The Rivan Codex: Ancient Texts of THE BELGARIAD and THE MALLOREON (The Belgariad / The Malloreon)
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The Chereks quite naturally took advantage of the preoccupation of the Wacite Duke and bit off large pieces of northern Sendaria. Similarly, Tolnedran generals took the opportunity to push seriously weakened Mimbrate forces back beyond the River Arend, eliminating for the time the threat of Arendish invasion.
The war of the three kingdoms was one of the darkest periods in Arendish history. It was a time of alliances broken, of betrayal, of surprise attack, of assassination and ambush. One example should serve to illustrate. In 2890 the Asturians and Mimbrates had formed an alliance against the Wacites, who were dominant at that time. The expedition into Wacune was highly successful, and the Wacite nobility was virtually wiped out. In the latter days of the campaign in what is now south-central Sendaria, the Asturians suddenly turned on their Mimbrate allies and annihilated them. Thus, with one stroke, the Asturians had very nearly destroyed Wacune and had wiped out a major part of the Mimbrate Army. To defend themselves and to prevent the Asturian Duke from achieving the monarchy, the Mimbrates immediately formed an alliance with the remnants of the Wacites and concluded treaties with certain Cherek chieftains and some of the western clans in Algaria. These freebooters assaulted Asturia from the seaward and the landward side while the Mimbrates attacked her southern borders and the Wacites struck from the north. Asturia quite naturally collapsed and immediately formed an alliance with Wacune to attack the now-dominant Mimbrates.
As a result of constant attrition, the effect not only of the civil war but also of the ceaseless attacks by Cherek seafarers and Algar horsemen, the Wacite Duchy was finally so weakened that it was possible in 2943 for the Asturians to move decisively against their northern cousins at a time when the Mimbrates were preoccupied by a border war against Tolnedra. The campaign was short and brutal. Wacune was crushed, never to rise again. Vo Wacune was torn down, and all surviving members of the Wacite nobility were sold to Nyissan slavers, who carried them off to the south.
The savage destruction of Wacune by Asturia shocked the civilized world, and the weight of sympathy of other nations was firmly on the side of the Mimbrate Arends. The consolidation made possible, however, by the elimination of the Wacite nobility and the absorption of the Wacite serfs into the Asturian feudal system, made Asturia virtually impregnable for centuries.57
It must be candidly admitted, however, that through the closing centuries of the third millennium and throughout most of the fourth, it was a basic tenet of Tolnedran policy to maintain the balance of power between the contending Duchies of Mimbre and Asturia. From a practical standpoint, it was to the enormous advantage of the Empire to encourage the friction between the two contending houses, since a strong and unified Arendia would have made the development of the Tolnedran Empire an impossibility. It is of course a truism that the Arendish Knights are one of the most awe-some forces in the west. Had the Arends been united at any time during the third or fourth millennia, the Empire would never have been, and the whole history of the west would have changed. The stalemate between Mimbre and Asturia lasted until 3793 when the Mimbrates concluded a secret treaty with Tolnedra. In return for certain military assistance from the Empire (largely the removal of restrictions upon Cherek freebooters and Algar raiders and the northward march of a column of ten legions from Tol Vordue toward Asturia’s southern border) the Mimbrates pledged a limited allegiance to the Tolnedran Emperor. This opportunity arose when the continual warfare in Arendia had become a nuisance hindering the construction of the Great West Road and an interference with normal commerce.
The four-pronged attack against her so stretched the defensive capability of the Asturians that their supply of manpower dried up, and the nation collapsed into that most useless (and most typically Arendish) defense—the retreat into fortified strongholds. The details are gloomy and need not be repeated. The results were inevitable. Asturia fell. Vo Astur was laid waste. The last Duke of Astur fell in battle, and his family was all but exterminated. Asturia as a recognizable nation was no more. It was, however, a weakened Mimbrate Duke who was crowned the first unchallenged King of Arendia, and the Tolnedran design in the west was complete. Arendia was no longer a threat.
Although a Mimbrate King sat on the throne at Vo Mimbre, he was in many respects a puppet-king—albeit a dangerous one. The most elemental of the rights of sovereignty, that of conducting one’s own relations with other nations, was severely curtailed by the provisions of the Treaty of Tol Vordue. Arendish merchants were severely limited in terms of what commodities and goods they could import or export, and Tolnedra profited hugely from the arrangement.
The Kings at Vo Mimbre had other problems, however, which did not give them time to brood about the possible injustices implicit in their treaty with Tolnedra. Although the cities and strongholds of the Asturians had been destroyed, the Asturian nobility and yeomanry remained intact—although greatly diminished. The nobles simply retreated into the vast reaches of the Arendish Forest, taking the always-loyal peasantry with them. What they could not carry off, they burned. Thus the Mimbrate King fell heir to a smoking wasteland, empty and unpeopled. The fiefdoms granted his loyal followers became a punishment instead of a reward, since land without the people to work it is a burden. Whole villages in the Duchy of the Mimbrates were uprooted and transplanted into the north to work the holdings of their feudal lords, and their efforts were largely to no avail since Asturian brigands crept from the forests by night, burning crops and villages with abandon. It was also observed that Asturian bowmen routinely used Mimbrate peasants for target-practice. This quite naturally caused the peasants to avoid the edges of those fields which abutted on the forest, and in time this grisly game developed in the Asturian bowman a capability of phenomenal accuracy at unbelievable ranges.
The activities of the Asturian outlaws provided the Emperor at Tol Honeth with the pretext for the formation of the Kingdom of Sendaria in the north, which stripped the Arendish King of a little more than a third of his nation. As the Emperor explained, ‘Sendaria will close the northern door to these outlaws. You may hunt them down now without fear that they will escape to the north.’ The King of the Arends received this with a glum face, since ‘hunting down’ well-armed men in a forest which stretches three hundred leagues in each direction is rather like hunting down fish in the ocean.
For a thousand years, however, Arendish Kings mounted expeditions against the Asturian brigands in the north. Whole generations were swallowed up in the dim, silent stretches of the forest, and old men woke screaming as they remembered the horror of the expeditions of their youth. The forest became a labyrinth of caves and tunnels and hiding holes. Dead-falls and pit-traps made the roads impassable. (The sole exception being the Great West Road which was patrolled by Tolnedran Legionaries and which the Asturians in a secret treaty with Tol Honeth had agreed to leave open.) Asturian archers, already the finest in the world, became even more proficient, and the floor of the forest was littered with mossy bones and rusting armor. Transplanted Mimbrate peasants plowed and planted, and the Asturians came out of the forest and reaped and gathered. Paradoxically, it was frequently necessary to import food into one of the most fertile places on earth.
The situation in Arendia remained unchanged until 4875 when Kal-Torak came across the mountains of Ulgoland and down onto the Arendish plain. While it might have been expected that the Asturian Arends would simply hide in their forest and watch the destruction of the Mimbrates, such was not the case. Apparently the persuasive powers of the Rivan Warder were sufficient to move the Asturians to join with the Rivans and Sendars on their great march southward to the Battle of Vo Mimbre.
NOTE
The battle of Vo Mimbre is the most celebrated event in the history of the twelve kingdoms. The details of the strategy, tactics and the individual heroism of various participants are too well-known to make their repetition here necessary. Elsewhere in these studies is a portion of the Arendish epic which deals with the battle. While the work is a bit overpoetic for Tolnedran tast
es, it is nonetheless, a fairly straightforward account. In this respect it is unlike certain bardic productions which literally seethe with enchantments, magic and unseen monstrosities, all of which may be very well for the entertainment of children and illiterate peasants, but has no place in a work which strives to some seriousness.
At the conclusion of the Battle of Vo Mimbre, by unspoken mutual agreement, the Mimbrate King and the Baron who had led the Asturians through the final years of their endless war with the Mimbrates adjourned to a quiet dell just east of the city, and there, without preamble, they fell upon each other with their swords. By the time they were discovered, both were dying from innumerable wounds. The Mimbrate Knights and the Asturian Foresters would undoubtedly have resumed the eons-old bloodshed between them on the spot had it not been for the timely intervention of Brand XXXI, the towering Warder of Riva, who had just overthrown the mighty Kal-Torak. The enthusiasm of all the kingdoms of the west over his victory gave his word virtually the weight of law. Summoning both the Mimbrate and Asturian Barons before him, he quickly determined that the heir to the Mimbrate throne was a strong young man, and that the last descendant of the Asturian Duchy was a young maiden. He thereupon ordered that the two be married, thus joining the two houses in a unified monarchy and ending the war that had lasted for eons. When it was pointed out to him that a marriage between an Asturian and a Mimbrate was more likely to cause a war than end one, he instructed that the two young people be imprisoned alone together in a tower for the space of one year. This was done, and for the first several months the shouts of the two as they wrangled and argued could be heard for some distance. In time, however, the shouts subsided, and upon their emergence from the tower, the couple seemed quite content to marry and to rule jointly.
It is strongly suspected that this ploy was the invention of the two advisors of the Rivan Warder, a strange pair whom history has never identified. Both wore the traditional grey cloaks of the Rivans, but no distinguishing badges or crests. The man was grizzled and grey, and seemed quite fond of sharing a bottle or two with the common soldiery. The woman was strikingly handsome with an imperious presence. As one Tolnedran General remarked, ‘She carries herself more like an Emperor than the Emperor himself.’
Following the unification of the two houses by the marriage of the Mimbrate Prince Korodullin and the Asturian Princess Mayaserana, the nation lived in peace and outward harmony. The Asturians returned to their lands and lived in relative peace with their Mimbrate neighbors. It was during this period that a rather intricate dueling code was developed whereby disputes could be settled directly between two contending parties without plunging entire districts into war.
The time of peace which followed unification profited Arendia enormously. Fortunes have been made from the abundant wheat harvests, and there has been a greater supply of good bread in the nations of the west than ever before. It is, however, characteristic of the people that much of this wealth has been poured into fortifications and arms. Apparently, Arendish nobles believe in their hearts that the peace is only temporary and, as always, they prepare for war.
The present King of Arendia, Korodullin XXIII, is a somewhat sickly young man who has sat upon the throne at Vo Mimbre for little more than a year.
NOTE
It has been observed by certain breeders of livestock that a strain is severely weakened by too much inbreeding. It is unfortunately true that the touchy political situation in Arendia makes it mandatory that all members of the Royal Family of Arendia marry as closely within the blood-line as possible without violating the universal laws forbidding incest. The centuries of cousin-marriage have undoubtedly accentuated defects which would have been quite easily washed-out by the influx of new blood.
Arendia
COINAGE
Large numbers of gold and silver coins from the period of the civil wars of varying weights and purity. Practice is to weigh them and check extensive tables for value.
One of the provisions of the Treaty of Tol Vordue was that Arendia would use Tolnedran coins, which they do.
COSTUME
SOLIDLY MEDIEVAL
Because of the nature of the country, Arendish noblemen never leave home without being fully armed and at least partially armored—chain mail and surcoats inside wool or linen or fancier fabrics, elaborate robes, crowns etc.
ARMOR
Arends are a little heavier into plate armor than other nations—not quite the free-standing suit, but breastplates and strap-on guards over upper arm, forearm, thigh, shin, front of throat. Full visored helmets (not hinged). Weapons: swords, axes, maces, lances, etc., etc.
WOMEN
Very medieval. High waist. Pointed cap, etc. Lots of brocades, etc. Heavy cloth.
BURGERS
(Townsmen) Merchants. Guild-type hose, jackets baggy, tam-o’-shanters. Cloaks, robes, very elaborate marks of rank on robes etc.
SERFS
Usual serf-stuff, burlap, rags. Arendish serfs are badly downtrodden.
FORESTERS
(Asturians) Robin-Hood stuff. Nobles encumbered by their mail but they wear it.
COMMERCE
The Burgers try, but Arendish nobility is so stupid that they keep putting obstacles in the way. Needless embargoes, prohibitions on the removal of gold from the fiefdom, etc. Taxation is brutal in Arendia. Lots of smuggling and tax-evasion. Tax-collectors are frequently bushwhacked. (Standard item of apparel for tax-collectors is a thick, close-grained, and well-fitting plank under the mail to protect the back from arrows—not uncommon to see a tax-collector ignoring the two or three arrows stuck in his back.)
SOCIAL ORGANIZATION
Strictly feudal—vassals, serfs etc. Arch conservative. Nobility very uppity. Tremendous importance of HONOR. Code of dueling to avoid warfare. Formal meeting of Knights— charge with lances. The fight on foot afterward. (Considered bad form for a mounted man to attack a man on foot.) Usual King Arthur stuff.
Some degree of courtly love—all pretty formal.
Political marriages. Women bored to tears. Certain amount of fooling around. Poetry and romance have left Arendish women pretty senseless. Lots of suicides.
RANK
MODES OF ADDRESS
MANNERS
Arends are formal to the point of being socially incapacitated. Their lives are so circumscribed by custom and the rigid social structure that their entire lives seem to be a kind of stately dance. Lots of bowing and formal address. Honor, which is to say good name, is everything and almost anything can be considered an affront. The period of the Civil War proves that they can be extremely treacherous, however. The major concern of the monarchy is to head off the Arendish tendency toward civil violence—no private wars. The King’s time is taken up adjudicating disputes between the various nobles.
Vassals are suitably subservient but very proud, nonetheless. The commoners are servile, knowing that their masters have life or death power over them. Arendish justice is capricious and savage. Serfs are treated badly.
HOLIDAYS
Erastide—Formal banquets
Festival of Chaldan—Late Spring—the most religious holiday
Festival of Korodullin and Mayaserana—A combination of the celebration of the victory at Vo Mimbre and the unification of the nation
King’s Birthday—A patriotic holiday—formal jousting
The Lord’s Birthday—Local celebrations on each estate
RELIGIOUS OBSERVANCES
Pretty much medieval Catholic. Religious orders abound, supported by the nobility and providing an escape for the serfs. Usually established to provide perpetual prayer for victory of some lord. Three major orders—Mimbrate, Asturian and Wacite monks. (The monks are never molested in war— bad luck.)58
Female orders formed for similar purposes. Severely cloistered. They provide an outlet for surplus female children of the nobility.
Priests, Bishops and the head of the church, the Archbishop of Vo Mimbre.
ULGOLAND59
&n
bsp; GEOGRAPHY
Ulgoland (or simply Ulgo as the Ulgos themselves call it) is mountainous—indeed it consists solely of mountains. It is bounded on the east by Algaria, on the west by Arendia, on the north by Sendaria and on the south by Tolnedra. There are no known passes through the country, and the only road to the capital at Prolgu was built following the war against the Angaraks at the end of the fifth millennium. There appear to be large amounts of mineral wealth in Ulgoland, but the Ulgos steadfastly refuse to permit mining within their boundaries; and, since time immemorial, expeditions of adventurers into the country have vanished without a trace.
THE ULGOS
These are perhaps the strangest of all the peoples of the west. Not only do they worship a strange God, live in caves deep in the earth and speak a language unrelated to the civilized tongues of the north or the west, but they are also physically different from any other known race. They are significantly shorter than Alorn or Arend, and their skin is markedly pale—perhaps as a result of generations of cave-dwelling. Their hair is without color, and their eyes are quite large and sensitive to light. The extent of their numbers is unknown since their habitations are below ground and no outsider has been able to determine the extent of the caverns and galleries beneath their mountains. They are a suspicious and secretive people and appear to be totally uninterested in commerce or trade.
THE HISTORY OF THE ULGOS