Dark Age of Marrishland (ca. 1000 - 1800 I.D.)

Before the Hammerfall War, the population of the Kalkoraen Nation was divided roughly equally into three areas — the North (blockading the Dominah), the interior (in the wetlands), and the coast (Domus Palus and everything south and east of it along the sea). After the Hammerfall War, very few Kalkorae still lived in the North. The Kalkorae of the interior remained numerous, though they were heavily reliant upon the coastal cities for energy. The coast was increasingly dominated by the Mar, especially in the larger cities.

The Hammerfall War altered the balance of power on the subcontinent. Deprived of an enemy, some among the Kalkorae grew ambitious, and many more rankled at the lack of representative government. Many of the Hundred Tribes had fallen into their old rivalries. Within a hundred years, the wints had returned to their sporadic wars, and the Kalkoraen Nation had splintered into two small, rural countries — one in the North and one in the interior - and a half dozen coastal city-states increasingly populated by Mar.

What followed was a long dark age about which little is known. The Kalkorae in the North appear to have remained close to their mede roots. Those of the interior soon found themselves dragged into the wars between the wints, and it is believed they were culturally and racially assimilated into the Hundred Tribes. The city-states seem to have done well up until the point when the last remaining pure medes died, leaving the Mar an advanced magical infrastructure that they couldn't use and libraries of knowledge that would soon vanish forever as the magic that maintained them faded away.

Even this last lacked an easy remedy, since the Kalkorae's pictographic language could not be rendered in two dimensions, and since the Mar lacked a written language. For seven centuries, desperate Mar scholars attempted to preserve this knowledge by word of mouth. This was not easy, since the Kalkoraen language was at least partially conveyed through gestures and tones the smallest variation of which could radically alter the meaning. Further, the Mar had long since established languages of their own that were a combination of the wint and mede tongues. Not only did this render the works contained in the oral tradition meaningless to all but the most knowledgeable scholars, it eliminated the capacity to detect errors in transcription and so opened all the information to cumulative errors.

Much of what scholars believe took place in Marrishland during the Dark Age of Marrishland is based on the surviving accounts of those who lived before and after it. The stark differences between these accounts attests to the turmoil of these centuries, though the exact nature of these tumultuous events will never be known for certain. Scholars have speculated at great length, however, on what transpired during these eight long centuries.

Before the Dark Age, the Kalkorae had a civilization in the interior of Marrishland (among the wints of the Hundred Tribes) and in the north, as well as a strong presence in a string of city-states along the coast, the largest of which by far was Domus Palus. By the end of the Dark Age, the Kalkoraen cities among the wints stood empty, the Kalkorae were a tiny minority among the Mar majority in the city-states, and the cities in the north were all that remained of the once-great Kalkoraen nation.

Before the Dark Age, the wints of the Hundred Tribes were more numerous than the Kalkorae and the Mar combined, but they were divided among scores of large and small tribes. By the end of the Dark Age, only eight tribes remained (those whose patrons went on to become the major gods and goddesses of Mar religion), but each had grown powerful in the absence of their ancient Totanbeni enemies.

Before the Dark Age, the Mar were a minority largely dismissed as unimportant by both the Kalkorae and the Hundred Tribes. In the wake of the Hammerfall War, the population of Mar outstripped that of the Kalkorae, at least in the coastal cities. By the end of the Dark Age, the Mar still held the coastal cities with greatly reduced urban populations, and rural Mar communities had pressed inland several hundred miles. The Mar at the end of the Dark Age lived at a very similar level of existence as the mundanes in communities at the edges of civilization do today.

There are many different theories about what events led to each of these developments.

Of the three civilizations, the greatest mystery surrounds the fate of the Kalkorae. The theories of scholars fall into one of three broad categories - assimilation, annihilation, and migration. It is largely impossible to argue that none of these happened, but no small measure of bile has been exchanged over the details of these events. In an assimilation theory, the Kalkorae living in the wetter southern regions near the Hundred Tribes (whom historians call the Humarae) were assimilated into one of the other civilizations - the Mar, the Hundred Tribes, or the Fygae (those Kalkorae dryer, cold plains of the north). In an annihilation theory, the Humarae were completely wiped out by the Hundred Tribes, the Fygae, or the Drakes. In migration theories, the Kalkorae left the subcontinent behind, either traveling across Huinsey and into Manarem or along the coast into Kafthey.

Scholars examining the evolution of the Hundred Tribes during this period focus on violence versus nonviolence and internal versus external. Most will even acknowledge that the process involved both internal and external acts of violence and nonviolence from the surviving tribes. Violence proposes that successful tribes used force to enlarge their territories and/or increase their populations, possibly even drawing the Humarae into themselves. In nonviolence explanations, the largest tribes gradually assimilated less dominant cultures. It is widely accepted that at least some of the wints of the Hundred Tribes migrated into Manarem and Kafthey, though their eventual fates are less certain. A few scholars believe the Drakes played a role in the loss of some of the tribes.

The Mar are the most controversial of the three groups. The simplest explanation is that food became scarce as the Kalkoraen devices in the city-states began to fail. The mundane infrastructure of Mar civilization simply could not support large populations. As a result, the Mar were forced to forage deeper into the wilderness. A number of scholars add Dinah's Curse or some other unnamed plague to the equation - a reasonable possibility, since an undernourished population would have been more susceptible to disease.

Another popular theory is the Humarae and the wints of the Hundred Tribes continued to intermarry until the mar spread eastward simply by virtue of mar being born farther and farther east. Since mar were of no use to their magic-wielding parent cultures, they naturally found a home in the growing Mar civilization. Slightly less popular is the theory that the Kalkorae banished the Mar from their city-states for one reason or another. The oldest explanations, of course, involve the intervention of one or more deities.

(Contributed by Weard Leif Gesyk)

Copyright 2005-2007 Eric Zawadzki and Matthew Schick. All Rights Reserved.
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