A History of the
A History of the
Sheldomar
By Kirt Wackford (wackford@biology.utah.edu )
Edited by Scott Rennie (scott.rennie@virgin.net) for 'Black Hart' campaign consistency, and
subject to revision.
c. CY -380 (SD 5136) to CY
-180 (SD 5336) [29 but see below]
Humans learn rice cultivation; populations grow rapidly. Jurnre
founded; County of Ulek and Kingdom of Keoland declared [26,27]
Eventually these nations learned from
halflings the cultivation of cotton, indigo, jute, tobacco, and
hemp. Most importantly, the halflings taught the Suel how to
build dams, levees, and ditches for rice paddies [25]. Suel
kinglets embarked on ambitious dam and levee projects and began
to fill the river valleys with rice fields. This permanent
agriculture allowed people to settle down and territories to
develop. Population grew and settlements spread. People who lived
in one place all their lives saw the value of planting orchards
and groves [25]. Trade towns came into being, and in time trade
cities grew from the largest and best-located towns. The first of
these was Jurnre [26], founded c. SD 5201 (CY -315).
With permanent, settled agriculture and growing populations
filling the Sheldomar and Kewl River valleys along the
Silverwood, the Suel kinglets found themselves not just the
masters of men, but of land as well. The boundaries of the petty
nations became clearly marked. Increasingly rulers had to discuss
with one another plans for settling new communities and for
undertaking new hydraulic projects, increasingly they had to
resolve competing claims among their subjects for water rights
and access to new land, pastures, and hunting areas. In most
times and places this would have led to wars, and, to be sure,
there were some skirmishes, some displays of power.
But for the most part the Suel rulers were reluctant to
fight one another. They were united by their common history and
Suel identity, their bonds of honour, and their still quite
necessary military alliances against the incursions of humanoids
and unsettled Suel and Oerids. Thus, in conflicts over lands,
lesser Suel kinglets tended to defer to the judgements of their
greater peers. "Lesser" and "greater" were
widely recognised, complex (and sometimes disputed), matters of
honour, involving the size of one's estate, the valour of one's
action's, and the reputation of one's family [28].
While those rulers judged superior made their decisions
in what they considered a fair matter, it is no surprise that
this process resulted in the great nobles becoming greater
through more growth and the lesser ones becoming subservient.
Many lesser nobles eventually dropped the pretence of independent
nationhood and swore fealty to the greatest of their peers. In so
doing they gained honour (by association with a greater ruler),
protection, and more favourable consideration of their subjects'
interests in land conflicts. This consolidation was paralleled by
the simultaneous growth of the populace in all the nations, both
internally and through the continual absorption of defeated
enemies and new allies. Of course the greatest lords were the
most attractive to join, and had both the most subjects to
protect and the largest armies.
They defeated the most foes, accepted the most allies,
and grew faster than their lesser peers. The greatest lords and
Princelings were likewise best able to protect and expand the
lands of their peoples, and so saw the fastest growth in
population. By such mechanisms the slow transformation of many
petty nations into ever fewer and larger ones proceeded. The
premier nobles among the greater lords tended to be those along
the Sheldomar, which had a broader valley and more farmable land
then the Kewl. Those nobles at its northern end had access to the
plains which lay beyond the furthest extent of the coastal forest
[12]. These nobles could protect herding families and raise
horses for their armies. This added greatly to their power and
prestige.
By CY -268 [27,29] one such Prince of the Rhola, Keoghtain,
dominated nearly all the settled states of the Sheldomar Valley.
When his forces captured and held the settlement of Niole (now
Niole Dra) from the Suel and Oerid raiders which had long used it
as a base of operations [30b], he was recognised as being the
mightiest and most honourable of the Suel. He proclaimed himself
King and called his nation "Keoghland". His cousin had
recently combined the nation of Jurnre with several other states
and styled himself the Count of Ulek, Master of the Kewl[32].
This man's realm was the only independent state of consequence
remaining, but he swore fealty to Keoland [31] in return for the
hand of the King's daughter.
Thus by early in the 54th Suel Century nearly all the nobles of
the river valleys had been united under the banner of one King.