100-200 A.E. (RECKONED FROM THE YEAR OF THE GREAT FIRES)
at the beginning of the second century A.E., stone-trolls were divided into three different groupings. The first, of course, was around the Holy Valley of Five Stones. High Chieftain Speaks-like-thunder, just arriving in his prime at 86 winters, now controlled the High Council and the Assemblies of Voices and Reflection. About 6600 trolls remained in the Valley of Five Stones by 100 A.E., and under his own edicts, they could only engage in limited agriculture and husbandry. Still, work continued unabated on giant astronomical and geometric architectural structures; despite
Barumbesukeh distaste for Promethean styles, their construction technology proved invaluable in the carefully chiseled, intricately assembled towers, stone henges, and memory halls that began to dot the inner valleys. Though Speaks-like-thunder was still young, he began to call himself “Thunderspeaker”, in the style of a clan name, an honour normally only given to respected elder trolls over the age of 150. He consolidated his political control, claiming to be “Most High Chieftain”, rightful religious and political leader of all trolls. In truth, he was this in name only.
While Thunderspeaker was owed the personal fealty of the largest
Barumbesukeh clans, Deepsleeper, Stonebreaker, Riverdrinker and Longstrider, there were still around 2000 trolls who were
suga, clans who were former slaves. These clans included the influential Stargazers, and the Strongbacks and Chainbreakers, who lived closely with the human troll-spawn and birthed more each winter. The six thousand sentient troll-spawn in the nearby highlands had been allowed to remain, but their villages and herdsmen were required to pay tribute to the Five Stones. A gangly six-foot troll-spawn could not hope to best a twelve- or twenty-foot troll in battle, but the troll-spawn tribes were more loyal to their troll clans than the Council. Furthermore, troll-spawn worshiped the nature-spirits of their human or Promethean ancestors and only paid lip service to the Five Ancients. The
suga clans were consistent opponents of Thunderspeaker, in particular the 30-foot, two hundred-year old, Winterpine, a nephew of the Prophet Stargazer. The “Winterpine
suga” saw Stargazer's commandments as open to interpretation, but believed the Assembly of Voices and Reflection should be guided by High Chieftains related to Stargazer – after all, they were the ones who carried and remembered his death-recitation most carefully. Knowing they were outnumbered by Barumbesukeh, they also advocated for troll-spawn to have voices in the assembly.
This religious and cultural divide would only deepen in the valleys of the Five Stones over the next twenty-five years. Thunderspeaker feared Winterpine's
suga might attempt a coup or political maneuver during a Bi-annual Festival of Stars, when hundreds of powerful and ancient suga trolls returned to the valley from afar to speak and vote in the Assembly of Voices. So, in 120 A.E. it was officially pronounced that the creation of sentient troll-spawn was in breach of the Five Precepts of Stargazer, and disallowed for any troll. The
suga were outraged. Many
barumbesukeh, as well, were skeptical but obedient to this new rule.
In 125 A.E., Thunderspeaker organized many young warriors into a formal bodyguard in preparation for the next year's Festival. While it was common among many clans for a Chieftain to be accompanied by several young men, normally the size and strength of a troll leader was defense enough. By the end of the year, there were one hundred trained “Stoneguards.” The
suga saw this as a trained army, and began to arm themselves;
suga radicals numbered perhaps five hundred, and while the ancients, Winterpine among them, urged for calm, violence began to break out across the valleys in the spring of 126 A.E. The strife came to a head, as expected, at the Festival of Stars in the summer.
The radical
suga had come planning to force Thunderspeaker from the High Council, through words or through force. Hundreds of troll-spawn warriors lay in wait above the valley. Dozens more sympathetic chieftains from the Northern and Southern clans had arrived, but Thunderspeaker's control over the Assembly meant that a political victory was unlikely. The radicals hoped to force Winterpine and the other suga into open rebellion. They also knew many
Barumbesukeh chieftains disliked Thunderspeaker, and though they would not speak against him, might not fight for him if it came to war. On the night of the Festival, three hundred trolls and five hundred troll-spawn warriors stormed the Five Stones. They expected heavy resistance but only slew a few guards, driving right up to the stones themselves. By the time they realized the trap, it was too late. Hundreds of stoneguards and Deepsleeper and Stonebreaker clansmen had surrounded them, and fires suddenly blazed high into the night.
Trolls are very difficult to kill. They can recover from even the most crippling wounds, given time and care. Yet on the slaughter was complete; not one
suga troll escaped the clubs, spears and fists of Thunderspeaker's men. In the highlands, ancient Longstrider hunters fell on the troll-spawn allies, and across the valleys, encampments and holdings of
suga trolls were raided and burnt. In later years, this night would come to be known as simply “the Grudge” or “the Blood-debt” by the
suga and the “Night of Betrayal” by the Barumbesukeh. It is estimated six hundred trolls, over three-fourths of them suga, and a thousand trollspawn lost their lives that night. Winterpine and other chieftains were imprisoned, an unacceptable insult and crime for any troll, and two months later sentenced to permanent exile by a unanimous vote of the Assembly of Voices.
With winter approaching, 1200
suga trolls and 4000 troll-spawn lead by Winterpine were exiled to the unfamiliar north with their herds, but stripped of their fall harvests. With them went 980
barumbesukeh who refused to accept the rule of Thunderspeaker and were outraged at the massacre of fellow trolls. Two hundred trolls and countless spawn would die of hunger and exhaustion on the journey or simply never awoke when spring returned to the earth in 127 A.E. Yet they eventually arrived at the end of a long journey in the highlands above the Great Northern Forest. The details of this journey quickly entered the Great Recitation, the history taught by rote to all children of
suga and exiled
barumbesukeh.
The exiles and Winterpine himself were welcomed by the tribal leaders of the northern troll tribes, who had prospered in the century and a half since the fall of Promethea. The Northern
dyarvikim [Children of the Forest], were a mixture of the wild northern Dyarvik and descendents of Promethean slaves exiled from Five Stones fifty years earlier. Approximately 9000 trolls and 15,000 troll-spawn occupied a massive stretch of forest and plains from the highlands to the sea. They had built mighty hill-forts and stone circles, created cultivated fields and rolling pastures in the great wilds; many advances in pottery, husbandry and metallurgy date to this wealthy period. Still, many Dyarvik lived much as they had for centuries, even under the Prometheans, traveling in alone or in small bands. They lived alongside human tribes mostly peacefully, though there were constant skirmishes and ritual battles between dyarvikim and the fierce Feinar warriors.
For a time, all was well in the North, and for twenty-five years, Winterpine and his people prospered alongside the northern tribes through seasons of great plenty. But the good times were not to last. Dyarvik ancients speak of a great and bitter wind that came down from the north in the fall of 154 A.E., bringing a particularly cold and bitter winter, with more snow than had been seen in memory. Floods followed in the spring, washing away crops and soil, and then a great rainstorm drowned the land for five days. No more rain would fall for four months. The next winter was long and cold, and again the spring floods burst the banks of rivers, and again the summer was dry. Plants began to wither, cattle collapsed in the heat, wells and food stocks grew shallow. Troll children and troll-spawn emerged from hibernation smaller and weaker than they began, as though their hungry hosts had drained some of their vitality. The elders prayed that the Five Ancients would look on them and weep, wetting the land with their tears. No answer was heard, but the rumble of thunderstorms that always stayed on the horizon.
The drought would last fifteen years, until 169 A.E. During this time, many trolls ventured south, only to find the famine more severe and the human residents greedily guarding their meagre stocks. Others returned to Five Stones and submitted to Thunderspeaker. But most stayed, and suffered. Violence broke out between humans and trolls, and dozens of minor wars were fought over trifles. The Feinar, in particular, became convinced that the trolls had a wealth of food in their hill-top forts. While they could not defeat the trolls when they marched in force, they hunted isolated troll families and bands, and massacred villages of troll-spawn. In winter, they scaled unguarded walls and killed trolls as they slept. In response, troll chieftains marched north in 159, 163, 167, and 168. They killed Feinar by the thousands, burnt camps and villages, set fire to their forests, and returned home hungry and bloodied, with nothing to show for their efforts but scars and empty faces. Trolls understood violence and combat between individuals and small groups, but this sustained mass warfare, year-after-year, exhausted them.
Worrying the trolls were too vulnerable on the lowlands and in the forests, Winterpine convinced many trolls to follow him back to the highlands. In 173 A.E., the Feinar and allied tribes saw their chance, and seized much of the north from the trolls in a single bloody summer. But their victory would last only a year; in 174 A.E., the drought returned even hotter and dryer. Lightning struck thousands of times, and catastrophic forest fires devastated at least twenty-five percent of the northlands. This unparalleled ecological disaster scattered both trolls and Feinar. The trolls were forced to retreat to the mountains with what remained of their herds, and many Feinar, naming the Great Forest as cursed, poured eastward towards Yossod and Qa-Avnel. By the end of the century, their tribal lands would almost reach the Ayel's borders. Some isolated trolls and humans remained in the Great Forest, but otherwise the whole region was either wilderness or Feinar territory. The
dyarvikim trolls returned to the highlands.
The famines finally ended in 179. While the Feinar raided the lands of the Yossod, groups of stone-trolls, searching for better pastures and fertile valleys, began to trade pottery, cattle and the strength of their backs for food and a place to stay the winter. While trolls and humans were wary of each other, troll-spawn proved good and approachable ambassadors between the two races. When Prometheans resisted Qa-Avnel, several stone-trolls served as engineers to the army, happy to break paths and carry burdens to help defeat their sworn enemies. Together, humans and trolls weathered the great famines, and rebuilt towards the end of the century in the North.
Meanwhile, over this period, a much smaller group of trolls had established themselves in the south, in the great river valley of the Get. These
Getterim, numbering perhaps two thousand, were the clans who had worked in the forges and on the monuments of Promethea, and were the most independent out of any trolls, paying very little attention to the political events in Five Stones. In the years leading up to 151 A.E., they had become closely entwined with the human cities on the coast, and had begun trading their raw metal and stone, and their labor, for advanced technologies, cattle, and jewelry, for which the
Getterim developed a pronounced taste.
In 151 A.E. an ambitious human king, Ahmet Pajar I, rode out to an assembly of the greatest troll chieftains. He ruled the city of Bet Aybar, the center of trade and wealth on the west coast of the continent, and dreamed of extending his power throughout the west, even up to Promethea. He promised the trolls he would institute their faith as a state religion, ban slavery in his realm, and grant them massive swathes of territory, tens of thousands of cattle, and, most remarkable of all, half of the Imperial treasury each year – in exchange for their labor and military service. The trolls agreed after much debate, and so the Empire of Bet Aybar was born. By Emperor Pajar I's death in 189 A.E. trolls were entirely entwined in the fabric of Imperial society. Racism and prejudice did remain on both sides: merchants grew frustrated with the trollish habit of freeing foreign slaves (and even “freeing” servants) wherever they saw them. Yet the Emperor's personal bodyguard was made up of fifty armored twenty-foot trolls, and troll-spawn formed half his legions.
By the end of the century, the three kingdoms of the stone-trolls stood as such:
- The
Dyarvikim tribal confederation in the northern highlands with trade routes to Yossod and the Great Forest. A significant minority are exiled suga who follow Winterpine, nearing the end of his waking life: he slept through three whole years at the end of the century. They are only just recovering from devastation: 7,000 trolls remain, and 14,000 trollspawn.
- The southern
Getterim number approximately 3,800 and an astonishing 16,000 trollspawn, most of whom are shepherds and wranglers or cavalry and legionnaires of Bet Aybar.
- The
barumbesukeh of the Five Stones, under High Chieftain Thunderspeaker, remain xenophobic, conservative and suspicious of outsiders. They number perhaps 4,200 with only a few remaining loyal troll-spawn clans who guard the borders in winter. Most are stationed nervously on the eastern border, where the new Scalethein Empire has began to rub up against the holy lands of the stone-trolls.
Major Events for the Dyarvik:
Cultural: Increasing cultural, poltical and religious divisions between:
Barumbesukeh: trolls never enslaved by Prometheans, in general xenophobic and religiously conservative. They believe trolls should be ruled by one Most High Chieftain (Thunderspeaker), and refuse to create sentient troll-spawn.
Suga: descendants of former slaves who believe the Assemblies of Voices and Reflection should include troll-spawn. Politically and religiously, however, they owe their allegiance to the Stargazer clan, notably the now-ancient Chieftain Winterpine.
Dyarvikim: northern trolls who live in the highlands and lowland hill-forts, generally the most numerous and (after the Getterim) technologically advanced of the stone-trolls. They are increasingly traders, traveling long distances, living in small groups, and bartering their labor and knowledge for food, supplies, winter protection, and (even more) knowledge.
Getterim: southern trolls who live in the Get valley and the big cities of Bet Aybar. They have a love of jewelry, fancy armour and weapons, and take pride in their skill in husbandry, agriculture, warfare, and construction.
Technological: Generally increasing tech with domestication of animals, riding horses (for trollspawn; though troll-spawn horses are common, being stronger, larger, and easier to tame and control), pottery, architecture, and metallurgy.
Military: Getterim trolls begin to use armour and metal weapons in battle. Troll-spawn now provide the majority of the cavalry of Bet Aybar, and they have started to serve in the Imperial legions, developing new forms of miltary organization and mass combat techniques.
In the north, dyarvikim have begun to construct massive defensive fortifications and hill-forts or earth, wood and stone to protect themselves, especially on the lowlands.
The Five Stones has developed the “Stoneguard”, massive trolls who spend their lives training for combat to enforce the will of the Most High Chieftain Thunderspeaker.
Government:
Thunderspeaker consolidates control in the Five Stones, and exiles the suga rebels, lead by Winterpine, to the north.
In the south, the getterim support Bet Aybar's rise to power and the expansion of a human state that worships the stone-troll Gods.
Territory:
