Welcome back to the World of Astrom blog! Sorry it’s been a while since I last posted, but I’ve been busy writing the next novel. However, a new blog-series is long overdue, so I’m delighted to resume my Races of Astrom series with a sequence of posts about the different Mortal people groups in Astrom. This follows on from previous posts about the elves, dwarves and armists.
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Most of the races of Astrom are mortal, but when reference is made to Mortals (capital M), it has a very specific connotation. That is because it translates the elvish word düel, which was a term used by the elves to distinguish their kin who forfeited their immortality from those who remained deathless. Mortality was their defining feature, though they were in origin elves.
The words ‘men’ and ‘women’ are used for convenience in my writings, but make no mistake, the Mortals of Astrom are not human. They are descended from elves who fell from grace and came under the Curse of Morality for their part in the Great Betrayal. To understand these events, it’s necessary to go back many thousands of years to the late Second Chapter, when Elvendom stretched across all of Astrom from Ciricen in the north to Lurallan in the south, and from Kalimar in the east to Ithrill in the west. Yet all was not well in Elvendom, and there were numerous fault-lines in this vast civilisation.
The elves of Endomar (future Hendar), Ciricen and Aranar had become alienated from the elves of Ithrill, Kalimar and Alanmar by profound religious differences. What had begun as obscure doctrinal divergences had widened over the long centuries of the Second Chapter into a yawning cultural chasm. With some variations, the elves of Ithrill, Kalimar and Maristonia had remained faithful to the true teachings of Prélan, the elven God. By contrast, the elves of Endomar, Aranar and Ciricen had wandered far from this truth. Some had fallen into grave heresies, some had lapsed into a kind of indifferent atheism, and some had become ensnared in demon worship and all manner of perverse practices. What they all had in common, though, was a persistent rejection of Prélan.
And for all of them, the effect on their societies was deleterious. Justice fell by the wayside, corruption and division became rife, persecution of faithful minorities was rampant and everywhere the tendency was to violence and exploitation. Coupled with these trends was a growing national identity in the new realms the elves had established outside Kalimar. In different ways these new principalities found means to distinguish their identity from that of Kalimar, the mother-kingdom. Some, like Ithrill and Alanmar, found ways to be different and yet still co-exist peacefully with Kalimar and honoured the overlordship of the High King; but others, like Endomar and Ciricen, committed themselves to a disastrous policy of rejecting all Kalimari norms and values. Nationalism and apostasy combined to create a toxic division in the elven world.
Great efforts were made to heal this divide, achieve reconciliation and draw the heretics back to the true faith, but these efforts were spurned, misinterpreted as cultural imperialism by Kalimar, and the prophets of Prélan who preached the true faith were persecuted and martyred. Eventually, the worsening atrocities of the renegade nations – including mass murder, child sacrifice and demon worship – became so bad that Prélan’s forbearance came to an end, and He unleashed a long-threatened punishment. In the last year of the Second Chapter, on the very night when the corrupt leaders of Endomar, Ciricen and Aranar had gathered their subjects together for profane rituals and a mass repudiation of Prélan, the judgement fell.
All of those who had rejected Prélan became mortal. Their immortality was taken away, lest their evil perpetuate unchecked for all time. The night of judgement was seared into elven consciousness, marked by many upheavals and tumults in the natural world: the sun was darkened, huge lightning storms consumed the sky, the land was riven by unprecedented earthquakes and the coasts were swamped by towering tsunamis. Many perished in the natural disasters, and those that survived were left shell-shocked to acclimatise to a world that had changed. The favour and blessing of Prélan had been withdrawn, and they felt the effects in their bodies and in an increased struggle to subsist on the land. They did not die at once, but they became subject to death, and as the years lengthened, one by one they succumbed to ill health and old age.
That terrible night was known by the elves as the Great Betrayal, and ever after their history was divided into the period that came before it and the period that followed after. The judgement of Prélan was known as the Curse of Mortality, and that indeed was how it seemed at first. The elves were appalled, both those who had been afflicted, and those who looked on in horror at what befell their neighbours and kin. Yet the judgement was not universal; it was targeted to where it was merited. Only those who rejected Prélan were affected. This meant that although the vast majority of certain populations became mortal, some small communities and faithful families escaped.
Only a few elves became mortal in Alanmar, but the greater part of the elves of Lurallan, Aranar, Endomar and Ciricen came under the judgement. Only a few isolated groups were spared, and these were quickly driven away or persecuted into extinction. Even in Ithrill many became mortal, especially along the western coast where the harmful influence of neighbouring Endomar was most widespread. Only Kalimar escaped more or less unscathed.
Enmity and mistrust immediately sprang up between the mortal elves and the immortal, and soon after the Great Betrayal war arose between them. King Lancearon of Ithrill and High King Avalar of Kalimar took it upon themselves to chastise their neighbours for their heresy, and invaded Endomar (now known by its mortal name, Hendar) and Ciricen respectively. Yet they shied away from genocide and long-term occupation, and satisfied themselves with regime change, hunting down and executing the worst ringleaders, the kings, priests and false prophets who had led so many people astray. When the two kings withdrew, Ithrill and Kalimar settled down to an uneasy co-existence with the new Mortal kingdoms.
Further posts in this series will explore the character and culture of the different Mortal nations, looking in turn at Aranar, Ciricen, Hendar and Lurallan, but it remains here to complete the overview of Mortal history. Gradually the Mortals came to terms with their new nature and destiny, but as the offending generation died and a new generation emerged, difficult questions and hard choices arose. Some persisted in the folly and sins of their fathers and mothers, and so remained cut off from Prélan, but others repented and turned back to Prélan. They remained mortal, but at least their souls were saved, and their spiritual health restored.
Where children were born to parents who had both fallen under the Curse, this new generation was mortal from birth. In some cases, however, the situation became confused. In the early days of the Third Chapter, when the full effects of the Curse had yet to be seen, there came about unions between Mortals and immortal elves. In some cases, there was love that knowingly crossed the divide, and in some cases, couplings occurred where one or both of them were unaware of the nature of the other. A male immortal might unwittingly father children with a Mortal female, and a male Mortal might seduce a female immortal who was unaware of his Curse. Therefore, a generation of mixed heritage was produced, sons and daughters who had one immortal parent and one mortal, and in most cases, one parent who believed and followed Prélan, and another who didn’t. This hybrid people became known as the Genauri, the half-elven.
They were most widespread in western Ithrill, though their population spread right up the western coast of Astrom to Hendar. They were a troubled people of uncertain loyalties, and they caused many problems for King Lancearon of Ithrill. During the Ship-king era he had to contend with what was virtually a nation within a nation, many of whom took to terrorism and piracy. Likewise, there were Genauri in Hendar who wanted to cleave to elven Ithrill or create their own coastal state spanning the two kingdoms, which caused centuries of strife and unrest.
Elven philosophers maintained that first-generation of Genauri, who had one fully mortal parent and one fully immortal, were given a free choice by Prélan, to choose which kind they would belong to, though this was by no means universally believed, and there were many scenarios which were more complicated. Some chose Elvendom and rallied behind King Lancearon whilst others chose mortality, and these latter had varied fates. The most rebellious were driven to extinction by Lancearon. Others migrated north to Hendar, or over the sea to Lurallan. Eventually the Genauri faded and became assimilated into the distinct ethnic populations of Ithrill and Hendar.
By the end of the first millennium of the Third Chapter, the Genauri were a distant memory and already semi-mythic in most of Astrom. The new Mortal kingdoms had by this stage become strong and secure with a clear identity, and the boundaries of immortality were sharply drawn along the frontiers of Ithrill and Kalimar. Smaller Mortal principalities had also grown up in Urunmar and Dorzand, eking out a precarious existence on the margins of civilisation. The elves and Mortals were still uneasy neighbours, but they had learnt to tolerate each other, engaging in trade and diplomacy. The arising of a common enemy in Kurundar of Urunmar, however, greatly accelerated and deepened their tentative friendship. They fought together to overthrow the dark sorcerer in the First War of Kurundar, and so sowed the seeds of a common heritage and sense of mutual belonging.
After the First War of Kurundar the nations of Astrom continued in friendship and even experimented with a political and economic union, which for a brief time linked them together in a kind of loose federal structure. However, they could not find lasting agreement, and their different ambitions drove them apart. The Mortal kingdoms experienced much more upheaval than their elven neighbours, for generations came and went, with shifting values and personalities. The horse-lords of Aranar quarrelled among themselves so often and developed such temporary power structures that they lived in a state of constant competition and instability. The Mortals of Ciricen, too, were divided, the chance events of the Dragon Wars giving rise to two distinct races, the Lordai and the Sordai, who became the bitterest of foes and whose wars lasted for centuries.
The strongest Mortal kingdom was Hendar, whose size and natural resources might have allowed it to dominate northern Astrom, had it been blessed with wiser leadership. King Ciryexeres fell into overbearing pride, and his treacherous seizure of Ithrillian territory triggered the long, slow-unfolding tragedy of Hendar in the second half of the Third Chapter. Stung by this unprovoked attack, Lancearon struck back, and the greater skill, resolve and military prowess of the elves of Ithrill saw them annex most of southwestern Hendar. Thus began the Silver Wars, a thousand-year conflict between elven Ithrill and the Mortals of Hendar. Theirs was a deep hatred, and it took the near destruction of both groups to achieve some measure of reconciliation.
It was not long after these wars had begun that Lancearon realised that Kurundar had returned to Urunmar. Recognising the coming threat, and convinced that he could not depend on the friendship or willing alliance of Mortals, Lancearon set out to bring all Astrom under his sway, so that he might gain the strength to defeat Kurundar. In a geopolitical game played out over centuries, Lancearon gradually conquered all of Hendar, half of Aranar and parts of Maristonia and Lurallan. Thus, a great part of the Mortals of Astrom came under the control of the Silver Empire. Some diehards resisted to the last, pursuing a hopeless blood-feud, but others fought under imperial banners against the common enemy that culminated in the Second War of Kurundar at the end of the Third Chapter.
Only in the Fourth Chapter did the Mortals of Astrom become truly free again, liberated both from Kurundar’s invasion and Ithrillian overlordship. A Mortal kingdom was renewed in Hendar, the Mortal clans of Aranar resumed their lifestyle of tournaments and horse-breeding, and the Lordai and Sordai remained locked in an unending struggle for control of the peninsula of Ciricen. The Mortals of Lurallan had a history of their own in the Third Chapter, as did those of Dorzand, but all these must wait for another chapter of this series.
So that is how Mortals came to be found in Hendar, Aranar, Ciricen, Dorzand, Urunmar and Lurallan. From the vantage point of the Fourth Chapter, they could look back on three thousand years of history, during which they had by turns been the sworn enemies, staunch allies and sullen neighbours of the elves. Loremasters on both sides remembered their common heritage and mused over unanswerable questions about their respective destinies, but for ordinary folk the days when Mortals had been wayward elves were so far removed as to have lost all meaning and relevance, legends lost in the mists of time. They were kindred races, but so estranged as to be effectively two different species. Thank you for reading. The next few chapters in this series will explore the characteristics and idiosyncrasies of each Mortal race in greater detail. Come back soon to delve deeper into the lore of Astrom.
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