The Age of the Sage-Queens Part 2: Shattersea Early Period

The last post in this series deals with the Early Sage-Queens of the Yaro Valley. This post deals with the same period in the Shattersea Region, just to the South of the Yaro’s mouth and Qabarat. While some scholars claim that the age’s name should not apply to the Shattersea’s history, for no Shattersea queen was ever called a Sage-Queen, in truth this region continued to form a contiguous cultural spectrum with the northern cities. The Southern Lashunta kept an appreciation for thoughts and developments exported from their old homeland, even if they felt no obligation to follow their example.
When the Lashunta Warrior-Queens first broke out of the Yaro Valley, the Shattersea’s eastern shore was the next area they settled. The war of extermination against the Moqeva continued, as the Lashunta pursued them along the coast and eastward into the hinterland. Yet in retrospect it seemingly took on a secondary priority, as if the Lashunta realized how big the world was that they dwelt in. Expansion and settlement - sometimes even peacefully - became the primary drivers. Soon as they learned shipbuilding, they spread to the islands, a vastness of resources and wonders that has since sustained huge populations, rich from both the lands’ and the Sea’s bounty.
Thus the Shattersea escaped the trauma and upheaval that marked the end of the Age of the Warrior-Queens in the Yaro Valley. The historical transition is less abrupt and more of a continuation. Instead, the Age of the Sage-Queens is the first time that Shattersea civilization stopped being a colonial outgrowth and came into its own heritage. Neither did the first Shattersea cities lack for age. Lasahaua, the first city south of the Yaro, was founded as early as 1844 ZS, beginning a brief but spectacular maritime empire when it beat Son’s fleet in the first naval warfare battle five hundred years later. Wicked Nivaea, originally Lasahaua’s colony at the bay where the Hisyho, the Father of Waters, runs into the Shattersea, followed in 2284. Thence, every two to four centuries a new city’s name appears in the ancient chronicles: Timiyurael, Alendrastrya, and even Ofu Vou hidden within the Straits of Glory, first noted as a “Stronghold of Sea-Thieves” among the chronicles. The Pirate-Queens of Ofu Vou would figure in later history.
In 3559, just a hundred years after its founding, Queen Izirinme of Alendrastrya announded the final extermination of the Moqeva. The war that, according to Lashunta legend, had lasted four ten thousand years was over.
By way of a history-marker, Lasahaua’s destruction from an earthquake in 3820, and its colonies’ resulting independence, marks the Shattersea’s beginning of the Age of the Sage Queens. Unlike the Yaro Valley, the Shattersea’s Lashunta saw no cessation of violence, for they were already embroiled in a conflict vying for the region’s control, with the Elves. While the Reielari - Elven Wars - now figure largely as a subject of romantic legend among Lashunta, historians cannot discount Elven influence on culture, education, literature, and language. This historical period is rightfully the most Elven in Castrovel’s history, when they achieved their greatest growth. Starting with Sovyrian’s settlement (conveniently isolated from any competition) and El’s founding in 4517 (Earthfall on Golarion), the Elves had used the Age of the Warrior-Queens to consolidate their holdings and then start expanding along Asana’s southern coast facing the Sea of Teeth. By 5326, when they founded Qabarat, Elven ships had already become a regular sight in the Shattersea, trading with Lashunta cities, and also taking advantage of their disunity after Lasahaua’s fall.
Thus the Shattersea of the Early Sage-Queens is an age of competition, not only for the choice locations along Asana’s coast, nor even for the best islands lying off, but also for who could claim the most resources in a continuously expanding world. Over the millennia, mariners, both Lashunta and Elf, whispered rumors of an unknown land lying beyond the sea’s western edge. They told tales of boundless lands holding incalculable wealth, tales which the Pirate-Queens of Ofu Vou (where the Straits of Glory form the closest link between East and West) desperately tried to quash for their own advantage. Against their best efforts, the inhabitants of Asana discovered a new world awaiting their opportunity. Lost Marasta it is sometimes called. Yet even then it was sometimes called the Colonies.
Colonial empires became the rage across the Shattersea, as both the Elves and the Lashunta cities raced to claim prime spots on Marasta’s coast. Wars, both for control of actual territory and for that of the shipping lanes bring vast wealth back to Asana, became common, though they more or less skirted the mass slaughters that had besmirched the Yaro Valley at the end of the Age of the Warrior-Queens. For the first time, Lashunta contemplated a code of conduct with a species other than themselves. While atrocities and even genocides (inflicted by both sides) happened, as inter-city competition intensified, the Lashunta understood the Elves as potential allies against greater rivals. As these alliances and relationships matured, historians find the first references to ‘Difelari’ - Elf-Right - under which Lashunta accorded special privileges to non-Lashunta, a tradition that has continued to this day. Over time these Marastan colonies grew, and even sought to determine their own courses, throwing off their founders’ yokes, as the conflicts grew even more complicated, which course culminated in the first native regional power being founded in 7365 on that continent: Valmaea, renowned and mourneded in history and legend down through the ages. Under that city’s matronage, Lashunta native-born to the Colonies first defied Asana’s imperial privilege.
Throughout this whole period, the elder cities of the Yaro Valley remained an important source of a critical export: people, both the commoners the Shattersea cities used to settle their colonies and the philosophers bearing the new learning, both moral, natural, and psychic. Attempts were made to copy the Council of Queens into regional cooperatives, sometimes or not with success. Lashunta nobles and merchants avidly heard the new thoughts of how the world worked, from the Heavens beyond the clouds glimpsed from the Hall of Stars to theories on the nature of life. Also, for the first time the new arts wielded by the Ralysa - Soul-Seers - crossed from the arcane sphere to the moral, as queens and captains prevailed on these wonder-workers to use their powers to advance their causes at a foes’ expense. This enlightenment found new ground, along with challenges, and so took on new forms and schools.
Then a new discovery rocked the Lashunta’s world: to Marasta’s north loomed another continent. Ukalam it came to be called, another new, untapped land, possibly as great as the Colonies. Whereas the older cities of the eastern shore were growing tired of their daughter-cities’ rebellions and the Elves’ manipulations, this offered new opportunity and easier pickings. A first colony was founded as the other cities raced to follow suit.
And then a darker word flew back eastward over the Shattersea: on Ukalam the Lashunta were not alone. Not the Elves this time, but an older, wickeder foe: the Moqeva. Presumably they had fled westward along the Northern Shattersea Chain before the Lashunta learned ship-building, where they had quietly made a home unimpeded.
Right afterward, the Ukalam county vanished. Ships visiting found the site empty, a bare, cleared area amid the jungle where the fields were already overgrowing. At that word, it seemed as if an illness struck the Lashunta. All conflicts halted; all differences set aside. The Lashunta became united under a vision to finally exterminate their ancient foe. In 9940, just five years after Ukalam’s loss, an allied fleet first gathered at Nivaea, sailed across the sea to Valmaea, where further allies from the Colonies joined, and then sailed northward. The Shattersea cities waited for reports, either of victory or requests to send reinforcements (already gathering) to continue the conquest.
No word ever came back. The allied fleet, like the lost colony, vanished without a trace.
Not to be gainsaid, a second allied fleet was marshalled just nine years later. It arrived, but reported back it found nothing. No sign of the first fleet, no more clues of what had happened to the settlers, and no sign of anything linking their disappearance to the Moqeva, nor any hint of their ancient foe. Rather lacklusterly, a garrison was set on Ukalam, and the fleet came home empty-handed. Although the colony was reestablished, the Lashunta did so half-heartedly, fearful of the mysterious lurking in the northern jungles.
For the first time in their long and war-spattered history, the Lashunta had met a check. It would not be the last.