The areas that later coalesced into the empire of Muetar suffered less from the great Cataclysm than most other parts of the ancient Lloroi Empire. The tipping of the planet's axis actually improved the overall climate, which previously had been colder and dryer. Moreover, the upheavals of the topography rechanneled two great rivets, the Deep and the Wanderer, through the region's heart. Once the shaken inhabitants recovered from the shock of hurricanes and earthquakes, they began to realize they now had the potential for a flourishing agriculture.
But these early days were marred by frequent aftershocks and the invasion of starving mobs and marauders. The cities could not be supplied with provisions while Nature was in revolt (and indeed, for long afterwards). Accustomed to public grain doles from the extinct Imperial government, the citified refugees were ill?equipped to survive, except by plundering. Fortunately, the country people in many places managed to organize and defended their homes. Often they were led by brethren trained in the Imperial Army. Over the next few years the swarms of marauders were thinned by starvation, exposure and disease. Only a few, who had special and useful skills, found refuge with the countrymen. The vast region was soon only scantily populated by hunters and scattered farming communities.
he inhabitants of the post?Cataclysm called their land Kalruna?Sasir, the Land of Great Rivets. In other areas of the former Empire, the small bands of survivors often plunged into deep barbarism. Kalruna?Sasir, fortunately, was spared that fate by its favorable circumstances and the industry of its people. Kalruna?Sasir was, however, more a cultural region than a state. As prosperity and numbers increased, peaceful trade developed between the growing villages. But each community was self?governing, usually led by an elected council of elders.
Eventually, disunity undid Kalruna?Sasir. As the population multiplied
and available land began to run short, quarrels developed over rival claims.
Worse, ambitious leaders hatched sanguinary schemes to seize their neighbors'
holdings by force of arms. Hillero, our principal source for information
of this early period, laments thusly in his History of Beolon: "While men
still worked to rebuild a shattered world lords, priests and village headmen
kept in some degree their proper place in society. But when all memory
of harsh times had passed away with the generations and men knew only the
present, peaceful state of things, all principles of truth and justice
were destroyed to such an extent that not even a dream of them remained,
except in a few??and they were very few."
In their fratricidal madness, the leaders of Kalruna?Sasir hurried
their own destruction.
Now, centuries after the Cataclysm, outsiders began to make themselves known on the fringes of Kalruna?Sasir. The warring parties eagerly hired these barbarians as mercenaries against one another. At first the barbarians fought well for their paymasters, but the stories and goods they brought home afterwards incited their kinsmen. Slowly at first, then more rapidly, barbarian tribes migrated toward the pleasant, cultivated land. Disunited, the warring communities fell rapidly. When the natives were all fled, slain or enslaved, the wars still went on. One barbarian tribe fought against another, as war?chiefs founded tiny, ephemeral kingdoms.
Over the next two centuries conditions stabilized as the mild conditions of Kalruna?Sasir took the warlike edge off the invaders' behavior. The existence of such trading posts as developed in Pennol and Basimar bespoke other pursuits aside from primitive agriculture. But the return of prosperity summoned even more invaders from the wilderness.
The most important of these were the Mueta. Their first incursions
evinced a design not only to plunder, but also to subjugate, the tribes
around Basimar. But if tradition may be relied upon, these early
raids were invariably repulsed. The men of Kalruna?Sasir refused
to pay tribute to the Mueta and maintained their independence.
At last, seven centuries after the Cataclysm, resistance began to weaken??owing
perhaps to internal dissension. A Mueta Chieftain managed to capture
the stronghold of Basimar by a ruse. He quickly proceeded to annex
the surrounding territory. Resistance was slight since the chief,
whose name was Oyaro, was a strong, fair leader who put a welcome end to
the prevailing strife of the region.
Oyaro founded a long line of princes, the Oyarostars, who governed Muetar
until the twelfth century after the Cataclysm. The early Oyarostars
maintained a disciplined kingdom and waged perpetual war on the frontier.
They encouraged the zeal of their warriors by generous awards of newly
conquered lands, a portion of which they retained as crown land to enrich
the monarchy. They were opposed by the older dynasts of Pennol, who
had merged with the local population into the Maragonian kingdom.
A slow process of consolidation began. When enemies were strong,
the expansion of the Maragonian and Muetan states were temporarily checked.
When a king fell into disorder, it quickly crumbled before the attacks
of one or the other.
An astonishing event accelerated the evolution of Muetar. In the
tenth century after the Cataclysm, Minaria suffered invasion by monstrosities
the ancients called "the abominations of the land and the horrors of the
air." Since many records were destroyed during these dreadful incursions,
Hillero and the lesser historians necessarily made us of dubious materials,
such as epic poetry and legend. The creatures may have been amphibians,
for they followed the river valleys inland from the coast. Their
infestation of the great lake of the Deep, then called Lake Lorimer (the
Green Waters), caused it to be renamed Lake Carth??"Carth" meaning "abomination"
in the regional dialect. Since that time unverified reports of sinuous
monsters in Lake Carth have been many.
The most plausible explanation for this unnatural irruption belongs to
the history of early Mivior. Not even the Maragonian kingdom could
stand before their onslaught. Suffice it to say that the scourge
sent hosts of refugees streaming eastward into the Muetaran domain.
The Oyarostars sold their succor dearly, forcing many a landed refugee
into oaths of fealty. Once in safety, most victims repudiated these
forced oaths, but the Oyarostars used them as a pretext for much of their
subsequent aggression.
The "abominations of the land and the horrors of the air" lost their impetus
soon after reaching the Muetaran frontiers. The Oyarostars successfully
held them at bay and several Muetaran epic heroes gained fame in these
times as great monster?slayers. The monsters began to die out as
mysteriously as they had come. The Oyarostars followed the retreat
cautiously, capturing the devastated Pennol in the twelfth year of King
Mykino, the 996th year after the Cataclysm.
The devastation of Kalruna?Sasir left a power vacuum which was swiftly
filled by Muetaran armies. Petty kingdoms of Groat and Beolon were
the last to fall. By the early eleventh century the Muetarans had
largely achieved their present?day borders. Their last permanent
conquest was the north shore of Lake Carth, whose inhabitants, the Vidarna
tribe, had been weakened by the destruction and subsequent capture of Pennol.
Not permanently subdued, these people figured largely in the history of
Immer.
After the conquest of Muetar's natural borders, the Oyarostar's military
adventures fared badly. The wilderness of the Border Forest and the
Mountains of Ice was not worth the cost of annexing. The trading
cities of the south were too far away, across a barren wasteland.
Equally forbidding were the Nithmere Mountains, populated by powerful Goblin
tribes. To the northwest the resurgent Vidarna checked their advances;
moreover, Muetarans disliked the cold northern winters and the short growing
season. The warm country of Hothior proved a more tempting target.
For a time the eastern Hothiorans fell under Muetaran power, as the country
had not reorganized after the invasion of the monsters. But the Hothiorans
would not assimilate into the Muetaran kingdom. For the first time
the Muetarans were trying to subjugate a people with whom they shared no
cultural traditions. They were men of the inland river country and
the Hothiorans never ceased to regard them as aliens and enemies.
Many Hothiorans took to the hills and forests. From there they mounted
raids against Muetaran strongholds and other Hothiorans who collaborated
with the enemy. When pressed by Muetaran armies, they retired beyond
the River Ebbing, where Hothior remained free. There reinforced and
supplied, they invariably returned with a vengeance.
The Muetarans replied with massacres and the mass deportation of Hothiorans
as serfs for the homeland. But such policies only incited a more
bitter and desperate resistance. At length, the king of Muetar resolved
to deprive the rebels of their bases by the conquest of all Hothior, no
matter what the cost. The cost proved disastrous, for a major Muetaran
army was lured into ambush and shattered. In a continuing flood of
victory, the Hothiorans rose up and swept all the Muetaran landlords and
colonists back to their own country.
The failure of expansion caused the decay of the Oyarostaran state.
The energies of the landless nobility, once turned against foreign foes,
now festered over internal strife. The later Oyarostars found no
better solution than to attempt to buy loyalty, as in the past, with land
grants. But the only land left to give away was the crown land.
The impoverished dynasty inspired baronial contempt and even more insolent
outlawry. The last kings were ignored by their subjects and lapsed
into wild eccentricities. One of the last, Gybalus, accomplished
so little he was known by no loftier epithet than "the Flute Player".
After a century of Oyarostaran impotence, an ambitious sorcerer named Corfu
usurped the throne and put the royal family to the sword.
Corfu had attained a kind of power not enjoyed by a black sorcerer since
the pre?Cataclysmic usurpation of the Scarlet Witch King. He sent
agents into neighbors' territories, to assist local covens to seized control
of their own kingdoms. They found the easiest route to tyrannical
power to be by the infiltration of the law courts, the universities, and
the bureaucracy. His minions were most successful in Hothior, where
a demonists named Mornard used magic to clear his way to the chancellorship.
The murderous ascendancy of Corfu, the despotism, and the sorcerous abominations
which followed spurred the last responsible elements in Muetar into action.
Egalon, a prince of Pennol with a dash of royal Oyarostar blood in his
veins, rallied the country. The war laid the country waste, but Corfu
eventually felt his power ebbing. He won by bribery an alliance of
the magic?wise Wandering People, but failed to protect them from rebel
raiders. The survivoring Wanderers placed the curse of the werewolf
upon the evil ruler, and distracted by his affliction, the rebel forces
made great gains against him. Also he let his aid to his allies wane
and their conspiracies began to fail, and even his most important ally,
Mornard of Hothior, perished in combat with the patriotic sorceress Sheladeann.
Finally, Corfu used black magic of the most powerful to draw the curse
into his left hand, and then struck it off, freeing himself of the Wandering
People's curse.
But it was too late to save the power he has stolen. Seizing
Basimar, Egalon slew Corfu in the midst of a desperate conjuration to save
himself and mounted the throne as the first of a new dynasty, that of the
Pirostar, which still rules Muetar.
Egalon was an exceedingly able young prince and kept the loyalty of those
factions that were tired of the former strife. Egalon humbled the
lawless barons by confiscating the lands stolen from small holders.
He did not, however, return these properties to their rightful heirs, but
retained them as crown land. This simultaneously weakened his rivals
and restored the crown's solvency. Times were dangerous and the measures
he took were appropriately ruthless.
Egalon's break with the past was complete. Because Basimar was associated
with the country's worst hour, he moved the capital to Pennol. Likewise,
the title of "king" having fallen into derision, he assumed the ancient
title of "Emperor." He favored the non?Muetaran nobility and rallied them
against the insolent blue-bloods of Mueta. He raised emergency levies
and flung back foreign raiders from the borderlands: Goblins, barbarians,
Ponese, horse nomads, Vidarnans and even Hothiorans.
Egalon realized that his country required a professional military class
and an economy to sustain it. With this end in mind, he extended
serfdom, intending that the great mass would labor to support a warrior
elite.
The coercion of Muetar's freeholders into bondsmen was bitterly resented,
but in the hand to mouth existence of the of the Muetaran serfs kept the
periodic uprisings local. But by the time of Emperor Herrott, the
conditions on the land had improved considerably. Trade fairs flourished
and town-populations won concessions of municipal government from their
local lords, usually in exchange for large loans in time of emergency.
Further, new ideas were propagated, even among the serfs, where new ideas
were most dangerous. The missionaries of the cults, particularly
the cult of Huisinga, the deity of change, preached self-worth, if not
actually rebellion.
The Earthquake of 1354 disrupted the flow of the Wanderer and deprived
much land of its irrigation. Herrott turned to trade to make up for
the injury to the kingdom's agriculture, dredging and widening the River
Deep for deep-draft navigation. The new trade spurred even more town
life, and carried the Great Plague inland from the sea ports where it had
started.
The Great Plague of 1355 cause great losses among Muetar's serfs.
Not long after it was over, the damaged fabric of life in the country erupted
into piecemeal revolts -- more serious than those of the past, especially
with the military revenues cut by the disruption of the plague. Also,
it was not long after the plague that the peasants learned that their labor
was much-valued by the landlords of the depleted countryside, who bide
high wages for free laborers, and did not ask many questions of a willing
worker.
The crown's attempt to find and return runaway serfs caused an explosion,
especially in the irredentist areas of Maragonia and in the impoverished
regions of Groat. It would they not have been an especially noteworthy
event except that the peasants found a leader in a disgruntled mercenary
captain, the warrior maid trouble. For most of a year the countryside,
especially the rough country north of Pennol, inhabited by Maragonians,
always resentful of the Muetaran supremacy. The government brought
the full weight of the army down on the rebels and slew tens of thousands,
which only added to the manpower shortage of the strapped kingdom.
Five Pirostar emperors have reigned, some able, none totally discreditable.
The sixth, called Herrott Golden Helm, has mounted the lofty throne at
Pennol. The subjects of his vast realm watch eagerly to take his
measure and gather in the fruits of his reign.