and the Mun'umati nomads also living in nominal Zaba-Tutuli territory - they could seasonally water their herds at the rivers now surrounded by 'Awali farms in return for a tribute of animal products and slaves.

    Throughout the 8000s and 9000s, the 'Awali fiefdom centered on Chelanibibi skated by mostly unharmed by the disasters wreaking the rest of the empire. The people there had learned very early on to grow wheat over rice in the cooler, drier climate of the region, and so while the rest of the empire was increasingly wracked with food shortages and the resulting riots, Chelanibibi remained a net food exporter. The mountains overlooking the 'Awali settlements here were a good source of coal, which was the locals' primary way of keeping warm on account of a lack of trees and, therefore, firewood in the grassland. The spears and chariots of the garrison & newly established local nobility kept the Suuvulk in line or at bay, depending on whether they were being tolerated within the governorate's borders or lived outside of said borders respectively. And the Three Little Sisters, besides being excellent conduits for transportation and trade when they weren't frozen over, also functioned as natural defenses to reinforce the walls and towers built to protect the 'Awali towns dotting their banks.

    Artist's imagining of a Chelanibibite riverside farming complex

    After the 9000s, as anyone who has cracked open a history book today knows, the Zaba-Tutuli Empire's lengthy fall finally concluded with it slamming into the ground and splattering, courtesy of a massive Mun'umati migratory invasion from the Great Sand Sea. After some early successes in holding back the tide, the Zaba-Tutuli army was lured into a trap and annihilated in the searing sands of the western desert, followed by the Mun'umati overrunning the eastern half of their empire and then gobbling the rest up a few years later after a farcical peace treaty. The Battle of the Dunes isolated Chelanibibi from the rest of the 'Awali, not that this was noticeable at first - the province's remoteness and the disasters plaguing the empire for the past millennium had allowed its governors to exercise significant independent authority and even make their position de-facto hereditary. Still, the first post-Dunes Governor of Chelanibibi, Tizip, was apparently a man of enough honor to remain nominally loyal to the distant and feckless Paramount King Ulath-eni-bal. It was not until 10,020 AA, when news that Zaba-Tutul itself had fallen and the empire was finally undone in full reached their little corner of the planet (five years after the fact), that Tizip and the Chelanibibites declared themselves an independent kingdom.

    The Kingdom of Chelanibibi immediately after its proclamation by Tizip, c. 10,015 AA


    Red - Chelanibibi

    For about sixty years this rump Kingdom of Chelanibibi held on to existence for dear life, battling increasingly aggressive and numerous Suuvulk migrants to the east (driven in part by the migration of the even more barbaric Yahg) and emboldened Mun'umati forces to the south and west. The abundance of 'Awali artifacts found to have dated to the early 10,000s in this area and references to 'the First Men living beyond the mountains' in the much scarcer Mun'umati records of this time period indicate that they were a staunchly traditional kingdom which did their damndest to preserve 'Awali culture, and beyond doubt saw themselves as a direct continuation of the civilization of the First. From what can be gathered of the ruins in and around its purported site, the city of Chelanibibi would have looked like a fossil of better times for the 'Awali: that's to say, a riverside walled city of reed and mud-brick houses centered around a palatial ziggurat like virtually every other major settlement in the empire's halcyon days. There is no evidence to suggest that their society was reformed to be any less hierarchical or slave-reliant than that of the Zaba-Tutuli Empire they grew out of, either. The depiction of Chelanibibite warriors on recovered pottery fragments and reliefs also indicate that they fought in exactly the same way and with the exact same equipment as their predecessors. They did appear to alternate between hostile and peaceful - though mostly hostile - relations with the new Mun'umati kingdoms emerging in the Riverlands, from engaging in skirmishes with their forces in the mountains to trading wheat, millet and fruits with them so as to keep Chelanibibi's economy afloat.

    Rare preserved relief depicting Chelanibibite warriors marching off to battle (note the equipment, identical to 'Awali battledress of the Zaba-Tutuli period)

    Around 10,075 AA, the Kingdom of Chelanibibi faded into the mists of history. Their precise fate was not exactly a mystery that couldn't be solved by anyone with enough brain cells to put two-and-two together - after 10,075, all mention of the 'Awali there disappeared from history and the Three Little Sisters were re-inhabited by Suuvulk nomads - but for millennia the only actual, physical evidence that to support this conclusion existed were two brief missives from a frontier commander to his overlord, written in Shamshic cuneiform:
    Quote Originally Posted by Munashar bar Abassur al-Ra'jul, Shamshic military commander
    My lord and my sun,

    May Al-Hazi'-Shams, the unconquered sun, impart one thousand and one thousand blessings unto thee, His shadow on earth, and to we, His and thine humble people. All has been done as thou commanded: one thousand archers, five hundred spearmen and two hundred riders of asses and horses arrived here from Qalat al-Bomal this morning to reinforce our existing outposts in the mountains against the troublesome First Men who live beyond the mountains. If Al-Hakm-Shams, the mighty and judging sun, wills it, we will repulse those infidel curs when they try to retake their homeland which the merciful Sun has already seen fit to give us. Scouts and spies report that they have as many as six thousand warriors under arms in that ramshackle collection of huts and towers they call Chelanibibi, though I am further told that they can afford to pull together such a number if they strip away their eastern defenses against the Giant-Friends of the steppe and our cousins who remained behind in the Great Sand Sea. I am fully confident of our success, Luminous King, for even setting aside the roughness of these mountains and the courage of thine stalwarts and the preparations we have undertaken in these holdfasts, no force under heaven can undo the judgments of our Lord-in-the-Sky.

    Thine humble servant who is illuminated by thine light,
    Munashar bar Abassur al-Ra'jul
    Quote Originally Posted by The same guy, nine months after the apparent fall of Chelanibibi
    My lord and my sun,

    May Al-Lahad-Shams, the one and indivisible Sun, impart one thousand and one thousand blessings unto thee, His shadow on earth, and to we, His and thine humble people. I write in this missive only the best of news: there is no longer need for any of us to be in the slightest bit concerned about the First Men who lived beyond the mountains. It is my humblest recommendation that thou recall the reinforcements from Qalat al-Bomal and Qabat al-Kharat, for thou wilst certainly find them to be of more use in the war with the treacherous Taibani madmen to the south than in these quiet mountain passes. I am quite confident that the standing garrisons here will be sufficient to deal with thine new neighbors, lest they attempt to attack thine lands.

    Thine humble servant who is illuminated by thine light,
    Munashar bar Abassur al-Ra'jul
    It was not until recently that archaeologists uncovered a few fragmentary ruins of Chelanibibi's ziggurat (all bearing marks of manmade damage), mass graves and troves of damaged 'Awali military equipment that the fate of Chelanibibi could be conclusively determined. It appears that in the eleventh year of the reign of Meš-uni-qip, Tizip's grandson, a massive wave of Suuvulk emerged out of the blue to obliterate the rump kingdom with thunderclap suddenness, and that Chelanibibi fell so quickly that not only was there no time for its inhabitants to record their sentiments or defensive efforts as there was with the Riverlander 'Awali, but its Shamshi neighbor to the west - which had been preparing to fight a war with the Chelanibibites - was completely unaware of what had happened until almost a full year after the fact. What is now clear is that Chelanibibi was violently razed and that numerous 'Awali were killed regardless of sex, age or fighting ability, and most of the records they did have were destroyed with their capital (which would explain why almost everything modern historians know of Chelanibibi was written by their contemporary neighbors or said neighbors' descendants, as opposed to the Chelanibibites themselves). It is considered unlikely that many, or even any, of the Chelanibibites survived, including the royal family. Ultimately, even this last fragment of the once-glorious and expansive 'Awali civilization was snuffed out in the chaotic and violent upheaval that marked the 'dark age' transition between the Bronze and Iron Ages.

    Artist's recreation of Chelanibibi before its fall, c. 10,070 AA
    Last edited by Barry Goldwater; December 02, 2018 at 09:45 PM.

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