Age of the Thief-Queens, Part 1: ~Shaiatha Vira~ - the First Conquest

After extermination of the First Formian Hive, the chaos of economic collapse led to trade and territorial disputes between the Yaro Cities, which for the first time in five thousand years the confederacy of queens failed to arbitrate. Full-scale civil wars outbroke in Reiefya and Hanazhyana, in the latter of which rival pretenders to the Hanat throne sought recourse in Mahyat and Son respectively, laying the groundwork for open warfare between the cities, but without the knowledge to fight it.   Son found answer within the returning Retaea sellswords. This city, the Yaro’s northernmost and nearest the moorlands, had brokered the contract between the Sage-Queens and the nomad clan-queens. Now Queen Aiahil of Son reached an agreement with Berelezh, queen of Clan Naoloha and a general from the Formian Wars, to gather an army among the returning veterans, which she wielded to effect. In 12,823 ZS, Son’s army under Berelezh defeated a similar mercenary host hastily raised by Mahyat, after which the Mahyata sued for peace. Son, for the first time in eight thousand years, found itself in a position of supremacy over the Upper Yaro.   Son’s hegemony, however, belied conflict ongoing between its people and the Retaea sellswords. The outland warriors stood outside the city’s social hierarchy, causing resentment with the peasant population. Contrarily, the city’s nobles prejudicially shunted Berelezh and her captains from influence within the city’s government. While Son's rulers fully enjoyed the fruits of the Retaea’s military supremacy, they failed to realize how precariously their supremacy balanced upon these outlanders’ goodwill, nor that Berelezh was cultivating relations with her erstwhile opponents who had supported Mahyat. Too late Queen Aiahil realized her error in 12,871 ZS, when she tried to remove Berelezh as commander of the city’s forces. Berelezh, however, took advantage of discord among the nobles to withstand the queen’s command and organized a palace coup.    Bereleth's  warriors and allies brought Aiahil bound to the streetyard before the palace (where Son’s Hall of Matrons now stands). There Berelezh slew her, took the queen’s crown, and burned her body. Then, against her local supporters' expectations, she set Aiahil’s skull upon a spear in a Retaean custom that soon became a symbol of terror and tyranny, and declared herself Queen of Son.   The shock Aiahil’s death spreading through the Yaro Cities proved no less great than in Son itself, whose people suddenly realized they were ruled by a foreigner for the first time since Old Hanat was razed. Huges swathes of the populace refused to accept Berelezh and joined the nobles in revolt, including the High Priesthood of Matarasse’s Temple, who condemned the deed, all except the Korasha veterans who had come home with the Retaea sellswords, who supported their bonded clanwives and the new queen, in civil violence that ended with half the city burned, and anywhere from a tenth to a quarter of the population massacred. To consolidate power, Berelezh purged most of the nobles and the priesthood, even those who had first supported her, as well as most of the psychics not allied with her. Once the city proper was under control, the Retaea still needed to overtake the outlying settlements. Even though these rallied under their appointed magistrates, with the center gone, none could coordinate resistance, and the Retaea warriors decimated them piecemeal.   For the first time ever, the term ~Shaveraze~ - Thief-Queen - whispered down the Yaro River, tribute to an usurper who had slain a lawful ruler whom some ancient philosophers had deemed divinely appointed. Yet the cities’ outrage died in confused unbelief as they dealt with their internal conflicts and bankrupt governments struggling to keep from toppling. While Mahyat quickly seized the opportunity to reverse its losses, Hanazhyana and Hesenya still roiled in internal squabbles, and both Qabarat and Reiefya had to contend with external conflicts in the Shattersea and Sovyrian. The greatest reaction was an upsurge of anti-Retaea sentiment ejecting many of the itinerant sellswords, sending them northward toward their homeland, though with much pillaging along the way.   On their path homeward rose Son, held by Berelezh and her subordinates. In an enlightened move, she let the displaced warriors pass through, and even gave those who would accept stead among her followers. To those who continued to the moorlands, she took a page from Queen Lanare’s empire-building manual and asked them to spread the word to any of their moorland kinfolk that, if anyone would seek adventure and honor in the south, the new queen of Son would welcome their blades.   Thus in 12,874 ZS, just three year’s after Aiahil’s murder, Queen Berelezh led an army southward reinforced with her new allies. She beseiged Mahyat on the Laul’s confluence, bested its defence, sacked the city, and split the spoils among her followers. Then she slew Queen Keishe upon her throne after she refused to yield. As she had done with Queen Aiahil’s, Berelezh set Keishe’s skull on a spear. Thereafter, the Thief-Queen’s army all flew flags adorned with skulls to spread more terror.   It took Berelezh and her cohorts, both from the original mercenary armies and new recruits from the moorland clans, another fourteen years to conquer Hanazhyana, a larger city who had time to learn from Mahyat’s losses and mistakes and supported by Hesenya to the south. The scholars and chroniclers from this time luridly decry these misdeeds, and also describe that many folk of the cityfolk refused these foreigners’ rule, and even, remembering their Warrior-Queen ancestry, took up hunting spears and wood-axes in revolt and died bravely if pointlessly. Neither did the chroniclers spare ink on the Retaea warriors, especially the Damaya females riding Shotalashu, a tactic that had long faded out of military use in the Yaro Valley, being reserved for hunting and frontier patrol. Yet these last scholars of the Sage-Queens described with morbid glee these wives’ savagery and bloody crimes, on which they pinned their Retaean title: ~Jeieveth~ meaning scout or outrider (whence comes ~Zheieve~: outrider-knight), already a title of distinction among the northern clans, but in the south soon came to mean a raider or brigand.   Queen Berelezh died in 12,900 ZS, twelve years after Hanazhyana’s fall, described as passing on a bed of gold within the palace of Son, surrounded by her daughters, underqueens, captains, and haremmates. She had become the first queen in over six thousand years to rule more than one city, and to claim the title of ~Shazhaue~: queen of queens, tyrant-empress. Yet ~Shaveraze~ - Thief-Queen was the one that stuck, especially among her foes, and then was applied to her successors. She had had silvered the queens’ skulls she had taken and bequeathed them to her heirs, among whom they became regalia, indelibly making the skull the symbol not only of the Thief-Queens’ power but of their tyranny, as was born on her warriors’ flags.   For the next quarter-century, the Thief-Queens paused. Following the Retaean tradition, each clan had its own queen, thus theoretically making each captain a potential queen as well. This formed a loose governmental congress with each fellow a potential successor to Berelezh’s high queenship, although her daughters held preeminence. This model did little to insulate the new Yaro Empire from another Retaean tradition: blood-feud, which swiftly set warrior factions fighting among themselves while wiser heads strove to negotiate a peaceful settlement. Of Berelezh’s daughters, two died in honor-duels vying for supremacy before the youngest Koroaeth cowed or defeated all opposition and unified all Retaea Clans in the Yaro Valley. Then she set out to complete the mission her mother had started.   Her target lay at Hesenya, poised where the Yaro Valley turns into the great marshland delta that flows to the sea, and which had had twenty-five years to prepare. Queen Koroaeth’s outriders reported new moats and stone walls warding the city, ramparts full of Korasha archers and spearmen, backed by the mightiest psychics in the valley under Queen Theahe’s command, and supported from the south by Reiefya (and less so by Qabarat). Yet the city had also come to rule its populace with as much ruthlessness as the Retaea. When Koroaeth received the city’s defiance, she gave them a simple reply: ~Shiruaeli oti Hesenya tarya eshodi esho domo hishora vearyelo.~ - “Yield, or Hesenya will burn until no stone stands on another.” When Hesenya refused, she let their envoys return, and then invested the city and cut it off from all relief or supplies. Several major battles, both on the river and landward ensued, but Koroaeth’s forces succeeded in keeping the city starving. After the first year, she offered a bounty for the head of any psychic or captain any of the cityfolk might bring her, along with promise to let them and their household go free. After the second year, she offered a wagonful of gold to anyone who would open the gates. When the gates opened in 12,925 ZS, she kept her promise to the traitors, and then hemmed the defenders inside. Her warriors went street by street, slaughtering everyone but children and then burned the city to the ground, thus keeping her original oath, and Queen Theahe’s silvered skull joined her luckless predecessors. To this day, Hesenya's site is abandoned.   After Hesenya, the Yaro Delta’s resistance to the Thief-Queens disintegrated. Reiefya sent a delegation, asking what the Retaea would demand to spare their city from Hesenya’s doom. Koroaeth’s answer came: ~Shae-sere mi uvaeura.~ - “Your queen and her crown.” To her credit, Queen Heaeze of Reiefya agreed, on condition that the city and all its people be spared. She then presented herself naked but for her crown before the Retaean army, knelt, and offered the crown. Koroaeth had her slain by slitting her throat, and out of respect returned her body with head to her city. Thus Heaeze came to be known as ~Shaeavyre Ryre~ - the Last Sage-Queen, for her sacrifice. Then Koroaeth installed her eldest daughter Raianzh as Reiefya’s ruler.   A last obstacle remained to Retaean dominance of the Yaro Valley: Qabarat, or Mir Annuigaer as it was more locally known then, still an Elven colony with a small but troublesome Lashunta population formed from refugees from Lost Valmaea and other Marastan cities who had escaped the Formian Conquest. While Qabarat’s Elves had held a long alliance with the Sage-Queens, the woes besetting the the Yaro Valley’s cities had broken that trust, and its Lashunta refugees held no allegiance at all. Koroaeth and her generals advanced on the Shining Jewel of the Western Sea more circumspectly, fully realizing that with its world-spanning aiudara elfgates, the city could receive endless relief against any siege, and furthermore proved willing to cause trouble back in the Retaea homeland though its gate's link to Ofu-Laubu. After any initial encirclement and protracted stalemate, Koroaeth entered into negotiations with both the city’s Elven and Lashunta leaders. Finally in 7644 within Qabarat’s year-count - 12,969 ZS, forty six years after Hesenya’s fall - Qabarat signed a treaty, agreeing to become a self-governing protectorate of the Thief-Queens with a Retaea governor appointed over the city’s Lashunta inhabitants.   For the first time since the Warrior-Queens, a single empire governed the whole Yaro Valley, an empire built on terror, at the moment held together by an alliance of bickering queenlings and a lone Damaya’s will.