Ptahr - The First Empire

Ptahr - The First Empire

Ptahr - The First Empire

The origins of the Ptahr are lost to time. Linguistic archeology suggests that the Ptahr were originally a Tsalmothua tribe of the late Middle Era, who left Tsalmothua approximately 12,000 to 11,000 years ago, eventually migrating, roughly 9,000 years to ancestral homelands in the upper country of Azul, beyond Lake Vos. The Ptahr were not a particularly successful people, and occupied relatively marginal agricultural land.

Everything changed roughly 7000 years ago when the Ptahr adapted traditional plow harnesses and bridles for riding. This simple innovation marked the beginning of the Ptahr’s transformation to an equestrian (sort of) society.

The first acts of the Ptahr were to exterminate their previously more successful and dominant neighbors. The Ptahr lifestyle shifted, from an agricultural society, to a semi-agricultural riding society. With less emphasis on sustainable agriculture, the Ptahr moved into uplands and pasturelands, exterminating nomadic hunter gatherers as they went. Agriculture was slowly abandoned entirely as the Ptahr found it easier to extirpate their neighbors and confiscate their crops.

The Ptahr are one of the few peoples in history to phase out agriculture in favour of a nomadic/herding lifestyle. But the truth was that they were not a successful agricultural people. Relatively conservative, their neighbors had wider ranges of crops, better tools and better organization. The Ptarh had been pushed continually out of its lands until they’d been forced to marginal farmlands where they barely held on. They were a failed and failing people, and so when luck or inspiration offered a new lifestyle and new chances, they embraced it.

Thus, over the next thousand years, Ptahr society and culture expanded rapidly at the expense of its neighbors. Yag records report tribes fleeing the Ptahr as early as 6500 years ago, as Ptahr expansion continued. Over this time, the Ptahr had mastered the highlands, utterly extirpating indigenous peoples. They occupied the shadowlands, and eventually the hinterlands of Azu and Yag.

Ptahr society appeared to contain a deep streak of paranoia and xenophobia. Having continually suffered and been evicted at the hands of more successful neighbors and competitors, the Ptahr paid back a thousand small humiliations without mercy. Ethnically distinct from the neighbors, the Ptahr religious pantheon drifted towards monotheism, and embraced a world view in which only they and their way of life were accorded respect. As the Ptarh developed their new society, and elevated in song, folklore and mysticism, they downgraded every other tribe or race, according them the status of animals.

A set of tactics were evolved - long range scouts to patrol the territory and report back to War chiefs. Enemies or strange incidents or events were reported back, resulting in either further scouting or a war party. If the enemies seemed too numerous, envoys would be sent to other war chiefs. In the end, the unwary enemy or victims would find themselves assaulted by an immense and swiftly gathered mounted army. In this way, the Ptahr exterminated tribe after tribe.

The Ptahr also innovated effectively in both armouring themselves and armouring their Shagui. An armoured Ptahr riding an armour plated Shaghui was effectively an invulnerable killing machine. The Ptahr also mastered lance, arrow, and a variety of riding tactics.

The Ptahr eventually allowed subject peoples to farm within their territories. There were a number of proscriptions governing such peoples, and much of their agricultural surplus was confiscated. At the least sign of resistance, an entire community could be put to death.

Six thousand years ago the Ptahr began their assaults on the upriver reaches of the Yag basin. Meeting early success, the Ptahr were quickly thrown back. The upriver city states of the Yag began to invest heavily in megalithic fortifications and barrier wall. Elsewhere, the Ptahr continued to expand into Wang Gash and Azul territories.

But the failures against the Yag were seen as traumatic by a people who had swept everyone and everything before them. Up to this time, the Ptahr were essentially a leaderless people without central authority. Their evolved strategies and tactics had been sufficient to eliminate their rivals.

Instead, the Ptahr were ruled by war chiefs and shamans, with elaborate codes and rituals governing their interactions with each other. The Ptahr tribes moved through their territory in elaborate looping trails, crossing and criss-crossing each other constantly. Once a year, in the flicker time (autumn - periods of true alternating day and night) the Ptahr would gather in the highlands. The repeated defeats and pushbacks by Yag cities infuriated and threatened the Ptahr. It was a massive cultural affront.

Approximately 5800 years ago, a charismatic Shaman/Warlord emerged who united the Ptahr under a single command. Over a decade, a majority of the warlords either joined the faith or were replaced by disciples. There was, during this time, a further innovation, the domestication or semi-domestication of the huge elephant sized Shaghut.

The united Ptahr swept down on the fortified Yag cities of the upriver region, breaching and slaughtering them as they went. The Yag survivors fled downriver, their soldiers making a fighting retreat, and establishing impregnable forts even as the Ptahr flowed past. Within a generation or two, the Ptahr had conquered the Yag utterly.

Roughly a third of the Yag cities, almost all of the upriver nations, were destroyed, and more than half of all Yag killed in the conquest. Only seasonal floods, and negotiated surrender, saved the Yag from complete genocide.

The Yag city states of the downstream and coastal areas had been faced with ferocious raids from the sea by Zhudan for centuries. During early raids, many Yag cities had been destroyed or badly damaged with large numbers slaughtered. The coastal Yag had evolved a number of effective strategies for dealing with their seagoing enemies, and the stronger upriver polities ranging from strategic retreats, elaborate defensive warfare, strategic flooding, negotiated submission and bribery to preserve their existence.

These tactics were employed in succession against the Ptahr. Even Zhudan mercenaries were employed to fight the Ptarh (to no great success). Although city after city was devastated, strategic retreats and strategic flooding blunted Ptahr campaigns year after year. By the fifth campaign, religious fanaticism compromised in accepting the utter submission of the embattled Yag, in return for which the Yag’s wealth and product entered into the service of the Ptahr. The years of resistance had actually thinned Ptahr numbers, bringing expansion to a halt.

The Yag were permitted to exist as a slave people, farming and working for the Ptahr. In another generation, Ptahr domination extended to the conquest of Azul. Expatriate Yag and refugee Azul fled again, into Tsalmothua and the Coal Kingdoms. However, based on the lessons of the Yag, the Ptahr were considerably more tolerant, accepting surrender and submission and reducing the Azul to a state of slavery.

With the depleted Yag and Azul as agricultural breadbaskets, and with complete mastery of their own lands, the Ptarh numbers rebuilt. They became dependent on agricultural products and tools from Yag and Azul, allowing the Yag to repopulate their basin, and allowing the revival of limited agricultural slave communities in their territories.

The Ptarh expanded into Tsalmothua, overrunning some of the coal kingdoms, warring with others. But here, they found themselves overstretched. Much of the Ptarh energy and military surplus focused on Wang Gash, where eventually, they pushed their way to an enemy whose own culture was even more psychotic and apocalyptic, the Zhudan.

The Ptarh-Zhudan conflict was long and brutal, and took place on ground well away from either nation’s strength. The war was a land conflict, where the Zhudan were a sea people. On the other hand, the Wang Gash country was extremely difficult, hilly and mountainous, filled with narrow passes and passages. It was difficult country to occupy, difficult to supply, and the Zhudan could defend indefinitely by holding key passes. The conflict dragged on year after year, without resolution, but with immense losses on the Ptarh side.

In the meantime, the Azul, and particularly the Yag, became increasingly important within the Ptahr empire. The Ptahr were essentially illiterate nomads, the actual tasks of governance and administration fell increasingly into the hands of Yag scribes, mathematicians, administrators, farmers and artisans. The Ptahr continued to maintain a formal nomadic lifestyle and refused to allow contamination or miscegenation with their slave races, with the result that they did not merge with Yag society, nor adopt useful customs.

Yag culture, in turn, had expanded to repopulate its its basin and rebuild its destroyed cities. Yag colonies and outposts were founded throughout the Ptahr empire, even into areas of Lake Vos and Wang Gash. Essentially, anywhere the berries thrived, the Yag expanded. Many of these colonies and outposts would vanish with the fall of the empire. But many survived, and even those who did not would make contributions to regional cultures. The Azul were less widespread, but the Azul agricultural package spread steadily inland.

By approximately 5350 the Ptarh empire, a rabid nomadic theocracy, had reached its peak, controlling much of the known world. But already the various schisms which would dismantle the empire were in play. The Yag and the Azul were very nearly independent peoples. Within the theology of the Ptarh, heresies had begun to emerge. Minor heresies were brutally purged. But centralized leadership was breaking down, and a single religious leader hand been replaced by a Council of Apostles, whose theological differences and political ambitions were barely papered over.

Within two hundred years, emerging tensions would divide the Ptarh Empire into the Greater Empire, ruling Yag, the Highlands, the Shadowlands, Wang Gash, Lake Vos and the upper Azul lands on one side, and the Lesser Empire, ruling Azul and Tsalmothua territories. The coastal Azul city states became independent principalities.

The Lesser Empire was minority Ptarh and thinly held. By increments, the Lesser Empire vanished into history, in the end, it was merely an Empire in title only, all political, economic and military power having slipped away.

The Greater Empire attempted to survive as an increasingly formal entity. The effort required substantive administrative support from the Yag. For political purposes, the Empire was divided into three kingdoms - the lowlands (Yag), the highlands (Ptarh) and the midlands (Wang-Gash). However, almost immediately, the three kingdoms essentially began to function as independent entities. A political crisis came about when the Ptahr Chieftains who ruled Wang-Gash resumed war with Zhudan, and the other two kingdoms failed to follow suit. It was the equivalent of declaring a holy crusade and everyone staying home. The Ptarh Empire was effectively dead from that point on. Roughly a generation later, the Ptahr of the highlands staged a rebellion against their own Empire. An Empire which was, for all practical purposes, run by their Yag slaves. The rebellion of the Empire against its slave people ended inconclusively with the independence of the Yag, which remained organized as a unitary state.

The Ptarh Empire, at this time, still remained as a coherent entity. In purging the Yag elements, and in losing control of the Yag basin, Wang-Gash and Azul, its dimensions had reduced considerably and it had lost its civilized provinces, but it still held sway over the highlands, hill countries and much territory in between.

It entered an interregnum period, where for a couple of centuries, it experimented with new social institutions, a sort of feudalism, new economic activities, including trading caravans, and religious consolidation. Bereft of Yag administration, it developed its own written script, and formalized a literate shaman class who administered a centralized mobile bureaucracy side by side with the traditional chiefs.

When civil wars broke out between the Azul city states, the Ptarh invaded and conquered once again, allowing reasonable independence and strict governance. With the wealth and resources of Azul behind them, the Ptarh again conquered Yag, then undergoing a period of weak governance. This was the brief interregnum of the Second Ptarh empire.

But this was to be the last gasp of Ptarh power. By this time, the civilized countries of the Yag Basin, Azul coast and the inland river systems they’d settled in population and resources far outstripped the nomadic Ptarh. The other peoples had learned to ride Shaghui into combat, blunting the Ptarh’s cavalry advantage. Even worse, mothbeasts had been employed for war. While Mothbeasts were no match in combat for Shaghui, they moved faster and could carry more materials. Mothbeast riding armies could outmaneuver and outrace the Ptarh on Shaghui. Moreover, lancemen and archers were increasingly effective against Shaghui chargers.

Their population thinned, their tactics and weapons obsolete, their efforts at modernization and reform a series of awkward half steps the Ptarh had been incredibly lucky with their second empire. They had not won from strength, but had stumbled into power through the weakness and division of their enemies.

But having won a second chance at Empire, they did not know what to do with it. The Empire experienced creeping paralysis as the Shamanic/Bureaucratic class battled feudal chieftains. The Ptahr refused to learn from or integrate conquered peoples, reasoning that this was the cause of the fall of the first empire. Instead, they became wilfully conservative.

The result was a series of rebellions and savage battles which saw the Ptahr power broken utterly, and the Ptarh fleeing back to their central highlands.

The Ptarh, subsequently would reform their tactics and administration, but by then it was much too late. Their central lands were incapable of agriculture. They recovered surrounding territories and practiced an awkward form of feudalism on conquered peoples, but were unable to reliably maintain control.

Eventually, the Ptarh withdrew entirely to the highlands, where they meditated for centuries upon their defeats and victories, and prophesied a new Empire, one in which the extermination of all other peoples would be accomplished without hesitation or mercy.

--

Not quite happy with that.

It seems that there's nothing new under the sun. The Ptarh are a nomadic hinterland people whose mastery of equestrianship, and whose ability to move and concentrate large numbers of warriors quickly, allowed them to overwhelm less mobile rivals and conquer less flexible civilized regions.

In this sense, the Ptarh are analogous to the Huns, the Goths and Vandals, the Mongols, the Manchu, the Masai, the Hittites, the Assyrians, the Arabs and Berbers and many more. In particular, the resemblance to the Mongols is especially pronounced.

I tried to move away from the Mongols by giving the Ptarh a strong streak of mysticism and a theocratic bent, a la the Ghost Dance, but that only pushed them towards a resemblance to Islam and Arabs.

The difference between the Ptarh and the Arabs was that the Arabs were a diverse culture, encompassing city states and complex civilization, but also encompassing nomadic barbarian cultures. When the Arabs swept out of their peninsula to conquer much of the known world, they also brought with them from other parts of their constituency the technical and administrative skills to hold it.

The Ptarh brought no such repertoire of technical and administrative skills. Indeed, they had in choosing their lifestyle, deliberately abandoned even the paths to developing such skills. Like the Mongols, they were pure horsemen.

Unlike the Mongols, however, they refused to be incorporated or absorbed into the more advanced societies they conquered. And unlike the Arabs, they refused to allow the conquered entry into their culture, their language, their way of life and religion.

Instead, they held themselves apart, with a xenophobic impulse that resulted in relentless campaigns of genocide against literally hundreds of tribes, and brought the Yag to the brink of extinction. The conquest and incorporation of Yag, Azul and other peoples as slave races of the Empire was not so much an innovation of the Ptarh but an acquiescence or adoption of Yag flexibility. The Yag literally taught the Ptarh the virtue of conquering them, as opposed to utter extermination.

The Ptarh had made themselves into an unstoppable military force. But in literally every other respect they were lacking. It was only at the dawn of the civilized ages, the Late Human Era, that conditions were such that they could forge an Empire. But having forged it, they were poorly shaped to hold it. The wonder of it, is that it lasted so long.

The interregnum leading up to the Second Empire represented a last gasp. A final effort on the part of the Ptarh to come to grips with the issues, with the skills and abilities whose lack had left the first empire slipping through their fingers. But their efforts were halfhearted, tentative and confused. The conservative impulse was strong.

Having won the second empire by sheer fluke, they learned exactly the wrong lessons and it evaporated from their grasp without them ever understanding why.

Their response to the failure of the second empire was to reject modernism entirely, to retreat both physically and mentally, into a cage of spartan insanity. By the beginning of the Bronze age, the Ptarh were a spent power.