Ðaŋharkhö

Ðaŋharkhö (regnal title Kal-Harkhö) was the second Öšdúu-Haðü, that is, the leader of Kal-Haðü, from 25018 to 25009 AYM. His reign mainly concerned the additional subjugation and pacification of the warring factions that had existed prior to his ascension and even killed his predecessor Vrüžnë. It is thought that Ðaŋharkhö was not a true successor but initially a puppet monarch in service of one of these warring factions, but who quickly turned against them. In his first 4 years as king, he launched a comprehensive campaign to weed out and capture his opponents, earning him the epithet 'Purifying King'. In his later years, he would launch numerous large-scale mines throughout the city, thus finally creating a substantial food source for the population.

For the widespread prosperity that characterized his reign, and the deification he received even during his own lifetime, Ðaŋharkhö is considered to be the greatest ruler of Kal-Haðü and one of the greatest of the Hýyo-Wýðúr cities in general.

Biography

Ðaŋharkhö is listed in the Tómošek Family's Žötó-Ïdhatón (the family records) as being born in the Ïlýrhonid Tribe on 25048 AYM. This would place his birth right near the end of the second and last wave of Žötó-Žimiara, especially around the peak of the Kavamïŋ-Züýŋ counter-religious movement. Due in part to the circumstances surrounding the death of its creation Rzüýŋ in 25044 AYM, the Kavamïŋ-Züýŋ would achieve immense popularity throughout 25040-36 AYM, and this would only be bolstered by the series of natural disasters that rampaged the Ïlýrhonid Tribe. These factors all contributed to the rapidly-growing Ýmïlýrhonid Movement, which distrusted the Tribe's ability to care for its citizens and thus advocated for emigration. It is a near-certainty that Ðaŋharkhö was affected by the Movement, such that he would ultimately emigrate to the Hýyo-Wýðúr in one of the two major waves that erupted after the successes of the Wýðúric and Khýnýšic Expeditions of 25026-25 AYM.

Ðaŋharkhö would find himself in the transitional state of the Hýyó-Wýðúr, which lasted from 25025 to 25020 AYM. This was marked by the Púlö-Ïlýrhonid, or Ïlýronidian Question, in which it was up to each individual person to adopt or reject notions of the Ïlýrhonidians' sociocultural outlook. This would spread into other areas of contention, like specific familial rites and cultural norms, and for each of these different choices, people would naturally migrate between Wýðúrian cities to find and be with those that shared their beliefs. Ðaŋharkhö found solace in a group of people that championed the ideals of the traditional Tómóšekkian family (that is, the family's culture before the establishment of the Ïlýrhonid Tribe). This group of people would end up in Kal-Haðü by the time of the Öšdúu.

This was followed by the establishment of the Öšdúu, which were absolute governments that each ruled over one city and prioritized self-dependence and isolation from all other settlements. Each city's Öšdúu could not be formed until the quarrels and conflicts between the different groups of that single city were resolved. Kal-Haðü, who had numerous such groups, was one of the last to appoint for themselves an Öšdúu, which was done in 25021-20 AYM, with Vrüžnë as the first leader, and even then, it was not a collective decision. In fact, it roused many groups to reignite their conflict, this time against Vrüžnë, ultimately leading to the king's murder in 25018 AYM.

Reign

Feud with the Tómóšekkian Faction

With the throne left empty, Ðaŋharkhö's faction took advantage of the power vacuum to install him as the new king. Ðaŋharkhö himself did not consent to the role, and was still an individual with little involvement in that faction. Most historians generally think that Ðaŋharkhö was meant to be a puppet leader, who would be the conduit through which the faction would supercede and destroy all others. This would chiefly be done through the installing of the faction itself as the king's army and personal guard, and thus his political decrees, aimed at the destruction of all other factions, would be most effective and most likely to result in total political and civil domination.

Ðaŋharkhö himself quickly resented being king, instead confiding in a group of personal friends his insecurities. These personal friends seeing the wretched political landscape through his eyes, eventually formed the king's secret battalion, which reached 2,000 individuals by mid-25017 AYM. Meanwhile, even amidst the increased pressures of the Tómóšekkian faction and numerous assassination attempts, Ðaŋharkhö would feign a sense of strategic delay, using excuses to explain why he had no carried out the plans of his faction.

This all came to a violent climax in late-25017 AYM, when, unable to convince the faction of his supposed innocence, he invited the bulk thereof to a meeting in which he would finally heed to their demands. There, the king's secret battalion massacred all members, bringing a sudden end to one of the most dominant groups within Kal-Haðü.

Wars against the Disparate Haðïan Groups

Following the mass murder of his own faction, Ðaŋharkhö had his secret battalion stand down while he himself extended to the rest of the groups an offer of peace and mutual respect. In secret, however, this was a way of diagnosing the true intentions of each individual. He had his battalion station themselves all across the city as forces akin to a secret police, with orders to immediately seek out the perpetrators of acts of violence, and to kill these specific people as quietly and covertly as possible.

Within Haðü itself, over 750 individuals would be slain in the following days, shrinking the population by 30%. In particular, his campaigns to weed out and destroy his opponents resulted in the revealing of their headquarters, which was where the vast majority of murders occurred, often en masse. Large swaths and blocks of the city were left bare and lifeless afterwards, and the rest were either oblivious or too stunned to take action. However, given the sheer perpetuity of the factional violence that had gripped the city for years before this, the comparative peace was generally seen as relieving and a return to civility. It is around this time that Ðaŋharkhö was given the epithet of 'Purifying King' for the cold and calculating nature with which he and his army disposed of their enemies.

By 25014 AYM, the last of the factions had been subdued and destroyed, and the whole of the city was under the rule of Ðaŋharkhö.

Creation of Mines

Following his successful purification of the city, Ðaŋharkhö turned to the interests of the people at large. At this point in the city's history, the warring factions had largely monopolized the mines, which were key to the inhabitants' health. This took the form of small-scale holes dug into the ground through which each group could reward its loyal members and force outsiders to be part of the group by virtue of necessity. During the destruction of these groups, these mines were finally exposed to the larger population. Thus began a concerted effort to enlarge the mines to better suit the growing number of inhabitants, which included the large-scale demolition of these groups' headquarters (which enclosed their mines) and the enlarging of the mines themselves. Given Ðaŋharkhö's hesitancies with the excessive enlargements of the mines (which posed a risk to civilian homes), he instead sought to enlarge the city as a whole, placing additional mines in this newly-designated outer ring. Aiming to protect these newly-established mines, which were to become the heart of the city's industry, Ðaŋharkhö would build a second outer wall past the first, made mostly of material from the wreckage of the warring groups' structures.

This outer ring would thus be home to over a dozen mines by the time of Ðaŋharkhö's death, each churning out around 5 metric tons of material per year. Ðaŋharkhö's wide matrix of production was only surpassed by the city-encompassing underground mining system established by Ŋüðúrr in the nearby city of Lómóhüd.

Later Years and Death

Ðaŋharkhö's later years were relatively benign and prosperous. Far from the warmongerer he had exuded in his early years, Ðaŋharkhö the established ruler was, by all accounts, reserved and benign. Having quashed the opposition and given the people the ability to sustain themselves, he would adopt a laissez-faire style of governance. This was an attitude reflected in the political and sociocultural climate of the city, which unlike the more southern cities of Lómóhüd and Vërðïm were not plagued by the incessant raids of the Maðúšýï. Life in Kal-Haðü was overwhelmingly communal, with no such formal currency or hierarchal system. Instead, as it is said, the people were bound by a devotion to Ðaŋharkhö himself akin to deification, as he had unbound what was once heavily guarded and given it to all the inhabitants. The overall attitude was not quite that of the reserved fear that had plagued the city during the purges of the early years, but a desire to see the vision of the vindicated Ðaŋharkhö (or Kal-Harkhö) realized.

Ðaŋharkhö himself would die in 25009 AYM at the age of just 39 years. This came as a shock to most, as even back then one could comfortably live to 50 years. Historians generally believe his death was due to an underlying birth defect, which almost certainly caused the steady deterioration of the vascular systems, legs, skeleton, and brain. In fact, it may be such that his laissez-faire attitude in his final years was a means of covering up this progressive condition, so as to prevent it from diminishing his reputation or that of his achievements.

To honor him, the residents of Kal-Haðü buried him at the Wëbëlup-Wýðúr of the city, and covered him in an earthen mound made of rocks from the various mines that he had created. In a symbolic gesture, his successor Tëvarúmr would establish his throne atop this earthen mound as an acknowledgement of the contributions Ðaŋharkhö had made to both the city as a whole and the reputation of the Öšdúu-Haðü.

Legacy

Ðaŋharkhö was considered the most legendary of the Haðïan rulers, and is still considered to be the greatest of all who occupied the Öšdúu-Haðü role. Part of his large reputation is his extremely short reign of only 9 years (for context, the similarly-praised Ŋüðúrr had a reign of 18 years), during which he ended the civil war that rampaged the city and established the first means by which the populace as a whole could flourish of their own accord. More poignantly, however, these series of actions decisively and permanently steered the city away from the ideologically-mixed heritage that was a staple of the Hýyó-Wýðúr during the Púlö-Ïlýrhonid transitional period. While the vast majority of other Wýðúrian cities also had to go through this shedding of ideologies, Kal-Haðü was the only such city that accomplished this to such a full extent and in so doing replaced it with an earnst devotion to the ruler himself.

Although the cult that had formed around Ðaŋharkhö extended itself to his successors, it would always remain most fiercely devoted to this singular deified ruler. As such, while the Öšdúu-Haðü as a kingly role grew substantially in prestige and reputation, the populace always judged the successive rulers against the perfection and efficacy of Kal-Harkhö, and more often than not found them wanting. This level of scrutiny, even despite later rulers' use of abject symbolism, has set the Haðïans apart from all other cities, and some historians even consider it to be a byproduct of Ðaŋharkhö's own tendency to see through the superficial dealings of his subjects and foes.

It is perhaps the failures of the rulers after Kal-Harkhö that spelled the final doom for the traditional beliefs of the Ïlýrhonid Tribe and its families, which were already brought to their knees by the drastic changes of Kal-Harkhö himself. A central tenet of nearly all such beliefs was that of deuterogeniture, that in a symbolic way the second-born carried the true heritage and lineage, sometimes a vestige of the parent's own soul, in themselves. Thus, a great person or ruler's second son was often expected to have the same or a similar level of greatness as the father did, and in the Öšdúu, this extended to rulership and succession. Although succession did not go from father to son, the successor was still thought to inherit a vestige of the previous ruler through the mere fact that the former was taking on the same throne that the latter once occupied. Thus, through the failings and mixed receptions of Kal-Harkhö's successors Tëvarúmr and especially Aškar-Ïbahlút, the myth of deuterogeniture would lay firmly in the city's past by the time of 24983 AYM.