Me:>> Not quite sure about that - coastal Pamaltela remained in the occasional grip of the antigods for some time, until they were overcome by the Fisherman hero of the southwestern East Isles.
> Fozeranto is in extreme east of coastal Pamaltela
Yes. Still, we know they were sea-going (after all, Sharzu/Thinobutu was an island, and they made it there), and coastal piracy is a good way to suppress the formation of a civilization. (It was enough to break imperial Roman hold on Britain and Gaul.)
> and the hero who destroyed it was not Finzalvo the Fisherman but Jesolo of the Golden Fleet.
The joys of replying away from the sources.
> While you could make an argument that Fozeranto also controlled Kimos, their lack of penetration into the Elf Jungles places a rather large constraint on the size of their grip.
Enough to terrorize the various groups hiding from them. I'm not quite clear whether the Outrigger folk suffered the full trauma of the Greater Darkness or the slightly lesser variation of the Vithelans (i.e. enslavement by Apdara), but I think that the Apdara would have spread terror beyond their immediate area of influence.
>> The Outrigger Peoples hid out while the apdara came raiding, except for the Kimotans who took the Gorger apdara more or less head on, or rather monument on.
> I don't think this is correct. There's no humans in Maslo for the first century after the Dawn (save Elamle-ata) according to Elder Secrets. Then there's a migration which surprises the elves. Since Jesolo destroys Fozeranto early in the dawn, I assume this human migration is human slaves fleeing the sinking of Fozeranto.
Possible - at least some of the other migrations report renewed attacks on their hideouts.
> The Thinokosans don't reach Fonrit until the same time as Garangordos does.
I'm still operating on the basis that Garangordos arrived there about four or five centuries after the dawn. The Thinokans appear to have established themselves there before falling under his rule.
> Before then they were in Ulrana which is probably in Laskal.
That's where you put Garangordos, too...
> I don't think the Pithdarans ever went to Fonrit. They built the boats on the Veldt and used magic to travel to the otherside so they could reach the Bad God from there. This makes their lateness a tad more plausible to me.
Why would they build boats? There is no indication that they could not walk there if you don't leave the veldt.
We seem to agree that they experienced some kind of other side imprisonment outside of the normal flow of time, but given the fact that it took the destruction of the Waertagi to release them makes me suspect that the Waertagi played a role in trapping them there.
The notion of boat-using Agimori is quite strange. Their Storm Age nemesis, the Artmali, were a boating culture, the best the Agimori produced in response are the Rinka reed boats. Not the type used by the Pithdarans, or the Seshnegi would have commented on that.
> > We have no records or dates for the Pithdaran arrival in the lands of Oabil, the traditional source for slaves for the Vadeli. From 4th action records, we know that the Vadeli took both Artmali and Agimori slaves in the region, but we don't know how far inland their slave-taking expeditions or trading went. There are some indications that the Artmali won a hold over the region some time in the Storm Age and terrorized the homelands of the Outrigger people.
> Oabil is Umathela.
I don't think that the Vadeli would have said "oh wait, the prospective slaves here have a bluish skin, like our ruler caste. Let's leave them in peace..."
Oabil was northwestern Pamaltela, east of the Mostali lands. That description fits Kareeshtu as well as Vralos.
> The Vadeli took their slaves from Poto which corresponds to Tarien and Jolar. When the Pithdarans travelled northwards (whether by magical or mundane means), Oabil was a vanished land occupied only by Aldryami and Lascerdans.
By that time, also by the first groups of kin of the Olodo carried there by the Waertagi.
The point is that the northwestern Pamaltelan coast is closely associated with slavery in the memory of the Agimori (and the southern Artmali).
> The Artmali lived in Coboranda which is described in Revealed Mythologies as being in Bandaku (Fonrit). I think Coboranda was settled directly from the Blue Moon and not from Kungatu or Tenel.
The Artmali did have flying ships in the Storm Age, which led to interesting encounters with the cloud ships of the Helerings, so I have no problem with an independent disembarkation there. However, at the height of the Artmali Empire, the northern coastal lands were part of that empire, and the northern coast would have seen their non-flying ships as well.
> As for terrorizing the lands of the outrigger people, the interactions with the Artmali in that particular section of Revealed Mythologies is rather clunky and one-sided.
Agreed.
> I prefer to look at the example of the Zaranistangi who moved northward to Teshnos as being more representative of relations between the Artmali and other humans at that time.
I don't see the Zaranistangi as Blue Moon related. A similar people of similar celestial origin, but quite distinct from the Artmali, with an ancestral link to Tolat.
>> Enslavement is what the history of [Fonrit] is about. Whoever wanted to hold on that land used enslavement to further their goals.
> While enslavement is a large part of Fonrit society, to speak of using enslavement to further their goals runs perilously close to modern cynical motivations that I was grumbling against before.
That's why I asked about the Fonritian concept of "ownership" below. It might be possible that ownership as originally practiced by the Garangordites was a bidirectional obligation that didn't limit personal freedom more than any caste system, and that it was contact with the Malkioni that somehow converted or perverted this concept into the cynical version that appears to have been practiced by the time of the Six-Legged Empire.
> Garangordos isn't enforcing chattel slavery to make himself more powerful (Many Fonritans might do that today). He enforced slavery because it was the correct way of maintaining harmony with the cosmos. He enslaves the rebels and renegades to return the world to a proper relationship with Ompalam.
Replace "slavery" with "justice" and Ompalam with Yelm, and the same text would result. Again, the original concept of ownership could have been different from that encountered later.
>> As a side issue, what exactly does "ownership" (whether of slaves or other possessions) entail in Fonrit? The concept might differ from our modern concept.
> The way I see it, everything should be the property of Ompalam. Serving another as a slave is a worthy act while having many slaves is better than having one. A constraint on the system (but by no means a foolproof one) is that Masters should be ideal slaves of Ompalam and thus behave virtuously. In terms of social order, a Fonritan might consider his clan as being the fellow slaves of his master.
One concept that took me quite by surprise a couple of years ago was the ease with which African chieftains sold off members of their clan as slaves. Apparently the exchange of slaves with neighboring tribes was some sort of lesser adoption of excess population rather than the aquisition of chattel property, and the individuals sold as slaves were expected to live a life not too different from that they could expect at home. Since the Europeans carried their purchases off across the ocean, no news came back how they were treated there.
I'm not quite sure how this could apply to northwestern Pamaltela. Slavery as property of blue-skinned logicians apparently felt little different to slavery as property of Apdara, if we look at the Pelandan stories. (Assuming these Logicians were the Vadeli after the uprising against the Kachasti and the formation of the Nidan Mountains by the Mostali.)
The Vadeli quite likely carried off most of their captured slaves into their vast empire later sunk by Zzabur, but (like the Europeans on the African coast) they would have had a presence on the collecting point, where some of the slaves would have remained to work for the raiding masters.
Any human population north of the belt of elf forests would have been an easy target. If the Veldang of Coboranda were out of contact with the Artmali during the Vadeli presence, I find it quite likely that Poto refers to their lands.
Even with the Greenwood of Jolar still in existance, Fonrit appears to have been the place where the Elf Forests were most easily penetrated into central Pamaltela.
The storm folk invasion of the Veldt first overcame an Artmali empire, then suffered the same fate as did the Six-Legged Empire in the Imperial Age.
Speaking of the Six-Legged Empire, I stumbled across this line in "The Middle Sea Empire" (p.25, corrective commentary on the boot-licking account of Miglos' reign):
"Fonrit rebelled, first in the city of Arbennan, and the success spread from city to city."
This offers the possibility that Hon Hoolbitku was one of the slaves caught by the Six-Legged Empire and brought to Fonrit. The Agimori of Jolar named their alliance against the Kresh after a Fonritian city? (And who classified the languages of the central veldt as Arbennan?)
>> Seventeen is a holy number of the Pamaltelan Veldt,
> It isn't. The Pamaltelan naming ritual only has thirteen people in it.
The number reappears in several Pamaltelan contexts (Garangordos, Seseko, ruling council of Dinal), and only once outside of Pamaltela (Seventeen Foes of Waha).
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