The People generally settled around the coast. Here, kin-groups that settled in the same regions would eventually conglomerate into settlements. Within the settlements, land was owned by families that merged over time or consolidated their grip on land, leading to the plots of familial lands expanding and inheriting. In the start, these families were anarchic and near-constantly involved in elaborate feuds with each other, but as time passed, the kin-groups began establishing common institutions such as a council for meetings and legitimizing myths. Eventually, this nascent aristocracy began electing one to be foremost among their number, a chieftain or early king to arbitrate disputes between them. What started as conflict negotiation transformed into a transfer of power. The chieftain was essentially gifted with absolute authority.
Of course, this was always a matter of degrees. Not only was the chieftain's absolute authority heavily dependent on his own charisma and the ability of the aristocracy to tolerate him, this scenario did not always play out identically in every settlement. In some settlements, these "Onenamekene" barely transitioned from their feuding origins and the council developed into mostly a room to negotiate bride and blood prices after feuds. In others, the Onenamekene became highly organized and violence was a thing of the past, a much rarer occurrence than it had been. In any case, the People settled many times and many places, and would continue to do so as people emigrated from old settlements to form new ones. Usually, the oldest of the settlements would have a place of prestige, not only due to their age, but due to their ideal locations.
Among the most significant of these old settlements were Eskeragal, Askomekane, Uraskomek, Axtezab and Gishmabel. Founded on the original wave of settling, these were built on the best spots and tended to have the largest populations. Of these, the largest settlement was Askomekane, followed by Uraskomek and then Eskeragal, finally followed by Axtezab and Gishmabel. For a variety of socioeconomic, cultural and religious reasons, these settlements came to be the most significant ones among the People, having some degree of pan-cultural importance that blended with their larger population sizes and gave them their positions of preeminence. While later historians disagree about the significance of the others, except for Askomekane, which was known for its unusually organized military, the most well-documented of these is Eskeragal, which was known for…
[ ] ...A pan-cultural festival: Historians disagree about its name and significance, but it is known that Eskeragal had, since prehistory, been the site of an ancient festival of importance to the whole of the People. This made Eskeragal sacred ground and gave it a natural spot as arbitrator between the disputes of near-lying settlements, who would refer to the holy judgement of the chieftain of Eskeragal.
- [ ] Write-In: What was the festival about? What did it celebrate? Detail it if you feel like it.
[ ] ...A vast trading network: While the names are forgotten to time, its existence is not. Eskeragal maintained trading relations with many peoples up and down the coast and even a few islands in the sea. This granted sailors from Eskeragal a great deal of knowledge about the area, but also served to make it far richer than many of its counterparts. In addition, it also gave Eskeragal a very multicultural population.
- [ ] Write-In: Which people did Eskeragal trade with? What goods were exchanged?
[ ] ...An educated elite: Its exact nature is unclear, but for a variety of reasons, historians agree that Eskeragal developed a somewhat literate elite. While a writing system was not yet invented in the Greatwater Valley yet, an early notation system was used by this elite to note down trades, amounts and other things. This gave Eskeragal certain administrative advantages compared to its counterparts.
- [ ] Write-In: What are these literati? How elaborate is the notation system?
After settling in the valley, the People rapidly assimilated and came to be part of the usual order of the day in the region. When they had been immigrants, they had been a nomadic terror to its inhabitants that disrupted all they knew, but after settling proper, they simply became new potential rivals or allies. This meant the People also came to understand that they were not alone and drifting between few sparse populated areas anymore, but constantly in the presence of other peoples.
To the east, the People met with the Tower-Builders. Generally settled in the valley lowlands, along the Copperflow and Swiftflow rivers, Tower-Builder was with high likelihood not their endonymic name, but a name given to them by the People for how their larger architecture must have shocked the still-nomadic ancestors of the People. This architecture was accomplished as a result of the far more organized and centralized Tower-Builder hierarchies, where the palace economy was the standard and the fertile floodplains supported much larger populations.
To the north, the People came into contact with the Metal-Workers. Settled in the highlands and foothills of Highwatch Peak, the tallest mountain in the region, these were mostly semi-nomadic tribes, the most settled of which exported copper and other metals to the lowlands. Despite this relationship of export, the Metal-Workers were generally a menace to the more sedentary civilizations of the valley, to whom the threat of a Metal-Worker raid could be a constant worry.
To the south, a remnant of the Dye-Makers, which the People had generally extinguished upon their original immigration, had remained. These were generally a few scattered chiefdoms in a more forested and hilly region, where the People had been fended off and exerting proper power was impossible for any of the settlements. Here, they persisted and kept to traditions which were fundamentally alien to both the People and the dwellers in the valley, a relict population from an earlier time.
Culture in the valley was a mixture of many different peoples, each with their own stories and myths. The People were not the first to migrate here, only the most recent. While the People shared certain overarching themes in their mythology, it cannot truly be called a single system of belief. Each settlement had its own beliefs and stories inspired by an eclectic combination of its surroundings, history, great figures and neighbours. Similarly, there was no real uniting beliefs further upstreams, and the disunited peoples of the lowlands, forests and highlands all maintained thousands of different ideas about the world.
Despite this disparity or perhaps because of it, certain common narratives can be identified in the mythology of the People, some of which have been reconstructed by later scholars. While the early history of Eskeragal is not as well-documented as its later history, scholars have still been able to pierce together some of the myths that would have formed the cornerstones of belief in those early days. The People had always believed in a menagerie of different divinities with purviews associated. However, these were the deities of nomadic migrants, and as the People settled themselves in the valley, they underwent societal changes and so did their gods.
It started slowly, of course, as these kinds of things always do. Gods with purviews that fit to changing circumstances found themselves changing as well. Words to describe the new metals introduced from trade with the Metal-Workers were introduced and given divine personifications as well. Slowly, the divine history of the People reinvented itself and became the divine history of proto-kingdoms dotting the coastline, rather than that of the nomads that had reached the valley by foot and travel. The great journey, similarly was also relegated to the domain of myth. Sometimes, it became a matter of a divine journey by some divinity to reach the earth, other times the fertile valley the People had reached transformed into an afterlife and the journey took place after life expired.
The oldest of the settlements showed this effect most and Eskeragal was no exception in any way. Founded on the initial wave of settling, the original seed of the myths of the People had a long time to germinate in Eskeragal, and a long time to change under changing times. As a result of trade and cultural meetings, the beliefs of Eskeragal quickly found themselves turned to new ends and taking its own cast. With changing beliefs came changing structures and the priesthood in Eskeragal steadily found itself taking on new roles in the daily life of the settlement. These new roles generally came about as the dominant beliefs of Eskeragal transformed into…
[ ] ...A solar religion: Worship of solar deities came to play a more and more important function. Chieftains were exalted through comparison to the sun, which was held to have absolute authority over heaven, just as they had over their subjects. The chieftain became, first and foremost, a defender and promulgator of order against the forces of chaos and dissent. Simultaneously, as Eskeragal slowly developed something resembling an early state, its many priesthoods came to play a greater and greater part in its running. Every family of the onenamekene would sponsor their own priesthood, which came to promulgate their decrees. The priesthoods came to be subservient to the developing body politic.
[ ] ...A celestial religion: The Dye-Makers had worshipped sea gods and with their conquest, Eskeragal came to exalt the power of the storm gods over the sea. The sea came to represent all that was barbarous and foreign and the storm was the disciplining and civilized power of heaven. The Onenamekene compared themselves to tempestuous lords of heaven and warrior ideals were exalted above all else. Chieftains married priestesses and in return, chieftains became priests themselves. The developing state of Eskeragal slowly came to merge with the priesthood, who came to dominate every aspect of society. The gods had created mankind for the purpose of labouring to their desires and the priests alone could divine those desires.
[ ] ...An animistic religion: The People had always worshipped a multitude of deities and would continue to do so in Eskeragal. Unlike other settlements, the priesthoods of Eskeragal never came to play an important role in state formation and instead remained largely decentralized, developing into many localized cults. These were based around sacred sites of the natural world and each maintained their own priests. Most families maintained their own gods; an eclectic mix of renowned ancestors and cthtonic beings. The same was true of the onenamekene, who carried their own traditions with them. The developing state of Eskeragal wasn't separate from religion, there was simply never a real organized religious tradition at this point in time.
MD: Yes, this one comes a bit late, sorry for that. I was busy and got distracted, I'll try and not make that happen in the future, but as long as it's one update per week, I think we'll more or less manage.
