~Kamatha Shaverazea~ - The Age of the Thief-Queens

Previously we’ve addressed the archaic Age of the Warrior-Queens and the classical Age of the Sage-Queens. This series of posts deals with the next in the series of historical ages: ~Kamatha Shaverazea~: the Age of the Thief-Queens. For many Lashunta, this is the dark age of their history, equivalent to Europe’s Fall of Rome and barbarian invasions, the Bronze Age Collapse between the Mycenaean and Classical Greek civilizations, or the Mongol Conquest of China. In comparison with Golarion’s history, it equates to the rise of Taldor and Absalom, and ended nigh the Elven Return to Kyonin from Sovyrian, which impacted both planets, spanning over seven thousand years (3,500 Earth/Golarion years). 
Some historians further divide it into a variety of conflicting and overlapping sub-periods, including the First Conquest, the Thief-Queen Wars, the Second Formian Invasion, the Revolt and Rise of the Matrons, and the Aftermath Retaea Wars. The truth about this purported dark age, however, is more complex, especially when one considers the length this age spans. The Thief-Queens variously succeeded in establishing stable governments over prosperous societies, if only for limited times, even if their wealth and accomplishments were shadows of what the Sage-Queens had accomplished. Yet this age hallmarked conquest and conflict between Lashunta, as had not been known since the Age of the Warrior-Queens, and furthermore divisions of ethnicity, which prior to this time had only been minor factors in Lashunta society.
It began with the economic and social collapse of Western Asana, after the Formian Conquest of Marasta (the Colonies), the Fall of Lost Valmaea, and the First Formian Invasion of Asana. The Sage-Queens of the Yaro Valley had joined the alliance of Lashunta and Elves from the Shattersea and the Valmaeana Diaspora, despite enjoying five thousand years of almost warless peace and having forgotten the martial skills of their Warrior-Queen ancestors. Thus the Yaro reeled simultaneously from the loss of lives levied and sent southward to fight in the Formian War, which had left agricultural communities stripped of their Korasha, fatherless, brotherless, and sonless, and from absorbing thousands of refugees who had made the seafare from Valmaea and the other conquered Marastan cities to Qabarat and Reiefya, whence they flooded northward through the Yaro’s delta and into the Upper Valley. These newcomers had no appreciation for the intricacies that had governed the Yaro’s highly stratified society. Conflicts broke out between natives and refugees, to which the Sage-Queens’ nobles stepped in with the only advantage they had: psionic control, and which did nothing to smother resentment. As economic depression and famine widened, these conflicts spread throughout society and became full-scale revolts, until, for the first time in thousands of years, the cities’ queens had their authority challenged.
Also with the invasion’s end, Retaea warriors streamed and circulated through the Yaro Valley, many seeking to return home to the Northern Moorlands surrounding Lake Arasene, though some found opportunity to stay. The Yaro cities, eager for skilled warriors to lead their untrained Korasha levies southward against the Formians, had recruited these northern nomad clans almost wholesale. Despite the contracted alliance between the Sage-Queens and the Retaea, the Yaro cityfolk and moorland nomads had little in common. Where the Yaro folk were refined, indirect, and passive, the Retaea were abrupt, direct, and actively sought confrontation as a means of determining social status. Like the ancient Warrior-Queens, their worth depended on success and booty in battle. Amid the breakdown in the cities’ social fabric, Retaea warriors and clanwives seized positions of authority. Furthermore, those Korasha conscripts who had survived the southern wars’ slaughter had often mated and bonded with their Retaea captains, shifting loyalty to these personal affiliations instead of allegiance to distant, corrupt, and increasingly ineffectual royal sovereignty