> The glorious Carmanian Empire ... maintained a cultural unity (yes, I am
> aware of the shift between lion and bull emperors) over the shift from 2nd
> to 3rd Age. How does your average Pelandan (living too far from Dragon
> Pass to have lost more than an emperor and say a couple of relatives in
> the Dragonkill, nothing worse than a failed campaign against say the Pentan
> horselords or Rinliddi) define the end of the 2nd Age, or your average
> Pentan (ditto)? Are these regions aware that the Ages have shifted around
> 1043/1050/1120? (They will have little difficulty to accept a shift of Ages
> in 1247, though...)
I can't speak for the Pentans. But the end of the Second Age and beginning of the Third was a terrible time for the Carmanian Empire. I don't have my books, notes and timelines to hand, but I'll set out some of the key events below.
In the mid tenth century, the Three Brothers Divided the World. These were sons of the Dara Happan Emperor Sarenesh and the heiress of the Carmanian Empire. The oldest son became Dara Happan Emperor, the second Shah of Carmania, and the youngest High King of Saird.
The Carmanians took this as proof that the mandate of Empire had passed to them: after all, was not Yelm the second of the Three Sons of Aether? Like Dayzatar, the Dara Happan Empire appeared lofty and aloof, while the burdens and rewards of rule came to the ruler of Carmania, who took the new title of Padishah (Emperor) of Peloria for the first time. (And the barbarians of Saird struggled in the dirt and did all the real work: Lodril's lot).
This was the high point of the Golden Lion Empire of Carmania. The ensuing period is known as the Three Generations of Peace: although Carmanians, Dara Happans and the men of Saird warred together against the EWF, there was peace between these three great powers of Peloria: at first genuine, later wary and conditional.
(A famous Carmanian poem of this period is called "Honeyed Words," referring to the way the ambassadors of Dara Happa spoke to the Carmanian Padishah throughout the period: at first in words which were like pure, clean honey, or the intoxicating mead that raises men's spirits for battle, then like the honey doctors use to sweeten a bitter medicine, the honey a cheapskate host uses to disguise his rotting meat, and finally the honey used to disguise the taste of poison. But I digress).
Sadly, when the EWF mysteriously collapsed (1042 ST: the Dragonewt Betrayal), this Pelorian peace came to an end. Uprisings along the border states between Carmania and Dara Happa invited interventions from both sides, and tension escalated. The last half of the eleventh century is known as the Three Generations of War. Eventually, Shah Haran the Great fought a heroic ten-year campaign against Alkoth (documented in the epic poem "The Alkothiad"), which ended only when the two enemies united against the remnants of the EWF in Dragon Pass. They assembled their united forces as the True Golden Horde, and marched to wreak genocide upon the races of Dragonkind...
After the Dragonkill, the Carmanian Empire was a hollow shell. So was their most powerful neighbour, perhaps fortunately. The noble Carmanian houses had been all but decapitated by the loss of their military class and most militant leaders; a speedy decline into decadent living followed among the nobles who survived "back home".
The "shift" (Joerg's phrase) between Lion and Bull emperors was in fact the forcible imposition of a military aristocracy of barbarian Bull-worshipping types on a formerly civilised and cultured empire: comparable to the "shift" when the Dara Happan Empire was occupied by barbarians at the end of the First Age, rather than a mere dynastic change.
The Bull Shahs attempted to steal legitimacy by forcibly taking Carmanian wives: they do NOT represent cultural continuity or unity, and they plunged the Carmanian Empire into an unending war of conquest against Dara Happa and neighbouring states: this was the background of the Seven Mothers' conspiracy, which was born from oppression and unrest. They built pyramids of heads, massacred indiscriminately, and gloried in the terror that they wrought: their inscriptions are stomach-turning in their callous brutality.
I think moving from Persian-style tolerance and splendour to Assyrian-style militarism and terror marks quite an impressive transition between the Ages. The Carmanians themselves were horrendously wounded by the Dragonkill; the Pelandans suffered when those (comparatively benign) overlords were replaced by barbarian usurpers. But the Red Moon overshadows (or enlightens) all of that.
The late Second Age and early Third were NOT a good time to be living in Peloria, whoever you were. Only the coming of the Lunar Jihad offered real hope of progress to the peoples of the world.
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