Kalkoraen Expansion (ca. 300 - 700 I.D.)

With the citadel of Domus Palus and the surrounding area sufficiently fortified to drive off the endless waves of Totanbeni raiding parties, the Kalkorae began to expand their territory. They fully realized that the colony would be in serious trouble if the shadelshifs successfully cut off the flow of supply ships from the Kalkorae's country of origin, so the explorers quickly sought to establish their complete dominance of the sea. With the many advantages their ships possessed, their victory was surprisingly swift. By 330 I.D., the Totanbeni navy no longer operated along the west coast of the subcontinent. By the end of the century, those few shadelshifs that remained were forced to all but sneak ashore, sailing into secret and virtually unnavigable harbors on the Novichnevich Peninsula and near the Huinsean Plateau. By 450 I.D., the Totanbeni had abandoned sea travel entirely.

Once they had secured the coast (ca. 400 I.D.), the Kalkorae diverted most of their attention to advancing inland. This required far more time than merely wiping out the enemy navy, for several reasons. Primarily, the Kalkoraen civilization and military machine was heavily dependant on the magical infrastructure connecting harvesters to conduits to foci. As the assaults on their outposts were virtually without end, they could no longer make a leap into unfamiliar territory and rapidly build up an infrastructure from there the way they had at Domus Palus. While the Totanbeni probably did not yet fully realize it, despite the futility of a war of attrition against mede magical defenses, their constant raiding definitely slowed the Kalkoraen advance enormously.

Secondly, the Kalkorae did not produce or catch their own food. Earlier adventures in the local fare had resulted in no small number of casualties. While the Kalkoraen magic was potent, it apparently was no better at curing Dinah's Curse than Mar magic. Even the majority of mapmakers would not risk eating local food. This meant that the Kalkorae were even more dependant on their supply ships for food and drink than they were for foci, relays, and raw materials for harvesters and conduits. This exceptional vulnerability further impeded the rate of their expansion.

Finally, the Totanbeni still possessed considerable power. In some ways, their failure to understand the most important differences between Kalkoraen magic and their own only made them more terrifying. They breached some fortresses and destroyed countless harvesters and foci, making their raids expensive for the Kalkorae, but the invaders certainly expected resistance of this sort. They were not prepared, however, for some of tactics normally used for dealing with wints.

While the accounts of Totanbeni savagery were almost certainly exaggerated, they possess a certain logic in keeping with the nature of wint magic that indicates there is some truth to the horrors they describe. When the Totanbeni captured a Kalkorae outpost, reports claim they immediately killed everyone over the age of ten and burned the corpses. As wints begin contributing magical power to their community late in puberty, and since the objective of the Totanbeni was to force the Kalkorae to use magic more quickly than they could replenish it, such massacres made military sense.

As is mentioned above, the wint tribes in general recognized that the population of a community was the source of its power, so the Totanbeni often captured and forcibly wed Kalkoraen women taken in raids. Further, the Totanbeni had a long-established policy of capturing and indoctrinating children under the age of eleven in order to increase the size of their population. They also destroyed all traces of a sacked community — including graveyards — to eliminate any artifacts and religious idols that might still contain magical power. In all likelihood, however, these mass killings were not preceded by torture, rape, or other acts of savagery described by some accounts. Nor were the bones of the dead taken back to Totanbeni communities, as the Totanbeni knew full well that even if the Kalkoraen dead possessed magic, the dead were not obligated to serve anyone outside of their own tribe. In fact, according to Totanbeni superstition, the remains of the angry dead could take their revenge on the living, which was another reason they burned the corpses of their enemies.

This seemingly inhuman behavior stirred the sentiments of the Kalkorae strongly against the Totanbeni, but it also wore at their resolve and made them cautious in building new outposts. Their wariness of Totanbeni magic, however, gradually diminished as they learned its limits. As mapmakers made more meaningful contact with other members of the Hundred Tribes, the Kalkorae learned more about the differences between wint and mede magic.

By 650 I.D., it was clear to all but the most wishful of thinkers that the Totanbeni possessed no amazing harvesters, conduits, or foci. While the Kalkorae understood very little about exactly how wint magic functioned, they realized it was incompatible with their own. Whether it was this realization or a change in the political climate of their homeland, by the end of the century, the battleships had departed, the expansion of the Kalkorae had stalled, and the supply ships had stopped coming.

(Contributed by Weard Oda Kalidus)

Copyright 2005-2007 Eric Zawadzki and Matthew Schick. All Rights Reserved.
This site has features best viewed in Mozilla Firefox. Download today!