Gnorrid the Warrioress - Background Fantasy - Long - 2 of 4

The kingdoms of men occupying the known world were built along great rivers or near their mouths; along the shores of calm shallow seas, teeming with fish and shells; and in fertile plains and rich valleys producing an abundance of crops and livestock. In spite of numerous conflicts and small wars, the thousand kingdoms enjoyed general prosperity. Behind it all was the Sisterhood of the Great Goddess and its temples which were present in all the kingdoms. The Sisterhood always worked behind the scenes to maintain some semblance of stability and harmony in spite of the natural ways of men.

Men were energetic, innovative, creative, inquisitive, playful, egocentric, boastful, covetous, selfish, lustful, possessive, cruel, vain, and vengeful to name only a few of their qualities. The Sisterhood understood well that these characteristics had to be harnessed and orchestrated to create and maintain a stable and viable civilization. Men were necessary, useful, and even desirable, but their destructive traits could not be allowed to run amuck.

For three thousand years the Sisterhood had worked subtly and diligently behind the scenes to influence the decisions and actions of kings and power brokers. The seeresses knew, wisely, when to apply pressure and when to back off. Men had to indulge their lust for power and conquest; no amount of manipulation could prevent this. The Sisterhood did, however, manage to keep wars small and the conquests ultimately inconsequential so as to prevent too much power from amassing in the hands of one man.

In this way the kingdoms of men hummed like a thousand beehives strung out across the fertile and productive regions of the globe. This constituted the known world. Beyond the borders of the buzzing little kingdoms; far up the rivers where the water became too shallow for the galleys; in the deep forests of the north; in the high mountains of the east; and in the stony wastes of the south bordering the great desert was the uncivilized, unknown world.

The inhabitants of these inhospitable lands were primitive and scattered, living in small tribes ruled by chieftains. Although there were occasionally skirmishes between these peoples and the kingdoms on the periphery of civilization, they never posed a real threat to the kingdoms. They were a nuisance at worst. Military forays into the wilderness usually brought new slaves and sometimes precious metals and gems back to the kingdoms. Other than this, the kingdoms of men showed little interest in the harsh and unproductive lands beyond their borders.

Likewise, the Sisterhood showed little interest in the affairs of primitives. Perhaps it was three millennia of prestige and privilege within the kingdoms of men that had caused them to become oblivious to the peoples outside their comfortable domain. The lives and culture of the primitives were no doubt reminiscent of the world in which the Sisterhood had its origins, but these humble beginnings bore little resemblance to the splendor and luxury enjoyed by the priestesses in their temple complexes. The Sisterhood was no more concerned with the affairs of primitives than were the kings and nobles.

Except fore some unsettling omens reported by a handful of seeresses, the entire civilized world had become complacent. Both the Sisterhood and the kingdoms chose to discount the omens as being in error. Life had become too predictable and comfortable. Surely no serious threat could exist outside the boundaries of the civilized world. This was not possible.

The first reports came into the central kingdoms of several powerful and voracious tribes on the southern frontier causing problems for the kingdoms in that region. These tribes were semi-nomadic herdsmen who inhabited the rocky wastes at the edge of the great desert. They intermittently occupied sites where they engaged in smelting, iron working and other crafts normally associated with more settled people. (Their swords were said to be extremely durable and effective.) It seems that several such tribes had banded together. They were reported to share a common language and they even had a system of writing. Above all, however, these tribesmen were far more numerous than anyone had imagined.

Several powerful kings decided to raise an army to send to the southern frontier to assist their weaker brethren. The kings assumed this little campaign would be over shortly and looked forward to the new slaves and other booty it would bring into their kingdoms. The Sisterhood was apprehensive. Although this little alliance was temporary, consolidation of power in the kingdoms was something they wanted to avoid. Nevertheless, the mercenary army was soon marching on its way to the southern frontier, assured of an easy victory against primitives.

Within weeks, refugees and other survivors, made their way to the central kingdoms. They carried tales of horror and woe. The mercenary army sent by the kings had been annihilated! These nomadic herdsmen were certainly more than mere primitives. They fought with discipline and dedication that would rival the army of any kingdom. The refugees told of how the army had bravely defended the walls of their kingdom, killing five tribesmen for each soldier that fell. The tribesmen kept assailing the walls with tens of thousands of men, chanting the name of their leader and their desert god, Dhradumus. Finally, they overwhelmed the defenders. This was followed by an orgy of killing, rape, and pillage.

In past conflicts, in the infrequent event that primitives would overrun a civilized town, they would take their booty and retreat back into their wilderness. Anything that couldn’t be killed, eaten, or raped on the spot was of little use to the savage. Their tribal structure was usually so primitive they couldn’t even make effective use of slaves - at least not on a long-term basis. These tribesmen, however, instead of abandoning the ruined cities, occupied and rebuilt them, claiming them as their own.

Most disturbing of all for the Sisterhood, however, was that their temple complexes were not considered sacred by these invaders. In fact quite to the contrary, they assailed the priestesses with greater fury and zeal than they did the vanquished army. The mere existence of the Sisterhood was an abomination to their desert god, who would tolerate no rival. The guardians of the temple fought valiantly, but they were no match for the frenzied hoards from the desert. Those priestesses unfortunate enough to be captured alive were tortured unmercifully.

Following the annihilation of the mercenary army the desert tribesmen conquered several kingdoms on the southern frontier. The kingdoms were consolidated under the rule of one powerful chieftain who apparently was the leader of many desert tribes - perhaps the supreme leader. The temples of the Sisterhood were razed and the priestesses killed. The tribesmen erected temples to Dhradumus and forced all the survivors in the conquered kingdoms to vow allegiance to him or be killed.

The Sisterhood faced a dilemma and dark days were surely ahead. The seeresses realized that their traditional policy of keeping the kingdoms tiny and divided would not successfully meet this new threat. These desert tribesmen, who quickly assimilated the resources and technical know-how of the civilized kingdoms, threatened to overrun the known world. Through their influence with most of the powerful kings, they devised a plan to consolidate the many tiny kingdoms into seven confederacies which would become the seven kingdoms. Each individual king was allowed to think he was an independent and equal partner in his confederacy, but the plan was to quickly consolidate the seven confederacies into powerful entities with a single ruler in each; hence the seven kingdoms.

The plan seemed to work, at first. The most powerful ruler in each confederacy of kingdoms quickly assumed leadership and consolidated his power. The Sisterhood wagered that they could still maintain a balance of power by manipulating the rulers of the seven kingdoms. However, in a war that raged for over a century, many unexpected and unfortunate developments occurred.

The pressures of war against this powerful and relentless enemy forced the leaders of each of the seven kingdoms to confer the title of supreme commander on the most experienced and able king. The seven kingdoms, out of necessity, were consolidated into a single entity, which afterward, was referred to as the Regency.

Ironically, the first great blow to the Sisterhood and the old order came when the tide of war began to turn in favor of the Regency. Regal armies recaptured some fallen kingdoms that had been occupied for decades by the desert tribesmen. Although the Regal standard now flew from the battlements of the cities, Regal troops, liberators of their brethren, were surprised to find they now occupied an alien land. The languages of each liberated kingdom had been corrupted and bastardized by the tongue of the desert invaders. The inhabitants spoke a from of pidgin barely recognizable to their liberators. Furthermore, the tongue of the tribesmen was becoming the standard across the occupied kingdoms. Peoples once separated by language now found the new language to be a unifying element.

Most importantly of all, however, the Regal armies found the populace of the liberated lands to be irrevocably dedicated to the worship of Dhradumus, the desert god. Although worship of Dhradumus had been enforced at the point of a sword, a new generation was coming of age who had known no other god. The mere mention of the Sisterhood to the youth of these kingdoms brought forth a reaction of loathing and intolerance.

Vengeful and uncompromising, Dhradumus was in every way a man’s god and a conqueror’s god. The followers of Dhradumus extolled manly virtues and despised the effeminate. The cult of Dhradumus spread quickly from the border provinces (no longer called kingdoms) into the heart of the Regency. Leaders of the new cult pointed out, quite rightly, that the Sisterhood had been manipulating the kingdoms of men from behind their thrones, emasculating them and causing kings and nobles to be little better than the eunuchs who voluntarily relinquished their manhood to serve the priestesses. Men who had followed the Great Goddess under the leadership of the Sisterhood were made ashamed. Joining the followers of Dhradumus by the hundreds of thousands, men began to clamor for an end to the Sisterhood and the destruction of its temples.

At long last the Regent, ruler and supreme commander of the armies, declared the worship of Dhradumus to be the official religion of the Regency. Those who dared follow another god would be put to death. The Regent set his armies against the Sisterhood razing the great temple complexes, burning the libraries, and killing the priestesses. Few escaped the holocaust. The age of the Great Goddess was over and the age of Dhradumus had begun.

The Regency was ultimately successful against the tribesmen, driving their scattered remnants back into the desert from whence they came, at least that is how history records it. At the end of the great conflict which was called the War of the Seven Kingdoms, a supreme ruler ruled the known world. The Regency was united under the worship of Dhradumus and a universal language was now spoken in all the provinces. The new language was but a variation of the tongue of the invaders from the desert. Within little more than a century the thousand kingdoms had become one empire, under one ruler, with one language, and one god.

Continued in Part 3