Kings crowned in darkness: The Inissi
We only begin to get a clear picture of life on Hyperaustralis starting around 10,400 AA, by which point at least one major power had emerged on the fractious continent in the form of the Inissi. They were a tribe of the northern coast, who first gained notoriety when they destroyed the weakened Himadassi before them around 10,300 AA, but it had taken them a century since that great feat to found anything resembling a real empire. In hindsight, historians argue, there was little reason to not predict that the Inissi would found the first true Hyperaustralic empire: they were by far the most 'civilized' of the known Hyperaustralian tribes after the Great Cooling, having independently developed an abugida writing system and written on simple clay tablets with styluses of sharpened flint; the curious replacement of wood as their main fire-lighting material with coal, which they mined from the mountains overlooking their homeland, and peat gathered from bogs on the rare occasion that they weren't frozen over; the establishment of an actual permanent capital, a first in Hyperaustralian history, Akaris, which also doubled as a core of their palace economy - in the style of the High Allawauric civilization, the Inissi of outlying villages would bring their crops and other goods to Akaris and amass it all into great piles, from which their witch-king redistributed to the individual families and villages as much or as little as they needed; and the stratification of their society beyond tribal lines.

Of course, there was much to criticize the Inissi for as well, at least from a modern perspective. It's true that they were not crazed cannibals, as the Gyarl were, nor were they psychotically bloodthirsty to the exclusion of all reason like the Himadassi; theirs was a more insidious evil, for they were determined empire-builders, with all the negative connotations that that characterization brings. Inissi warbands and later, armies fought with greater organization than any of their contemporary Hyperaustralic rivals, but they also didn't stop at destroying their enemies; no, the Inissi also had to burn down their foes' camps, and take the women and children of said enemies as slaves. This was standard fare in much, if not all, of the ancient world, but what set the Inissi apart was the sheer scale of their slaving operations - by 10,500 AA when there could be no doubt to a modern historian that their empire had been established, they had a vast underclass of chattel slaves tasked with everything from mining coal for their hearths and furnaces, to building their houses from fire-baked clay bricks and animal hides, to gathering kadvish and the tulka & ibak roots for sustenance, to warming their masters' beds: the only things they weren't trusted with were 1) fighting and 2) forging the Inissi's weapons, both of which were lessons their masters had learned from the Hamidassi.

The Inissi kingdom, c. 10,500 AA

Inissi language

Modern speech Proto-Hyperaustralic Inissi
Man, men Gach, gach'e Gak, gaksi
Woman, women S'gach, s'gachei Sagak, sagakai
Conquest Andum Hindaum
Sword Habad Sa-hapat
Dog Hubur Obor

Inissi society
At the pinnacle of Inissi society sat their Witch-King, who in the Hyperaustralic tradition was both a sort of great shaman and a warlord. Inissi Witch-Kings did not form dynasties and pass their throne to blood relations, nor were they elected by the nobility; rather they were chosen for their magical ability by and from the ranks of the kingdom's shamans (yanali, singl. yanal), men whose prophecies came true and who could reputably commune with the dead. Their duties did not only include communing with the spirits of nature and their ancestors for guidance and leading Inissi armies into battle, but also serving as the kingdom's supreme landowner. Among the sedentary Hyperaustralic tribes, all land was considered the communal property of the tribe; and among the more 'advanced' and 'civilized' Inissi, all of the kingdom's land was considered to still belong to the tribe in the sense that the Witch-King of Akaris is the Inissi. He essentially leased most of his lands (ie. the entire kingdom) to the yuthisi aristocracy as fiefdoms, but the commoners living on those fiefdoms still owed allegiance to both him and their local overlords. To use a modern analogy: if the Inissi kingdom were an apartment, the Witch-King was the landlord, the yuthisi were his security guards, and the peasants were tenants. Twice a year, every subject of the Witch-King had to make a journey to the stone palace of Akaris with all the goods they could carry, which the Witch-King would then redistribute according to their needs.

Recreated quill headdress and laughing lion skull-mas, as an Inissi Witch-King would've worn c. 10,500 AA

One thing that really set the Inissi apart from their less organized fellow Hyperaustralians was the emergence of a hereditary aristocratic class from their witch-kings' trusted inner circle of battle-companions were derived, and the consolidation of their barbaric camps into towns with simple earthen walls was conducted with governors chosen from this new aristocracy. Called the yuthisi or 'braves' (singl. yuth), these Inissi nobles were assigned fiefs to govern by the witch-king in Akaris, and were consequently responsible for both the administration and military defense - in other words, raising and maintaining private armies of local volunteers and mercenaries who could both extort taxes (as in, driving the villagers under their thumb to Akaris at the start of every season to pile up their belongings for redistribution) out of the population and fight outside threats on their own dime - of their new territories. The yuthisi also appointed all village chiefs in the towns under their jurisdiction, and dealt with legal disputes that said village chiefs were unable to resolve (though if a case had to come all the way up to the local yuth, it was likely it'd end with someone getting tortured to death). Initially most yuthisi lived in & ruled from caves in the mountains, but as the Inissi borders expanded more and more had to leave their subterranean holdfasts behind and build new forts of stone and earth on strategic hills or near rivers, closer to their subjects.

A yuth as he would've appeared in what passed for Inissi court attire: face paint, a token to ward off evil spirits and a wolf pelt headdress

Below the yuthisi there existed an informal 'middle class', chiefly artisans such as blacksmiths and wood-craftsmen. These were the people who actually lived inside towns, sheltered from outside dangers by their walls of earth and stone, and sold the goods they made for a living instead of barely subsisting off the land. There were few traders among the free Inissi: while there were naturally some peddlers who wandered from village to village to hawk their goods, and fixed merchants who bought and sold goods at a town's marketplace, the lack of any large-scale infrastructure beyond simple dirt roads, the frequent danger of bandits/greedy soldiers and yuthisi/the incursions of a rival tribe on said roads, and a cultural bias against merchants and traders in general as people who simply moved around the goods made by others & contributed nothing to the kingdom's martial security ensured that no great commercial enterprises came into being in Inissi lands, at least not in the early Iron Age.

Farmers were reckoned below the artisan class, and were entirely what a modern observer might recognize as proto-serfs: they had some legal rights (they couldn't be flogged or executed for no reason like slaves, for example) but were legally just tenants who didn't even own the land they lived & worked on, and since very few legal cases made it above the level of their local village chief (and fewer still get as far as the yuth), they had little chance of ever achieving justice against anyone ranked higher on the Hyperaustralic social totem pole than a fellow peasant. All were subsistence farmers, cultivating crops of various roots and kadvish during the brief spring & autumn, and praying to whatever gods will listen that their lord's men don't take more than what they themselves need to survive when the time comes; during winter, in case they didn't have enough crops stockpiled to last until spring, entire peasant families would brave the bitter cold, knee or waist-deep snow and icy pitfalls to hunt and forage for survival. Unlike say, the Saor or Venskár, among the Inissi and the Hyperaustralians in general there was virtually no tradition of a free peasantry, where common families personally owned the parcel of land on which they built their homes and grew their crops; all of the Inissi's own farmers were proto-serfs, as mentioned earlier.

Inissi peasants hurriedly plant their crops while the continent's still enjoying its extremely short spring season, c. 10,450 AA

Finally, there were the slaves, who were considered chattel and heavily outnumbered all sectors of Inissi society, even the peasants who were treated only marginally better than they were. These slaves were treated extremely harshly to instill fear and discipline in them, with failure in even the smallest tasks being quickly punished with a beating for the first offense and a flogging or outright execution for the second (a third always merited instant death). The strongest and most rebellious slaves were also routinely publicly tortured (not killed, that would be a waste of good manpower) in an attempt to both break their will and intimidate other slaves into staying in line; this torture was rarely too crippling, indeed it was often just a flogging session that would leave scars but otherwise rendered the slaves still able to work, but in more extreme cases - normally attempted escapees - the targeted slaves could also be hamstrung in one foot to ensure they would never be able to run away. And yet they were still better-treated than the Dzlieri slaves under the Inissi yoke, who on top of being used as harshly as the human slaves, were also considered a fitting dinner for their masters in a pinch. This was technically not really cannibalism, since the Dzlieri were a separate species from humanity and the Inissi don't seem to have ever eaten fellow humans (at least not as a matter of official policy like the Gyarl), but it sure wasn't seen that way by everyone surrounding the Inissi domains back in their day.

Owing to Hyperaustralis' extremely cold weather and ensuing lack of trees, the Inissi relied on coal, peat and lignite for heating. Slaves and servants tended to furnaces and hearths where these materials were burned to provide the building they were a part of with warmth and light, and it was said that the crude roads of Akaris were illuminated by braziers filled with red-hot coals. Carbon monoxide poisoning from the burning coal must have been quite the issue for the Inissi, but as far as they were concerned, anyone who dropped dead from standing in an improperly-ventilated room with a brazier or furnace full of coal for too long must've just incurred the displeasure of the gods for some reason - people died all the time in those days after all, and it wasn't like they had access to modern science for answers.

Inissi religion
The Inissi practiced a polytheistic religion known to modern historians as the 'Red Pantheon', a Mainstream faith of Statist soul and an Ancestral mentality. The eponymous Red Pantheon was comprised of numerous gods and goddesses, almost all of which were of a violent nature and demanded either human or animal sacrifices, and was led by a god of warriors & kings called the Dread King. None of them, the Dread King included, created the universe; rather they were the children of those who did just that, nameless and apparently indescribable 'Elder Gods' of whom nothing is known beyond that the Inissi believed they 1) actually created the world and all which dwells in it & 2) were overthrown and sealed away in the deepest recesses of the heavens by the Red Pantheon. No altruistic, or even vengeful, motives were attributed to the Red Pantheon for this celestial coup: in the Inissi's own telling, they overthrew their parents out of lust for power and the feeling that the Elder Gods weren't giving them their due by making them co-rulers of the universe, and since they actually succeeded, there was nothing wrong with what they did per the Darwinistic attitudes of the Hyperaustralians in general.

Universally depicted in Inissi art as a gargantuan, extremely muscular man with no eyes or skin that wore a crown of bones and carried an iron spear or sword, the Dread King was apparently prayed to to ensure that the Witch-Kings of Akaris and their armies would always have the strength to do what must be done to preserve the Inissi kingdom, no matter what it might be, and to fill the hearts of their enemies with (appropriately) dread. Though he was routinely honored with the ritual sacrifices of specially-marked bulls (whose throats were slit over an altar, upon which they'd be roasted and afterwards communally eaten by the faithful) and prisoners (tied to stakes, flayed alive and then finished off by being burnt to death while shamans praised the Dread King and implored him to accept their sacrifice), the Witch-Kings were thought to be the only men on the earth who had a direct line of communication with this horrifying deity; this was the main reason they were not supposed to be challenged by their subordinates, ever - doing so would undoubtedly anger the Dread King, and the Witch-King just so happened to be the only person around who can call on him to smite the fool who dared question their judgment. The unearthed skulls of several Inissi Witch-Kings have also been found to bear the Dread King's mark, a black triskelion painted on red; archaeologists have yet to determine why this was done, as most Witch-Kings' skulls do not bear the mark.

Mark of the Dread King

The Dread King was wedded to - ironically - the Red Pantheon's goddess of fertility, harmony, the sun and nature, Ina-Tana. Depicted as a dusky-skinned woman with black hair whose features were mostly hidden away under the many layers of robes and shawls (all varying shades of green) wrapped around her body, it was said that her touch created life even where her husband had gone on his murderous rampages, and she was prayed to for good harvests, shelter from the elements, and successful childbirth. Most of her festivals didn't involve bloodshed, a rarity for the Red Pantheon's deities, save one: on solar eclipses, a lamb is sacrificed, roasted and eaten on her altars while the shaman calls on her to lift away the 'Sun's veil'. Her symbol, the six-leaf clover, was said to be painted onto the palms of those shamans who dedicated themselves to her worship (and honored her by engaging in ritualistic orgies with their acolytes), though for obvious reasons these markings didn't survive the same way her husband's did.

A six-leaf clover, the mark of Ina-Tana

Besides the litany of lesser gods and goddesses - brothers, sisters, and children of the Dread King and Ina-Tana - who comprised the Red Pantheon and whose names have mostly been lost to history, the Inissi also revered demigods fathered by the Red Pantheon's male elements and human women. Even the Dread King, whose wife was the most beautiful of the Pantheon and despite his utterly monstrous appearance, was apparently not above engaging in extramarital relations with women who caught his eye (or so one might say, if only he had eyes). With their half-divine strength, these demigods performed great feats to enter the pages of Inissi myth: among others, Iratul son of Armatha broke an ice shelf with his hammer to secure the treasure within for his village, the Dread King's son Hinbali wrestled a feathered dragon and finally killed it by tearing its head apart at the jaws just to demonstrate his strength, and another son of the Dread King named Nashalul told jokes so funny, so awful or both that they made the heads of any who listened explode. Every Inissi Witch-King claimed descent from one of the Dread King's half-human sons, usually retroactively after ascending to the throne (the shamans were prone to executing those who falsely claimed divine heritage and couldn't prove it in a trial by ordeal for blasphemy), as further justification as to why they should never be questioned by their underlings. Said shamans existed as lesser conduits to the gods, often claiming descent from lesser demigod heroes like the yuthisi did in the process, and appear to have heavily stressed the need to remain loyal to the Witch-Kings in exchange for their privileged position in society - they got as much food and luxury items redistributed into their hands as the nobles did, and it is known that anyone who struck a shaman was to be killed on the spot.

The seat of the Red Pantheon's gods was thought to be the 'Great White', a massive glacier - quite probably the largest in the world, measuring at approximately 70 miles wide, 285 miles long and 9,000 ft deep - sitting at the core of Hyperaustralis. None who feared the gods dared approach it, for the Dread King did not appreciate visitors and would smite anyone foolish enough to trespass on his snowy 'lawn', or so it was said. The discovery of more than a few skeletons, mostly undamaged by human hands and dating back to entirely different years during the early Iron Age, on the way from Inissi lands to the Great White indicate that some individuals and small parties - adventurers, shamans, even just teenagers on dares - did attempt the long trek to their gods' homes, and died for it: not because the Dread King smote them (at least, not directly...), but simply due to exposure, starvation and the occasional attack by brigands, warriors of rival tribes and wild animals, up to and including Laughing Lions.

A mere fraction of the 'Great White'

Inissi military
A cursory examination of the Inissi war machine demonstrates why it was the most successful of all the early Hyperaustralic armies: it was more numerous and better organized than those of all their neighbors. The yuthisi aristocracy naturally formed the best fighting contingent of the Inissi armies, and besides being heavily armored in a 'battledress' of iron sheets bound together and wearing helmets beneath their hoods, also had their own twist on the chariotry of the Muataric nations - war sleds, pulled by teams of up to a dozen huskies, on which the yuth fought with a barbed iron lance and the assistance of one or two crewmen; a driver, and (if he's rich enough to afford an especially large sled) an additional archer. These war-sleds functioned like Antarctic chariots, tearing across the snow-covered and icy landscape with frightening speed to plow into an opposing warband's ranks where the dogs would bite at men's legs and stomachs, the yuth struck out with his spear and (if present) his retainer felled other foes from a distance with a bow. As it was not unheard of for the sled to be immobilized in battle, usually by way of the sled-dogs getting killed or too distracted with combat to keep moving, the crew were to get off the sled and engage in close quarters with an iron hacking sword and a hide-covered pinewood shield.

Model of an Inissi yuth with his armor, dated to 10,420 AA

The yuthisi however fought largely independently of the Witch-King's command, operating almost as lone wolves on the battlefield who'd often charge ahead of his army and maneuver & withdraw as they pleased. No, the true distinctive strength of the Inissi was in the Witch-Kings' standing army, the irmelezi (literally 'armed men'). An all-volunteer sustained by the treasury of goods & food that their master kept after redistributing the rest to his people, the irmelezi were well-armored and armed by the standards of their day: all irmelezi wore iron chainmail shirts (the oldest of these dated to 10,452 AA, nearly half a century older than the oldest known Hyperborean mail hauberk; presumably, the better-organized nature of the Inissi empire and the even more dire state of affairs on the Hyperaustralic continent forced them to develop it more quickly than the Hyperboreans) and simple, round iron helmets between their outer hide coats and underclothes, and fought with iron spears, axes or swords in conjunction with hide-covered shields onto which the Dread King's mark had been painted, all of which were supplied at royal expense. They appear to have been the elite heavy infantry of the Inissi, crossing wintry fields atop ashwood snowshoes with rawhide laces to firmly secure their feet, and to have never exceeded around two thousand men in number - organized into regiments called 'hundreds', each directed by a captain directly appointed by the Witch-King and dismissed at his pleasure - at the best of times, though in the tradition of grandiose ancient storytelling, Inissi chroniclers would routinely boast their Witch-King had hundreds of thousands of these elite warriors at his beck & call to impress their people and intimidate enemies.

An Inissi irmelez, c. 10,500 AA

The majority of an Inissi war-host would, as is to be expected of an Iron Age civilization, be comprised of men from the lower orders of society: free farmers, craftsmen and slaves alike pressed into service, more frequently by their local yuthisi than the Witch-King of Akaris himself (he had his irmelezi to count on). Dismissively referred to as heluthili, or 'centipedes', these common soldiers would have fought unarmored and from a distance as archers and skirmishers with bows, slings and javelins (often simply light harpoons) while their betters got up close and personal with the foe. Like many other ancient levies, it is difficult to imagine that they'd be of any use in close combat beyond adding the sheer weight of their numbers to the fight; as warlike as the Hyperaustralians could be, they were still human, and presumably untrained humans thrust into a warzone with nothing but hunting bows and knives still have families to tend to, fields to work and a million other things they'd like to be doing besides dying on the battlefield for a Witch-King they both fear and have likely never seen.

A Heluthil archer and his dog, c. 10,390 AA

The Inissi, like less civilized Hyperaustralians, don't seem to have used horses for combat or transportation very often: though once often used to pull chariots manned by their Witch-Kings and nobles before the Great Cooling, after the continent froze over horses became extremely rare and were only trotted out to pull the Witch-King's ceremonial chariot during the brief summers. Instead, the most mobile elements of their army and society were those who moved atop dogsleds, while others had to march on foot using snowshoes. Witch-Kings had the luxury of entering battle in ornate palanquins carried by slaves, but once it was time to actually fight, they appear to have fought like the yuthisi on large iron-framed dogsleds pulled by as many as twenty dogs, as did their bodyguards.