From: Joerg Baumgartner (joe@toppoint.de)
Date: Mon 29 Jul 1996 - 23:08:00 EEST
After the Gbaji wars had moved away from Choralinthor Bay and finally
ended in distant Dorastor, the people of Karse remained tribute-paying
vassals of the Hendriki king and the Only Old One.
The Karse tribe (i.e. the tribe living along the mouth of the Creek-Stream
River) did well during the early Second Age. The city thrived with the
Waertagi trade flowing in from Slontos and further off, and other goods
coming down from Dragon Pass. Argan Argar caravans came and went with valuable
goods, and also human merchants made fortunes through their trade.
The everyday life of the city was ruled by a council of thanes and priests
who also sat on the ring of the tribal king. They oversaw the market and
port, set up and collected tolls (to pay the tribute to the Hendriki king
and the Only Old One), and they sat in justice over minor offenses. The
kings of Karse ruled wisely most of the time, although some did not. Several
of these were claimed by the earth priestesses in their rites.
The kings and people of Karse did not take an active part in the tax
revolts of their northern brethren, and neither did they embrace the Wyrms
Mind Collective wholeheartedly, although they were friendly with the EWF
and allowed draconic magicians into their city.
Throughout this period the Karse tribe was a rival of the Kitori tribe
to its north. The city of Anjoralini saw several battles fought between
the Karsites and the Kitori.
The presence of quite a strong draconic Orlanthi cult in Karse made
the Jrusteli traders and scholars, who had developed an increased interest
in the area after the explorer Hrestol Arganitis had voyaged into Dragon
Pass, take a land grant from the Only Old One in the Tangle, the bushland
right below the plateau, where they built the city of Lylket.
Lylket became an exemplary Jrusteli port city, built in geometrical and
runic patterns, and densely crowded compared to its sister on the river
shore, which was surprised by the sudden absence of the Waertagi traders.
Karse still controlled all of the River trade, but Lylket became a major
port for the Jrusteli, and especially for those following the Zistorite
cult. Once it was clear that the Waertagi would not return, the boat-builders
of Karse started their own shipyards, and produced some of the finest vessels
of that age.
However, little over 200 years after the foundation of Lylket, the Machine
Wars destroyed the city, leaving only ruins haunted by shades and worse
darkness spirits lurking around the tunnel exits leading there from the
Shadow Plateau. Karse returned to its former all-importance for a short
while, then the Closing struck, moving even into Choralinthor bay, and
destroying most of the fleet in the harbour. The surviving vessels were
barely sufficient to keep in contact with Nochet on the far side of the
Bay. The thriving port of Karse was cut from its trade way, and as a result
a large portion of the populace previously living off the sea trade left
the city to find their luck elsewhere. 90 years later the Empire of the
Wyrms' Friends collapsed when its leaders were killed, and yet 80 years
later the Dragonkill War closed Dragon Pass for generations. Karse had
lost any strategical importance for trade, being too far from the Hendriki
plateau to serve as a port for that land. The city fell into ruins, and
only a fishing community and a few farmers remained in the land between
the unkempt ramparts. The temple barely survived, thanks to its grove,
tended mainly by runners and their dryad.
About fifty years after the Dragonkill War, the Heortland plateau experienced
the outbreak of religious and cultural turmoil. Traders had arrived on
overland roads from Ralios, and they had found ready acceptance with the
Hendriki nobility, who remembered their good relations with Arkat and his
Ralian companions 750 years ago. Through this contact, a formerly obscure
subcult of the Hendriki tribal pantheon, the Aeolian Church, aquired supremacy
and began to clash with the tribal Alakoring sect which had become dominant
with the refugee waves after the collapse of the EWF continuing up to the
Dragonkill War aftermath. Strengthened with Western armour and magics,
the Hendriki pushed back the minor tribes of Alakoring's design, until
these too united in three super-tribes. Karse inherited only a few settlers
out of this conflict, though.
The situation changed when Belintar the Stranger swam ashore in 1313
and challenged the Only Old One. A civil war shook all of the Shadowlands,
the rifts going even through the Hendriki families. Finally, the supporters
of Belintar won over in Heortland. Those who had been opposing the king
and his ultra-zealous Aeolian policy emigrated, and built a Ralian style
castle right next to the bay where the two creeks entered the remnants
of the River, additionally obscured by Belintar's slaying of the beast
of Darknes leaving behind the Lead Hills. The Hendriki king was content
for a while to let his enemies gather in this unimportant border mark as
a buffer against the trolls and concentrated his conquests on the inner
and southern plateau instead.
When Belintar learned of the human resettlement in Dragon Pass, he chose
at first to bide his time. He recognized the potential of the Karse settlement,
though, and when approached by a Hendriki noble fallen out of favour with
his king he granted him that land as an independent barony subject only
to the Godking of the City of Wonders. The Godking did this to balance
the power of his subject kingdoms, shortly after the Hendriki King had
conquered Refuge from its God Forgot overlords, as a means to keep the
peace within his Holy Country.
The newly installed baron of Karse, swelled by numerous refugees from
the ongoing civil disorder in Heortland, began to build a maginificent
castle around his small fortress on the shore, and also a walled city.
He imported master builders from Nochet, who constructed a fortress and
city wall in the same style as the great metropolis' walls. The Godking
sponsored much of the building efforts, which resulted in a city inhabited
by citizens originating from more than one of his Sixths.
The neutrality of the Barony of Karse made it the centre of financial
trades all over Heortland, and parts of the Holy Country. An annual fair
made debtors pay up their debts, or at least interest, all within one week,
or suffer debtors' prison.
Then, with the formation of the Principality of Sartar, trade began
to flow through Dragon Pass again, and the Sartar route became interesting,
even though the Godking sabotaged free exchange of goods for a while by
sponsoring Kitori raids upon caravans to and from Sartar. Still, this did
not disencourage intrepid merchants, and trade volume grew. Later, when
Tarkalor had suppressed the (meanwhile no longer supported) Kitori tribe,
the trade flowed fully via the good highways between Heortland and Sartar.
While the Volsaxi Confederation as the new caretaker of the upper Marzeel
Valley neglected the road upkeep a bit, it proved effective in holding
the route free from troll or Kitori raids most of the time.
The increased trade had lured many members of the royal tribe of Sartar
into the luxury of the Holy Country. Jotisan of Karse was a grandson of
King Sartar who settled here in 1555, the year Palashee Long-Axe was killed
by Phargentes. His example was soon followed by other, less important,
relatives of the princes. Some people claim that this emigration weakened
the Sartar dynasty so much that its fall in 1602 became inevitable.
The Lunar conquest of Sartar brought new merchants in addition to the
old connections e.g. with the Jonstown guild, like the Hazara sable clan
from Kostaddi, and while during the 1605 invasion there was a Lunar strike
force at the gates of Karse, there never had been a real danger of conquest
by the Empire. As long as the Godking defended the country, Karse was safe.
But in 1616, the Godking disappeared without providing a successor, and
three years after this Karse fell in a dramatic assault (described in KoS)
to the Lunars.
*1 Karse: scotch: "carse" means exactly that, a stretch of low-lying land
along a river
PS: I hope this makes up for my annoying insistance at Convulsion's lore
auction, Nick. I _needed_ to know...
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