The Ffexians never recovered from the War of
the Demons. A pretender was soon installed on the throne of Ffex, but he was immediately challenged by Yunreb, the reigning Duke of Tuza; a direct descendant of Orlacad and Silenx. The barbarians, now a civilized, if rustic, people accepted him as one of their own and flocked to his side. His forces quickly defeated the remnants of the Ffexian army and he was proclaimed the heir to the throne of Ffex. Yunreb moved the seat of power from Ffex to Tuza, which quickly grew to become the most populous city in the Oroolian Sea. A new realm was constituted from the old lands of Ffex and Tuza with the Duke of Tuza, now known as the Prince of Iffaros, as its head. The practice of magic was banned throughout its limits and for many decades the Tuzan monarchs ruled well. The idols of the ancient gods of the East, Lampedo and Sarpedon, were cast down and, save in the venerable shrines of Ffex, the Young Gods were again worshiped in Tuzan lands and the barbarian provinces.
The Tuzan princes extended the Ffexian conquests and began to push into the hinterlands of the Oroolian Sea. In the cool green northlands above Rhudavir they met their most implacable opponents. The barbarian tribes of Amuan, led by one Bangredeem, a priest-king of fearsome necromantic powers, defied the Tuzan forces for years -- even besieging Rhudavir itself. The Tuzans led one ill starred expedition after another into the misty Nesradian Hills, pursuing the barbarian horde into remote valleys where creatures of the elder world still dwelt. Always Bangredeem and his horde of half naked savages, springing from a thaumaturgic fog, suprised the Tuzan and cut them to pieces. At last a Tuzan expedition cornered Bangreedeem and his forces in one of the ancient hill forts scattered throughout the remote back country of the Nesradian Mountains. The Tuzans desperately attacked the fortifications in a night time assault, knowing that if they did not act immediately other barbarians, summoned by the bonfires blazing the hill fort, would surround them in turn. The first attack was repulsed, though with heavy losses among the barbarians. The Tuzans, heartened by their first taste of victory, renewed the attack confidently.
But a dreadful surprise awaited them. The first wave of Tuzans across the ramparts met not only their barbarian opponents, but also foes armed in the Tuzan fashion. What's more, in spite of their fearsome wounds, the beseiged forces fought with an unnatural vigor. The Tuzans wavered, confused by the appearance of their new enemies. Then a Tuzan cavalryman recognized an opponent: his brother, who had been slain in the first attack. The cavalryman blanched, then struck off the head of his brother. Riding up and down the Tuzan line he spread the fearsome tidings: Bangreedeem, outnumbered by the Tuzans five to one, had used his necromantic powers to reanimate the corpses of the Tuzan and barbarian dead and sent them against the besiegers. The appalled Tuzans fought furiously to avenge the hideous fate of the slain comrades. The reanimated corpses fought back mechanically, till they were hacked limb from limb and the remains thrown into the bonfires which lit the ghastly scene. At last Bangredeem himself was captured and burnt. Tthe restless dead of Tuza, whose dismembered limbs still twitched and jumped with unnatural life and blood lust, were at peace. The power of the barbarians was broken and Amuan was at peace.
The savage tribes of Amuan quickly began to adopt Tuzan speech and soon became prosperous, civilized provincials. In the southwestern Oroolian, however, the Tuzans merely clung to the coastal city of Myndo, hemmed in for decades by the savage Isarkians of mountain and plain. Mounted on hardy ponies, the wild tribesmen raided Tuzan settlements on the dry plains, burning farms and destroying irrigation canals, then escaping to the hills north before the heavily armored Tuzan troops arrived. Gradually, however, the Tuzans won over some chieftains with bribes of gold. Using these allies, the wily Tuzans played one tribe off another, till the once proud tribesmen were reduced to beggars and parasites. These they then enslaved and set to work on great slave farms along the River Niot, which cuts through Iskar north to south. A few escaped and fled to the hills whence they still depredate upon the lands of the hated Tuzans.
The realm of the Tuzans was now a virtual empire stretching from one end of the Oroolian to the other. The treasuries of the Princes of Iffaros were filled with gold and precious stones; the tribute of barbarian kings. Ivory, silks, and spices, gifts from Zanji merchants eager to trade for the furs, amber, and gold found in the northwestern part of Uthina, also enriched the Princes. Soon rival families, cadet branches of the House of Orlacad, assailed the dynasty established by Orlacad centuries before.
Of the rival families challenging the house of Orlacad, that of Mlondeeb the Deaf was the oldest and wealthiest. Founded by a wealthy merchant decades earlier, the Mlondeeb controlled trade throughout the Oroolian Sea. Their eponymous founder Mlondeeb established his house's wealth and power in a legendary feat. Two centuries earlier, Mlondeeb was a sailor aboard merchant vessel bound north with goods from Mirat. The captain midjudged his position and the ship strayed too close to the northern horn of the peninsula of Beliji. For years sailors had avoided this ominous promontory. The legendary worm Gusanas, an epicure of man flesh, dwelt on a high peak overlooking the seas about it. When Gusanas spied the unfortunate ship he swooped down upon it. Fanning his great wings, he blew the ship upon the rocks and dashed it to pieces. Mlondeeb secreted himself in a chest that had washed up on the rocks, while the worm leisurely picked off the mariners as they floundered onto shore. After gorging himself with man flesh, Gusunas, thinking the chest contained treasure, seized it and returned to his lair, a cavern in a lofty peak of the Belijian mountains. There he fell into a deep insensible slumber.
Mlondeeb, hearing the worm's thunderous snores, left his hiding place to search for a way out of the cave and down the mountain. Finding his egress blocked by the huge bulk of the worm, he turned around and followed a tunnel deep inside the mountain. He failed to locate an exit, but he found vast treasures, the loot of centuries, that Gusanas had secreted in his lair. His resolve stiffened by the knowledge he would soon starve if he didn't leave the cave, Mlondeeb took a sword from amongst the treasure, a legendary blade forged aeons ago in the War of the Gods by forgotten smiths of the Young Gods. Sword in hand, he crept up to the sleeping Gusanas and plunged the blade into the creature's soft belly. Steaming ichor spewed from the wound and the worm expired in convulsions, emitting ear splitting shrieks and groans. Mlondeeb, now permanently deaf, filled his wallet with a few priceless gems and fled the cavern, slipping and sliding down the lofty peak. Months later he made his way back to Tuza.
There he established himself as a merchant and his family grew rich and powerful. Years later, he returned once more to Gusanas's lair, but found that the cave and much of the peak itself had been destroyed in Gusanas's titanic death throes. Nevertheless, the gems he retained were enough to make him and his family, next to the House of Orlacad, the wealthiest of the Oroolian Sea. The location of Gusanas's lair remains a secret, though legend tells that Mlondeeb's descendants possess a map to the treasure.
Many years later Lachla the Mad, the great-great-great grandson of Mlondeeb, driven by greed and hunger for power, began to practice treachery against his sovereign. His family's immense wealth and influencem made him a powerful, if hidden, foe of Yunreb III, heir of Orlacad. Maintaining the pretense of loyal subject, Lachla used his position as a royal intimate to introduce dagger weilding assassins, subtle poisons, and witchcraft into the palace. When suspicion fell on Lachla, he fled the palace. Establishing a base deep in the Hyrian Mountains he created a rag tag army of disaffected provincials, Zanji adventurers and Haddee nomads and began to raid isolated Tuzan garrisons. Lachla succeded in destroying these small forces and his troops grew in strength and confidence, but against the elite royal corps Lachla's troops failed in battle after battle. Then, in a characteristically foolhardy stroke, Lachla led his raw troops against Tuza itself. The elite royal bodyguard scattered the raw provincials and Lachla, abandoned by his men, met Yunreb in single combat before the gates of Tuza.
Yunreb, the greatest swordsman of his age strode forward to meet his opponent. But he blanched with fear when he saw that his foe bore the sword of Gusanas The heirs of Mlondeem rarely used the invincible blade their forefather had stolen from the hoard of Gusanas, for its use exacted a hideous penalty from the wielder -- Mlondeeb had never recovered from the wounds caused by Gusanas's burning ichor and lived in dreadful pain till the end of days. But Lachla, stung beyond endurance by his repeated failures, had rashly taken it from its place and brought it with him to this last battle. He drew the sword his sire had stolen from the hoard of Gusanas decades ago. He ran to meet Yunreb uttering a blasphemous oath as he fell upon his enemy. Yunreb parried, but the blade of Gusanas was well nigh irresistible. Though Lachla wielded his sword unskillfully, he had the better of his opponent. For in spite of his superior skill, somehow Yunreb's every thrust went awry, or was parried by Lachla's blade, which notched and bent Yunreb's sword each time the blades met. At last Yunreb had only a shard with which to oppose his enemy. Lachla, seized by the bloodthirsty spirit of the blade, smashed his sword down upon Yunreb's helm. Down drove the ensorcelled blade, through the crested helm, through the mailed shoulders, to the armored codpiece, and cleft the royal person in twain. Thus began the reign of Lachla the Mad, First Emperor of Tuza.
But the blade of Gusanas had rendered Lachla, once merely a spoiled hothead, incurably mad. He proclaimed himself Emperor and assumed the grandiose airs of the despotic priest-kings of Zanj. His court, which had until then retained the simplicity and virtue of its rustic Tushana founders, became a seething cauldron of intrigue and vice.
Loyal Tuzans muttered that the increasing numbers of Zanji merchants in the Oroolian Sea contributed to the decadence of the Emperor's court. The Zanji had lately become curious about these faraway but wealthy western lands. The Zanji had traded in the Oroolian Sea for centuries and had established a city, Mirat, in the Bay of Haraki. But for many years the Zanji devoted themselves to other matters farther east; most notably to annihilating the infidels among the conquered peoples of Vedex and Rhastikoor. For the faith of Shahar required that all submit to its tenet or be killed. Faced with the prospect of a painful death, the Easterners converted in droves. But the Zanji, ruling from distant Sahar Menad, continued to punish the Easterners even after they adopted the faith of their conquerers. Satraps, who knew nothing of the lands they governed, were sent from the capital and returned laded with wealth after despoiling their charges. But most insufferable was the dreaded harem levy of the Zanji priest king. Each year the noble families of Vedex and Rhastikoor sent fifty of their young to serve in the seraglio of the Zanji despot. Always the priest king chose the flower of eastern youth: twenty five tawny, almond eyed maidens and twenty five sleek, clean limbed youths served a lustrum amidst the iniquity and machinations of the Zanji seraglio, appeasing the unnatural appetites of the priest kings and learning the arts of intrigue and vice. When they returned to their families, dissipated, idle and debauched, they were isolated in the halls of their parents--velvet lined prisons--and lived out their lives as parasites and schemers. For long years the East groaned under the burden of the oppressive conquerers.
The first rumblings of dissent came from wandering mendicants in northern Vedex. These impoverished holy men preached that the faith of Sahar Menad had become corrupt and required purification. The god Shahar, they said, was not a divine ruler who had created a panoply of lesser gods to aid him, but was in truth an impersonal force, the principle of order and good in the universe. Moreover, Shahar was opposed by a negative force, Hishawa, the principle of chaos and evil. The Zanji priests, claiming that this new teaching was nothing more than a recrudescence of the pernicious ancient Eastern myth of the cosmic battle of Lampedo and Sarpedon, attempted to root out this heresy and subjected the fakirs and their listeners to hideous tortures. But soon the populace united behind the movement and its charismatic leader, Gurwalz. The new faith became an armed crusade against the despotic Zanji. Zanji legions armored in cuirasses of brazen scales fought alongside their mounted Oundaghir allies against mailed Easterners emblazoned with religious devices. For a generation there was war between Zanji and the East, but in the end it was clear that Zanj would never hold the conquered lands. The limits of Zanji power and the Shaharite faith would extend east to the Rivers Wadreel and Aloo, and north to the Yozgats, but the Eastern lands were once again free of Zanji control.
Zanj now began to look westwards for new lands and converts. North of the Oroolian sea were lands rich in amber, fur, and whale ivory, and the fair skinned barbarians who dwelt in these lands were valuable as slaves among the dusky Zanji. Eastern mechants eager for these goods, bypassed the great markets of Rhudavir and Tuza and bartered directly with the northern barbarians. Oroolian merchants retaliated by depredating upon Zanji caravans and ships. In turn, the Zanji priest-king encouraged the barbarians to attack the northern borders of Iskar and Amuan and sent agents to the court of Lachla to whisper treasonous policies in the mad emperor's ear. The bluff, hearty Tuzan nobles, goaded to fury by their emperor's treachery and by the presence in court of the languid Zanji, with their scented boys and subtle, rarified cuisine, murdered Lachla and set up his nephew, Cascaras I, as emperor. He promptly put all Zanji in Tuzan lands to the sword and sent the Zanji priest king the embalmed heads of his principal agents at the Tuzan court.
The outraged monarch screamed for vengeance. He ordered a huge invasion fleet: thousands of men, horses, and elephants were set aboard gigantic Zanj war galleys and ordered to sail west. On land, a massive army of Oundaghir nomads began riding north along the border of the Ispochar desert towards Tuza. All along the littoral of the Oroolian Sea the population fled to the hills fearing the worst. The clumsy, lug rigged Oroolian trade galleys were no match for the sleek, predatory, lateen rigged triremes of the Zanji. The grim mounted archers of Oundaghir, clad in hauberks of horn and boiled leather scales, were reputed to be invincible. Moreover, they came in greater numbers than had ever been seen before. The fleet set sail in spring and expected to enter the Oroolian Sea in just over two months, after resupplying at Mirat. The Oundaghir hordes would arrive sooner and keep the Tuzan occupied on their northern flank as the fleet rowed into Tuzan waters.
The Tuzans waited fearfully, but no blood thirsty Oundaghir horsemen came sweeping down from the passes of the Hyrian Mountains with fire and sword. Only a strange, unseasonably chill, wind blew from the east, bearing with it the fine red dust of the Ispochar and a faint, repulsive charnel odor. A few crazed Oundaghir, found wandering dismounted and half dead from thirst, were captured by Tuzan skirmishers on the eastern slopes of the Hyrians. They told a mad tale of a blinding sandstorm which brought with it a preternatural darkness.. Then a sudden attack by Haddee nomads who seemed to come from nowhere. Other foes, bestial misshapen human like creatures who fought without weapons, rending and tearing with claw and tooth, appeared too. These were dreaded Quaquash of legend, a race of trogdolytic subhumans bred by the elder gods aeons ago from a monstrous interbreeding of man and beast. They proved virtually unkillable, except when a group of them pursued the fleeing Oundaghir outside the zone of darkness into the desert sun, where they blistered and sizzled as if a burning glass had been directed at their pallid, sickly flesh.
The nomads gibbered and wailed, crying that the demon priests of Ofkorzag had at last wreaked vengeance upon the Oundaghir, whose forefathers, led by Khezmenas, had destroyed the Haddee temples centuries ago. The pitiful wretches claimed to see demons where others could see nothing and begged to be allowed to destroy themselves. They were placed within strong walls, but all were found dead the next morning, their bodies horribly mutilated; expressions of terror frozen on their sun burned features.
The Tuzans, free to direct all their forces to the coming sea battle, hurriedly constructed a fleet of war galleys. The sages of Ffex constructed frightful engines of war for these galleys and even succeeded in discovering the recipe for sea fire, the weapon that rendered the Zanji galleys invincible in war. Luckily, unfavorable winds kept the Zanji fleet from Oroolian waters till late in the summer. But at last, word reached Ruphia, the port of Tuza at the mouth of the River Kafal, that the Zanji fleet had rounded the cape of Beliji. The new Tuzan fleet set sail and soon came upon the Zanji vessels, but a squall arose just as the fleets converged. The Tuzans, used to the summer storms of the Oroolian, rode out the squall, but the Zanji veered west, hoping to meet the Tuzan fleet during better weather.
But as the Zanji fleet sailed west, a good part, nearly half of the ships, remained behind, unaware of the order to avoid battle. When the squall cleared, the Tuzan fleet attacked the disoriented Zanji ships. With their greater numbers and the newly acquired sea fire, they defeated the terrified Zanji sailors, who had never before faced their own weapon. After the battle the Tuzans set off in pursuit of the rest of the Zanji fleet. For weeks the Tuzans pursued the Zanji, who circled the Oroolian Sea, hoping to escape the Tuzan fleet, which grew quickly as Ffexite and Amuan shipyards turned out new galleys. At last the Tuzans met the Zanji near the mouth of the River Niot in Iskar. The Tuzan fleet, vastly outnumbering the the Zanji, easily defeated the enemy, forcing their ships onto land, where mounted Iskar tribesmen hunted down the fleeing Zanji mariners, lassoing the unfortunate men and dragging them to death through thickets of thorny brush.
With this triumph, Tuza had destroyed the power of Zanj in the west. Soon all of Zanj's western colonies and outposts, from the Isles of Zai to the Bay of Haraki, fell into Tuzan hands and remained Tuzan provinces for centuries. In Zanj itself, the failure of the invasion and the loss of the western colonies produced tumults. Refugees fleeing from the western colonies created scarcities of food and shelter. Riots broke out in cities up and down the Basht. The King brought in Oundaghir nomads to quell the disorder, but the Oundaghir, furious at the destruction of so many of their people in the lost expedition to Tuza, turned on the decadent priest king. They murdered him and set up one of their own: an ascetic chieftain named Owg, who claimed to be the direct descendant of Khezmenas's irregular liaison with an Oundaghir slave girl. He established a dynasty that lasted a few short generations before another ambitious Oundaghir warlord destroyed it with fire and sword; a pattern that was to become common in Zanj.
Zanji, cut off in the east and west, turned south. The Phargolian isles, rich in spices, quickly fell to Zanj's rebuilt navies. Soon, Zanj merchants had reached the southern continent of Xibangu, where they discovered a veritable river of gold. Zanji traders found the mysterious people of Edneja -- an ancient kingdom hidden in the misty, inaccessible peaks of the Uphroo Mountains -- eager to trade their gold, which for them had less value than wood or stone, for the spices and silks of Phargolia and Rhastikoor. Voyaging up the River Slib, Zanji merchants met trading parties from Edneja and the two peoples exchanged their goods to the clash of brazen cymbals and the drone of ivory flutes. Soon gold flowed into Sahar Menad, and Tuzan privateers made themselves rich on the carelessness of Zanji captains.
These were the halcyon days of the Tuzan Empire. The Emperors, who inherited from their ancestors both keen commercial sense and an almost insane boldness, extended the Empire's borders north to the shores of the Salixian Sea, where they founded the city of Muzrig, and south to include the Zanji city of Mirat. The bellicose red haired barbarians of Movash and Ghat were pacified. The Movash, sailing in great war canoes carved from a single trunk of one the massive trees that crowded the Movash fjords, had been a constant menace to Tuzan ships. Now free from the barbarian menace, imperial fleets sailed far north, to barter with the pale, silent men of Yibma and Oubar for the curious treasures these northmen had amassed on their far flung voyages.
But as one generation of emperor succeeded the next, the strain of madness became dominant. Huge armadas were sent again and again to Xibangu to dislodge the Zanji from their impregnable fortresses along the River Slib, and each time were lost. Next the Mad Emperors mounted a huge fleet of exploration to circumnavigate the globe and investigate the tales of Yibman mariners, who told of unknown lands far in the west. Only a few ships limped back to the Oroolian Sea, where the starved, half mad sailors spoke of titanic storms, and a vast maelstrom which sucked the fleet down into a monstrous benthic netherworld, from which a handful of mariners miraculously escaped.
As the deluded emperors pursued their impossible projects the neglected imperial provinces went their own way. The lords of the vast Iskarian slave farms, slighted by the Empire except during tax season, became masters of virtually independent realms, ruling their lands as despots. Escaped slaves and shipwrecked sailors from all nations fleeing the cruelty of the slavemasters, escaped to the Iskarian hinterlands, where they joined with the nomads of the hills to form lawless mounted hordes. Fierce warlords, chosen in a savage trial of combat, led these Iskarian bandit hordes wherever there was plunder. Soon law existed only on the great slave farms, where the slave lords exercised cruel and absolute authority. Bandit hordes captured Myndo and turned the city into a haven for corsairs, ruled by a succession of pirate lords who deposed and murdered their predecessors with bloody regularity.
Caught up in the turmoils of Iskar, the Emperor failed to notice that peaceful Amuan, wealthiest of the provinces, chafed at imperial rule as well. The prosperous burghers of Rudavir and free farmers of the north were united in their hatred of Tuzan law, which penalized them by imposing stiff taxes and tariffs on all goods produced or sold outside of Tuza. Moreover, these taxes immediately left the north to fill imperial coffers; for the Emperor, fearful of the capricious Tuzan mob, thought it necessary placate it with free food and lavish entertainments paid for by provincial taxes. Townsmen and country folk of Amuan formed secret societies to hinder and harass imperial tax collectors. Resistance soon reached such a pitch that Imperial troops were sent to extirpate the movement. Thousands were imprisoned, tortured or killed by Tuzan inquisitors. Infuriated, the Amuanites openly rebelled. Great companies of Amuanite pike men and archers battled with the Tuzan cavalry in a vicious civil war. At last, on the plain of Lequestro the Amuanite army defeated a force of Tuzan troops and Amuanite nobles who had remained loyal to the Emperor. The Lord Mayor of Rudavir, who led the troops to victory, was proclaimed Count of Amuan,
de jure vassal of the Emperor, but
de facto supreme ruler of all Amuan and the northern provinces.
Distant Muzrig, which had aided the burghers and yeomen of Rudavir, was declared his fief of the new count. But this isolated city began to rule itself, as if the Empire had never existed. The frontier trading post became a prosperous city state, the largest settlement on the northern coast of Uthina. Mirat, the ancient city founded by the Zanj centuries before, soon followed suit, for its people, Zanji with a mixture of Tuzan stock, had long considered itself a race apart from either Tuzan or Zanji. The power of Mirat grew to include the wine rich Isles of Zai and most of the rocky peninsula of Beliji, where Tuzans had settled long before.
