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Marrishland has a long and violent history. Several civilizations have risen and fallen, here, and the book tells about events during one of the most turbulant periods - a period whose events determine whether a civilization survives or dies.

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Eslafeni and Ersvol (ca. 4000 - 3000 A.C.)

For the next three centuries (ca. 4000 - 3700 A.C.), the Eslafeni expanded their civilization along the coasts of the Novichnevich Peninsula. While the communities they built were small, and they never produced a system of writing, the Eslafeni left plenty of evidence of their presence in the form of stone cairns where they kept the bones of the many sea creatures that formed the backbone of their diet. It is not known why the Eslafeni treated the remains of their food in such a fashion. Based on the lack of human remains in the ruins of these ancient communities, the Eslafeni either cremated their dead or buried them at sea.

While this pattern remained for the Eslafeni living on the rocky peninsula, a new community appeared on the coast about two hundred miles south of the southernmost Eslafeni community. While undoubtedly founded by a group of wints related to the Eslafeni (probably approximately 3700 A.C.), the differences between the Eslafeni communities and this new settlement are significant enough to consider it the beginning of a new civilization — the Ersvol (first people), which is the first identifiable member of the Hundred Tribes that would come to dominate the Mar interior.

Ersvol villages are identifiable by the simple altars at their centers — the first evidence of organized worship on the subcontinent. Exactly what they worshiped is not certain, since none of these early altars bore the likeness of a deity. The Ersvol may have been iconoclasts, but it is equally likely that they simply had not yet agreed upon an anthropomorphic representation of the object of their worship.

By 3500 A.C., the Ersvol occupied the coast from the southern edge of the Novichnevich Peninsula to beyond the Fens of Ruer and were beginning to press into the interior of the subcontinent. They faced no resistance beyond the natural hazards that are now all too familiar to the Mar — Dinah's Curse, malaria, poisonous animals of all sizes, several species of large predator, quicksand, and suckmud. The Eslafeni posed no threat, seemingly content with occupying their coastal villages in the extreme north. Even natural hazards must have impeded them only a little, for they apparently possessed magic sufficient to protect themselves from such dangers. This allowed them to dominate their local environments thoroughly, giving the Ersvol ample energy to devote to the ambitious expansion that would be their ultimate downfall.

(Contributed by Weard Leif Gesyk)