The Age of the Sage-Queens, Part 3: The Coming of the Formians

So far, we have dealt with the early periods within the Age of the Sage-Queens, in which we separately treated the Yaro Valley and Shattersea. As we now address the later period, we shall again put them together, for the Twelfth Millennium Crisis (as some Lashunta historians describe) would impact them both, and more. Also, some scholars claim that the true Age of the Sage-Queens should be limited to the early period, and not to the events that follow, which they would label the Age of the Formian Conquest. However, in popular reference this period is still associated with the Sage-Queens, right or wrong, due to the monumental efforts undertaken.
While the Shattersea and Yaro Valley queendoms fretted over the mystery that had swallowed the Ukalam Colony and a whole Lashunta invasion fleet, a new danger was brewing. How they came to Castrovel is unknown, whether they appeared through a worldgate or made planetfall in a meteor, for it likely happened in remote wilderness far to the southwest, beyond even where the young, rowdy Elven and Lashunta cities of Marasta were throwing off their colonial yokes and jostling for primacy. None knew anything, until in 11,389 ZS tall, four-legged, shell-armored warriors began raiding out of the jungle, wielding poisoned weapons or even their own stingers, carrying off prisoners, destroying townholds, and pushing the Lashunta back for the first time in twelve thousand years. The Lashunta learned a new word: ~Moeru~ for these buglike invaders, by which they call the Formians, who had already built their first hives and set their path for conquest.
A few sages have had the chance to communicate directly with Formians, for under the right circumstances they will interact peaceably if single-mindedly, and ever focused on their manifest destiny to propagate their species. Those who have succeeded have learned something of their history, that they hail from a now forgotten homeworld not dissimilar from Castrovel, Golarion, or Earth and that their ancestors first invented interstellar brood-ships constructed from hollow asteroids, which they would fling from their home-star toward distant new planets. Of all the intelligent inhabitants within the Golarion-Matarasse Star System, Formians and Lashunta may even have the most in common. Both are psychically gifted and have strong senses of community identity, sometimes even to the dearth of the individual. More superficially, Lashunta with their brow-antennae have been called the most buglike of all humanoid species. Yet here only one more similarity remains: an implacable will to defend their communities, and furthermore to destroy their enemies, at all costs.
Despite this strong sense of common identity, the initial Formian conquests seemingly confused the Lashunta, at least beyond the Colonies. Following so swiftly on the lost Ukalam fleet, many queens worried this was another Moqeva ploy. Summit councils argued whether they should answer this new threat from the southwest, or send another force to the northwest, where some believed the true threat lay. Perhaps also, for the first time in their ancient and martial history, the Lashunta had grown uncertain of their own prowess. As internal struggles and economic imbalance troubled the Yaro Valley cities, many sought to enforce stability at home instead of meeting a threat far abroad. Thus, for many reasons, support from Asana came sporadically, leaving the Marastan cities to face the Formians on their own, a failure that proved doomful.
Over a bare century from the first alarms, Formian swarm-armies defeated allied Lashunta-Elven armies, sacked city after city, dug in, built new hives, and climbed the Colonies as their own, though they did so against brave, sometimes reckless opposition from the Lashunta, who fought back to take as many foes down as they could, and to buy time for refugees to flee coastward, where before long ships were bearing them back to Asana, as once their foremothers had gone westward, though others made a fighting retreat to last bastion, a name that has been sung down through the ages: Valmaea of the Tall Pearl Walls, who led the fight to throw back the Formians, plead for help from the Asana cities, and then gathered so many ships as they could find, and sent her citizens to flee into the east. At the last, the Valmaea Queen, her harem-captains, her princesses, and their warriors chose to stay, where they fought and died while their city burned around them. To this day, the descendents of the refugees who fled and settled in southwest Asana call their land Valmaeana - New Valmaea.
The Colonies’ loss had wide-ranging impacts on the surviving Asana cities, from the Shattersea to the Yaro Valley, and on both Elves and Lashunta, most impactfully as economies all around the Shattersea collapsed, due to the loss of trade and resources. The wealthy Tradehouse Class that had come to dominate Shattersea culture earlier in the age, suffered severely, in some cases reduced to piracy, or even seizing control of local cities to found feudalistic plutocracies, while crafters lost work. The coastal cities also reeled in trying to absorb huge populations of homeless refugees from Marasta, with limited resources or opportunities to do. The cultural impacts of this shock still exist today, in the Valaeana of the southeast, and also in the Shattersea’s migrant Fozoena Clans. Revolts wracked the Yaro Valley cities, already strained from overpopulation and inequality, forcing the Sage-Queens to use force, a combination of psychic power and inexpertly led military, for the first time in five thousand years to steady their rocking thrones.
As refugee ships scattered over the Shattersea, some made their way as far northward as the Yaro Delta, where in 11,413 a fleet bearing not only Elves, but also Lashunta, came to Qabarat, begging asylum, which the Elflords granted. Whereas for six millennia Qabarat had been wholly Elven, for the first time it became home to a mixed population, which caused conflict, but ultimately gave the Shining Jewel of the Western Sea much of its character still carried today.
The situation grew even worse in 11,572 ZS, when the Formian Hive-Burghs, who had used the previous sixty years to consolidate their hold on the Colonies and build resources, launched an invasion of Asana, with the intent of repeating their success. Despite their earlier disorganization, the Asana cities rallied, realizing the existential threat the Formians brought. Here also was born the Lashunta-Elven Alliance. Whereas before the Formian Invasion Elves and Lashunta had been largely rivals, afterward they realized they had a better chance surviving together than apart. The two species joined forces to meet their fate, as the call went out to rally forces from all of Asana and beyond, from Sovyrian and even such far-flung, gate-bound outposts as Jabask, Candares, and Ofu Laubu.
The world war to crush the Formians’ foothold consumed the Lashunta for the next 150 years, during which fleets marshaled, and battles raged over the whole Shattersea and along the southern shores. A new kind of warfare was invented, invoking a ferocity that even the Warrior-Queens had rarely touched since the last Moqeva had fallen, carried most fervently by the Southern Cities on whom the greatest brunt fellow and the Marasta refugees, who invoked Lost Valmaea and that city’s tragic last stand as their battlecry, and where every resource, no matter how ruthless would be wielded.
Far to the North, the Yaro Valley Sage-Queen’s heeding the tide’s desperation, and reckoning their own martial futility, proposed to hire mercenaries from the Retaea Nomad Clans that wandered the moorlands between the Northern Stormshields and Lake Arasene. These were not the same folk from whom the Warrior-Queens had descended, but the survivors of the Molstorms who had fled northward, and had only lately migrated back southward. They were a changed folk from the Warrior-Queens’ kindred, unlike in language, and exhibiting a violence, which, though the Sage-Queens feared and did not understand, they realized as an asset that could help the war effort. Thus with the Sage-Queens’ gold and silver, the Retaeans began migrating southward, where companies of riders on long-legged Shotalashu took ship to the southern battlefields. Also, some Retaean sellswords stayed in the Yaro Valley, where the Sage-Queens used them to pacify their own populations.
The Formian Colony on Asana was exterminated in 11,719, the culmination of a monumental, worldwide alliance among Lashunta and Elves, which had cost hundreds of thousands of lives and incalculable wealth in money and resources. Though it represented the Lashunta’s triumph against the greatest threat they had ever faced, still it required ceaseless vigilance across the Shattersea’s coasts and islands, against any new invasion that might be tried. It also left cities bankrupt, their treasuries empty, their populations bereft of their strongest youth, and seething with resentment as their queens strove to monopolize resources and maintain their influence and prestige. Little did the Sage-Queens know that their rule was reaching its end as the new era was germinating, the Age of the Thief-Queens.