Early Warrior-Queens: War with the Moqeva (Rei Moqevi)
Prior to this age’s beginning, and according to legend, Shotalashu-symbiant Lashunta tribes had already pushed back their ancient foe, the ophidian Moqeva. Damaya queens leading harems of Korasha warriors had conquered the vast Retaea Moorlands between Lake Arasene and the Stormshield Mountains. They had also launched incursions into the Yaro Valley and had settled, where their population, fueled by the richness of the river and the rainforests had exploded.
Then came the Moqeva counteroffensive. With their heartland based in the jungle swamps and myriad marshlands east of the Yaro, the Moqeva exterminated all Lashunta tribes on the Yaro’s eastern bank, began hunting down survivors on the west bank, and even invaded to take back the Retaea Moorlands and Lake Arasene. While only legends of this time remain, the Lashunta tell of fierce raids and flights up into the mountains, and also deadly, unholy magic, which the Moqeva used when their foes with their Shotalashu proved too bold to overcome. The tales describe woe, a people on the rout, facing the genocide their foremothers had visited on the Moqeva during their southward pushed.
All that changed when Eieshe, a Damaya warrior and her Shotalashu mount Taunu, who, fleeing Moqeva hunters, swam the Yaro’s breadth to the island of Aelau. There upon the northern spur of Mt. Eizoshu now called the Ofu, she received a vision from the goddess Matarasse - Burning-Mother, to bring her tribe and make them a safe place there. So was founded Son, the first Lashunta city in traditional history, as a stronghold against Moqeva attacks.
Note that, while all Lashunta cities maintain separate chronologies, Son’s year-count, starting in this year, is commonly used as a reconciling reference, and thus marks the official beginning of the Age of the Warrior-Queens.
Afterward, the Lashunta’s fortunes changed, though the war of mutual extermination with the Moqeva continued in earnest. With Son as a bulwark controlling the river, warrior-clans from the Retaea were enlisted to push back the Moqeva and found daughter-cities to consolidate conquest. Lea was founded in 357 ZS (~Zhireal Sonni~ = Son’s Year-list) to maintain control over Lake Aresene. Southward, Mahyat was founded shortly afterward, a stronghold where the Laul River meets the Yaro. Afterward, however, another four hundred years would pass before the Lashunta successfully founded another city. Hanat (Hanat-Tolla = Old Hanat) would be founded in 884 ZS, ‘under Moqeva poisoned arrows’ as the first Lashunta city on the Yaro’s eastern bank, a spearblade pointed right at the Moqeva’s heart.
This time also sees the first references to Moldstorms, which the Lashunta sages claimed had never existed beforehand, but were a Moqeva invention of eldritch sorcery to lay waste to Lashunta settlements. However, these flesh-eating spore-showers were just as disastrous for their inventors as they were for Lashunta. If this explanation may be believed, the moldstorms slowed the Lashunta conquest, but did not halt.
Finally, in 1,150 ZS, Son and its allies achieved their greatest success when Queen Inaene and her allies attacked, besieged, and razed Hoshiasa, described as the last great Moqeva stronghold. Afterward, Moqeva control over the eastern jungles and the Lower Yaro fell apart. After over a thousand years of warfare (though more than seven thousand in legend, ever since Queen Tess first tamed Shotaviras and saved her clan from Moqeva hunters), the end came less than a hundred years later, when Lashunta warriors caught the last Moqeva within the Yaro Valley against the Walls of Gohabarat (Qabarat), slaughtered them, and threw their bodies into the bottomless lake.
Curiously, the Lashunta of this age never settled Qabarat, instead preferring the Yaro’s delta mouths further eastward where they run into the Shattersea. While they understood the Akiton worldgate atop the headland (“which leads to the Land of Red Dust”), when Azlanti Humans arrived a thousand years later, offering gifts, Queen Aheale granted their request to found a settlement at Qabarat. The Azlanti maintained this outpost for over 1,100 Golarion years (2,200 Lashunta years), and upkept significant contacts with the neighboring Lashunta cities. When Earthfall happened, the Azlanti on Castrovel all withdrew through the Akiton worldgate and were never seen again. Yet to this day, the Lashunta word for Human is ~Aslanta~.
With the Moqeva’s extermination, the Lashunta entered a new phase. For the first time ever they expanded beyond the Yaro Valley, southward along the Shattersea’s Shore, and eventually founding cities as far southward as Alendrastya, overlooking the Sea of Teeth.
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