(Nick watches silly games where twelve men chase one ball, and the Germans win, to quote Gary Lineker (sp?). Actually, my team lost... last EC I spent the finals day cheering on the Danish Dynamite (in Norway). Now I will have to stand another evening with everybody else gabbing about that silly game.)
Anyway, the bits on Carmanian past are appreciated, since my official sources lack severely in detail information on that period.
>> 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.
Excuse me, but so what? There was a civil war between a formerly suppressed provincial people (Tawars) and a weakened upper class. Nothing worse, really, than what happened in Seshnela after Nralar the Old died. (BTW, would the Gbaji Wars be reckoned part of the First Age, or part of the Second? The universal time-shifting moment seems to have been the Sunstop, followed by 75 years of bloody aftermath sprinkled with periods of glory...)
>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. [...] the
second [son of three of the DHan Emperor became] Shah of Carmania
>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? [...]
Nice one.
>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.
As you yourself point out: a highly unnatural state of affairs in Peloria, which normally would have several powers at war with each other.
>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"),
So they returned to the normal state of affairs, with Dark Pelanda and Bright Dara Happa at odds.
>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...
Ok. I'll repeat: how does this affect my average Pelandan farmer? If I recall Carmanian society correctly, the farming etc serfs would have no part in warfare except when visited by it, and that would be a quite gruesome affair anyway. (Methinks the 10,000 had an almost Galvosti-like attitude towards non-"Malkioni", i.e. not-of-them.)
>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".
Still not a cataclysm, merely a major historical failure.
>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.
A repetition of Surander's arrival, you mean?
>The Bull Shahs attempted to steal legitimacy by forcibly taking Carmanian
wives:
Surander bonking Charmaine?
>they do NOT represent cultural continuity or unity,
Like the Persian pharaoh dynasty of Egypt?
>and they plunged the
>Carmanian Empire into an unending war of conquest against Dara Happa and
>neighbouring states:
Like the horse nomads of Sheng, for instance?
Sorry, while times may have been somewhat grim, this is comparable with other events right in the middle of Gloranthan Ages, not cataclysmic. And I doubt that it mattered much to the aboriginal Pelandans which foreigners abused their traditions and peoples. Do you really say that the Aryan invaders under Syranthir Forefront and their descendants became caring, understanding lords for their peasants?
>this was the background of the Seven Mothers' conspiracy,
>which was born from oppression and unrest.
Such was the background of Palashee Longaxe's revolt against King Philigos, or Hrestol's quest for knighthood to free Seshnela from the Basmoli.
>They built pyramids of heads,
>massacred indiscriminately, and gloried in the terror that they wrought: their
>inscriptions are stomach-turning in their callous brutality.
Like those of Zorak-Arkat or Sheng Seleris? Or the Kingdom of War?
>I think moving from Persian-style tolerance and splendour to Assyrian-style
>militarism and terror marks quite an impressive transition between the Ages.
Ok. So you do believe in a golden age of peace under Syranthir's descendants (excepting vile dragonspawn and -friends). Ok, I know that some of the worse Spolite movements in Carmania were banned or burned along with the emperor(s) propagating these. Don't you think that this religious infighting would have been as bad as the later bull occupation? Think of the German 30-Year-War...
>The
>Carmanians themselves were horrendously wounded by the Dragonkill; the
Pelandans
>suffered when those (comparatively benign) overlords were replaced by barbarian
>usurpers.
Really: were the bull shahs worse than Sheng Seleris? Sheng's joyride through the Empire did not mark a turn of the Ages. Elsewhere similar events didn't either (think of the Kresh appearance in eastern Pamaltela).
And I think it was you yourself who described Shah Tavarstin, son of Shahtavar (the Bull Shah Usurper) as "a truly noble ruler" (TFS p.99).
>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.
As I said before: I think the Lunar Jihad would qualify for the cataclysmic shift of Ages. Not only were there big and brutal battles, there were cosmic (well, stellar) changes, gods walking what usually would be considered normal ground, etc.
Thus: Would the Carmanian Empire qualify as an entirely Second Age phenomenon, including Cartavar, Bisodakar, Bisoshan and Yanistar? Would a 2nd Wane Lunar quester be able to visit/experience the Carmanian Bull Shah oppression in "time-travel" questing, under Sandy's premise?
Thanks for the info, anyway.
End of Glorantha Digest V2 #675
WWW material at http://hops.wharton.upenn.edu/~loren/rolegame.html
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