Early towns grow to city-states
First Empire
With the blaring of spiral trumpets the Thloxii swept down from the mountains. City gates fell to the rhythmic thud of battering rams slung between teams of half-tamed mammoths like trees under the axes of woodcutters.
By the third generation, the Thloxii had so intermarried with the native nobility that many of their now Plains-dwelling clans refused to associate with those who still clung to their mountain territories and customs. A "purification campaign," intended to reverse their change from mountain warriors, rugged and robust, to the "soft and decadent ways of the inferior Plains-folk," joined these acculturating clans with native noble houses against Emperor Daghadth, shattering the First Empire in but twelve short and bloody months. The Plains were made a mosaic of city-states once more.
Second Empire
Queen Aiethedra wed the priest-king of Denemar, and as a wedding gift to join their people conquered the smaller state of Mnam which lay between them. The landed houses of s'Lyn, tiered of a royal house whose intrigues could not leave a monarch unassassinated for even a single twelve of years, 'til the bloodlines were so thin and throne-claims so tenuous none could gather a strong backing, offered s'Lyn as an open city to the newly-wed conquerors on the condition s'Lyn be made capital of a newly declared Second Empire.
The Second Empire, founded upon native line, lasted rather longer than the first, but its twelve generations were as a day compared to the glorious era of the Third Empire.
Third Empire Rivalry between the cities became ritualized, champions wearing armor wreathed in faux-foliage of gilt leather contesting for water rights and tracts of fertile farmland. Armies were composed as much by beasts as of champion warriors and their attendant soldiers, for the royalty prided themselves upon training ice-tygers, snowy of coat and tooth, or poison-pinioned swans, lynx-eared gryphons, swift of wing and claw, or spiny-plated hippos. Combat was as likely to be by majic, for no boulder-launching wheeled mega-bow could equal a sorcerer's gust of flame, or, all the more likely in a realm of convoluted intrigue, some more subtle attack. The devastation possible with such sophisticated machines and majics made ritualization necessary, or the first victim of any combat would have been the hard-sought prize.
Thus, it was not so much by glorious combat but by secret machinations that Prince Hladrapacht arranged for a contingent of kings to select him as the least assuming, and most manipulable, of potential candidates when they, in desperation, sought to crown a single man emperor. They thought a single, symbolic leader would end the chaos and destruction that was threatening to ruin the prosperity of their lands. They got rather more order than they had anticipated.
Emperor Telkus, fourth of Hladrapacht's line, consolidated the dams controlling the entry of the Pure Hydra river network where it emerges from the mountains to the plains; his great work still underpins the Plauvecchy High Dam. The precedent of great works led to the building of the two other High Dams, the Hloro Akdy and Tenely, and the canal networks that spread from these and lesser dams.
Within a millenium fully half the Plains were knit by a web of canals. The Silver Canals might have banks of simple wattle and earth, their flow checked by gates made of single sliding boards, but they brought water during drought and dispersed it with little damage during flood. The great stone-sided Golden Canals carried more than water. Along these water-roads, wet and mirror-smooth, were towed water-wagons, or barges, which bore the goods of each city to each other city. The great markets these fed attracted not only merchants from the cities, now universally proud to be part of the greatest empire this region of the world had ever known but also from lands distant and most foreign. Vast water-wagons, not squared but pointed like leaves with stem and stern, came across boundless seas, propelled by the wind they caught in sails broad as fields hung from tower-tall mast-trees, threading their way from the shore-losing seas up the Great Delta to the Plains. Into the humid jungles of Klefeng, the wild lands centered about the Plains-draining Great Delta and along the seashore to either side, caravans brought such quantities of goods that the native tribes forgot the time when they compounded their concoctions - hundred-flowered perfumes and distilled olo-root oil, preserver of both wood and leather, precious resins of innumerably varied and long-burning torches of wax bound about vine-threads - in quantities sufficient only for their own needs.
Fall of the Third Empire
The people of the Plains had forged the largest state and most refined technologies, the subtlest sorceries and most sophisticated culture the known world had ever displayed, and they knew it. Their pride in the works of their own hands and minds grew to a pride in having tamed the Earth Herself. They imagined that guiding waters through their canals meant that they controlled, even ruled the waters. They believed that as they sculpted the land, cutting hillsides to fill dells and thus create yet more level, irrigable fields, as they linked high-towered cities ringed with such walls as no mountain tribe could dream of sundering with paved causeways raised high above the seasonal flooding of the fields, that they were indeed the masters of the Earth. Their festival offerings to the Waters and to the Earth Herself became hollow rituals, the forgotten origins of occasions to congratulate themselves upon their supremacy.
In time Earth grew weary of indulging Her children, and She shrugged. Which was the end of the Plains, and the people who had lived there.
In the jungles of Klefeng, the native tribesfolk knew the power of Earth and Her attendant elements and spirits. When they trapped birds by spreading gum on baited branches, they plucked only those feathers the birds could spare, then while wiping the gum off the birds' feet, whispered prayers for the birds to carry into the winds. When the Klefengii trained cinnamon-pelted tarsiers, whose fingers are a dozen times finer and a double-dozen times more dexterous than any child's, to weave wicker and reeds into water-tight jars or glow-beetle lantern-cages so delicate they appear to be miniature temples woven of stiffened spider-web, the Klefeng also teach the tarsiers such games as those miniature monkeys are able to enjoy, thus honoring the spirit of the woods where they are caught. When they collect shed snake-skins, to lay out in sheets and cross-laminate with lucent rosins to form leather, leaf-thin and crystal-clear, they paint the shells of eggs with prayers, and place these offerings at the entrances of burrow-snake tunnels, knowing that the snake, which wends its way deep into the Earth, know much of Her wisdom and is special to Her. The Plainsfolk thought the Klefengii superstitious and obsessed with ritual. Today, the Plainsfolk are gone while the Klefengii prosper.
Under the surface of Earth there are passages like veins and arteries in flesh. These circulate Her internal fluids, whether thin air, liquid water, or thick magma. To Her, it was but a blink to constrict some channels and expand others. A cluster of mountains, long quiet, erupted. They grew in height and bulk until their feet had cut off two of the rivers that fed the Plains, diverting their waters into the third of the great rivers. Other waters sprang from subterranean sources as mountainsides split. The Hloro Akdy High Dam, the greatest piece of masonry Humans ever build, shattered before the thrice-filled flood. Unchecked, the waters burst the walls of the raised Golden Canals, rushing with such vengeance as to simply ignore the lesser Silver Canals. The whole of the Plains was made a wide and watery corpse-pit. In twelve short hours, the Third Empire was no more.
Today
Today, the waters remain, a murk tricking through vast swamplands. Only the higher hills rear dry crests above the scum of floating mosses and buoyant tussocks, and most of these are but illusions of ground, neither more stable nor more rooted than an iceberg. Only the deepest places are not clogged by pulpy snake-limbed mangrove-cedars. As there are no longer Plains, so there are no longer rivers here, only occasional unmappable pools and bayous that shift as the aqueous foliage drifts.
The great works of the Empire have left physical memories, tortured and desolate. Fragments of raised causeways walk from nothing to nowhere. Sturdy city walls whose gates could overarch a village encircle only rubble-bedded lakes. Towers rise up above drowned palaces whose banquet halls are now patrolled by the descendents of fish once served there. The proudly manicured "sunken gardens" are now sunken indeed.
Just as the magnificent architecture has left shattered ruins, so have the masterpieces of sorcery that once held a center setting in the crown of Plains pride. While most spells evaporate when sundered, some remain, distorted relics. Some have even taken on a life of their own and grown.
The Swamp is haunted by innumerable ghosts. Some are but memories, a barely palpable sense of horror drifting by on the breeze. Others are more tangible. Horribly tangible. Whole legions, sure of their ability to defend the most glorious realm Humankind could imagine, who could not conceive of defeat, yet patrol their grounds, guarding what was from any who come. Flesh long gone, their bones wield their weapons as dexterously as ever; some have fed upon dismay, as much their own and their fellows as of their victims, and have grown unnaturally from this fleshless feeding, 'til they are several times their original size and strength, their weapons and armor, accoutrements and appetites having grown proportionately. There are stories of ancient priests and warriors, sorcerers and kings, who do not yet acknowledge their deaths.
The swamp is also home to fleshly horrors. Some are descendants of creatures that wandered upstream from Klefeng when the Swamp was new, encountering majics in the Swamp which have mutated once-simple beasts into new and less natural forms. Others were drawn down from the mountains that yet ring the region, and these, too, often show signs of unnatural modification. The worst of such fleshly beasts may be those with ancestry deep below the ancient Plains, those whose forebears once lurked in tunnels and caverns far below but were brought up by the flooding.
***
Plot for a Tale of Adventure - a search through the Swamp
In another city, there is a working class of Humans laboring under an elite of Elvyn. There are also a (relatively small) number of half-breeds. The half-breeds are not accepted by either group, although some can pass for Human or Elv. Lacking legitimacy with either group, many have turned to an alternative source of appreciation and acceptance: they form the backbone of the local thieves' guild. (Of course, this does not exactly enhance the repute of the half-breed.)
Elvyn: Obviously superior to Humans. Humans don't live long enough to be worth getting to know, let alone waste time training; any truly worthwhile level of skill requires several Human lifetimes to master. The Elvyn have tried letting humans have a degree of autonomy, and even influence, but they always make the wrong choices. Elvyn are not merely stronger, faster, and more dexterous, they are also smarter and wiser. This is not prejudice; it's a simple fact of nature. Elvyn also happen to be so beautiful that they can enchant Humans by their mere presence. Humans are coarse and ugly, not to mention crude and uncouth.
Humans: Most Humans accept the superiority of the Elvyn, and are grateful that the ancient and wise Fair Folk have deigned to help the pitiable and wretched race of Humans. Others feel very exploited, believing Elveyn are a patronizing elite who treat all Humans as serfs, with no chance for promotion. These Humans resent the fact that the Elvyn won't share any of their skills, whether technological, majical, or other. They also feel excluded from the courts and rituals that are the clockwork of this land.
The Plot: The thieves' guild realized a revolt is fomenting among a faction of Humans. This could well result in a split with both sides persecuting the half-breeds. They hear of a Majical McGuffin in a ruined city in the Swamp of the Drowned Empire that will, they hope, solve all their problems. If it ever really existed. If it's still there. If it actually had the powers they are speculating it must have. If it still has 'em. If they can get it to work. If they can get it away from whoever -or whatever - may have it now. If they can locate it in the first place. If they can get through the Swamp to it in the first place. Oh, the potential for adventure!
The Setting
The City where it all begins is a petty state of the Ma'ar Empire (which SEE.) A revolt might bring in the Imperial forces, which would basically crush everyone, or at least restore the previous order.
Alternately, the City is on the boarder of the Ma'ar Empire, perhaps a client state. Same plot. Or perhaps the Humans would prefer rule by the tolerant Heteroformes, or shape-shifters, who rule the Empire. Or there may be speculation that the City is ALREADY ruled by Heteroformes disguised as Elvyn (and perhaps as Humans as well!) The plot is to reveal and oust these puppetmasters. Or it's really the Heteroformes who want the Elves overthrown so they can step in. Or the whole reason for the search for the Majical McGuffin is a fabrication - some decadent, intreague-weaving Heteroformes noble just wants it for itself!
* How to work this into a story *
(Note: i do not like the framing device or tome of this snippet, which is why only a snippet is presented here. It does, however, suggest a few more details.)
"Tell us a story!" "Make it a good one, with princes and princesses!" "And castles! It has to have castles!"
"Very well. A story.
Once upon a time, a very long time ago, there was a stone."
"Was it a majic stone?"
"Yes, it was. Perhaps not at the very beginning, but it soon became one."
"How? How did it become a majic stone?"
"That is part of the story. Which I am trying to tell you.
The stone grew inside a mountain, as all the best stones do. It took a very long time to grow, but when it was ripe, it moved its way into an ore vein where is was discovered by Dwarvyn."
"Which Dwarvyn? Was it the Dwarvyn who live under the river caves?"
"No, it was not the Dwarvyn who live under the river caves. Which you would know if you let me tell the story. This was a very long time ago, before there were any Dwarvyn under the river cave, before there were any caves there, before there this river was ever born. A very long time ago. The Dwarvyn sniffed out the stone, and uncovered it, and cleaned it, and studied it, and polished it and carved it and finally mounted it in a great axe."
"Was it a majic axe?"
"By the time they were done making it, yes, it was a majic axe. And they gave the axe to a great warrior named Vladhlecchecch. And using that axe, he united the clans of the mountains into a great tribe, the Thloxii. And his son, Slegegart, became their king in his turn. And he took them down into the Plains and conqueror the cities there."
"How many cities did he conquer?"
"Were there any princesses in them?"
"There were more cities in the Plains than there are stones in a field, and each one of them had princes and princesses. Many of them had kings, and some of them queens, while others were ruled by high priests or priestesses, and some by priest-kings or priestess-queens.
And King Slegegart conquered them. Not all of them, but many of them. And so he became Emperor Slegegart.
Now, when he died, the axe left him by his father became a relic, sacred to his imperial line. And when that line died out, it continued to be a powerful relic, until one day the axe was broken.
The majic stone, they took it from the broken axe and set it aside. Later, it was used to make other things, and when they broke, yet other things. All in common seemed to have a special power, the power to unite people.
Eventually, the Plains were flooded and all the people drowned. But the story of the stone continued.
Far away, in the city of H'Lathle, there was a man called Kilm. He was also called many other things, but we will just call him Kilm. His mother was an Elv, while his father was a Human."
"Was his mother a princess?"
"No, she wasn't a princess. But she was an Elv. And in H'Lathle, that was nearly the same thing, for the Elvyn there were not like the Elvyn here. The Elvyn of H'Lathle were tall, and slim, and wise beyond words. A Human would become mesmerized by the mere presence of one. They were so beautiful, and so infused with enchantment, the very air shone and quivered about them. Our Elvyn here are but pale imitations of the Elvyn of H'Lathle."
"They sound wonderful! Almost as good as an enchanted princess!"
"They were more wonderful than any enchanted princess. The difficulty was, they knew it.
In H'Lathle there also lived Humans."
"Oh! They were so lucky, to live with enchanted Elvyn! The Elvyn here won't let any one even see their cities, never mind live there!"
"Well, not all the Humans in H'Lathle thought it was so great. The Elvyn were so wise and powerful, so ancient and learned, they didn't think a Human could live long enough to learn anything worth while, or be of any real use. Because of this, some of the Humans thought the Elvyn treated them not like Humans but rather like sub-mens. And truth to tell, some of the Elvyn did treat the Humanfolk like mere brute beast men. And, while most of the Elvyn did treat the Humans quite decently, in their own way, even the most gracious of them would not approve of Elv and Human marrying."
"So Kilm's parents weren't married?"
"Actually, they were. Which was a sad tale in itself. So Kilm didn't fit in with the Elvyn, and he didn't fit in with the Humans, either. Eventually, he discovered that he was, in fact, the only half-breed in H'Lathle."
"Father says 'half-breed" is a bad word, that only ignorant people use it!"
"Your father is right. But in H'Lathle, that was the word they used. Every one used it, both Elv and Human, and none of them knew any better."
"Except Kilm's parents!"
"Except Kilm's parents. And a few, a very few other people like them. So many people used the term, even the half-breeds themselves used it. They knew it was bad, but they didn't know any other word.
Well, Kilm finally found a place. The fancy name for it was the Society of the Two Hands. The regular term for it was the Thieves' Guild. One thing which happened in H'Lathle was that, when every one turned against them, the half-breeds turned against others. They dominated the Thieves' Guild because some of them could pass, some for Elv, some for Human. And once they dominated it, they left very little room for freelancers, Elv or Human."
"Just like the Pirate King! He's worse on single pirates than the city guard!"
"Exactly."
"There were Elv thieves? Even among such elegant, enchanted Elvefolk?"
"Yes. Not so many as there might be among Humans, but what ones there were, were that much better. They probably had rather more complex motives than a Human would, but the effect was the same.
---
So, Kilm and his companions set out to the Swamp to get the Stone, in whatever setting it might now be, and bring it back to H'Lathle, in hopes of unifying the Elves and the Humans.