One curious characteristic of the House of Borune has been observed down the centuries. While the male children of the house show little physical difference from ordinary Tolnedrans, the female children always differ markedly from the other women of our race. They are all quite tiny, and their hair is inevitably a deep, flaming red—a color which poets have rather extravagantly compared to that of the leaves of the oak tree in autumn. Their complexions are also significantly fairer than the olive skin of other Tolnedran women, and in certain light appear to have almost a faint greenish hue. Borune princesses, delicate and vibrant, may be justly considered the true jewels of the Empire.
PRE-DYNASTIC HISTORY
As did the other peoples of the west, the Tolnedrans migrated from the east during the early centuries of the first millennium. They established themselves on the central plain and began construction of their first city, Tol Honeth, on the large island in the Nedrane River. The present glory of Tol Honeth belies the crude log and mud fortress which first stood on the site. Written records of the pre-Dynastic era are tantalizingly brief, and few have survived down to the present. The documents of the FIRST HONETHITE DYNASTY, however, provide us with some insight into what life must have been like in prehistoric Tolnedra by virtue of those subjects which were of major concern to our first Emperors. Fire, flood, pestilence and civil war appear to have been endemic in those dark early years.
It is perhaps not an exaggeration to state that the Tolnedran Empire was born out of fire—or at least that it rose from the ashes. All wooden structures are susceptible to fire, and the city of Tol Honeth was no exception. Whatever the cause, in the first years of the ninth century a great conflagration broke out, and the island city was consumed from one end to the other. A minor city official, surveying the damage, concluded that stone does not burn and began the reconstruction of the city in that material while the embers were still smoldering. While a gang of wood-cutters may construct a log palisade in short order, work in stone is a much harder and more time-consuming enterprise. The vast construction crews who labored for decades to raise the walls of Tol Honeth provided the core as it were of the Imperial Legions. The standard ten-man gang used to transport large single stones became the elemental squad. The ten gangs of ten—the hundred—who moved the larger stones became the company, and the ten hundreds—the thousand—who dragged the vast foundation stones of the walls and wharves of Tol Honeth became the legions. The co-operative effort and the discipline involved in the construction of the city welded these work-gangs into the strong units which responded quite naturally to the commands of the overseer of the entire construction effort—the above-mentioned official. It was this official who became the legendary Ran Honeth I, the founder of the Dynastic system. When marauding brigands attempted to sack the fledgling city, the work-gangs, under the direction of Ran Honeth, dropped their tools, took up their weapons, and, because of their superior discipline, easily drove them off. Thus the idea of Empire was born. Once the work-gangs had tasted victory, the rest was simple. In a series of lightning moves, Ran Honeth consolidated his control over the entire Tolnedran people and established order, peace and security throughout the entire central plain.
THE FIRST HONETHITE DYNASTY 815–1373 (558 years, 23 Emperors)34
The major efforts of the FIRST HONETHITE DYNASTY were directed at the extension of the northern boundary of Tolnedra to the River Arend, the establishment of the port-fortresses at Tol Vordue and Tol Horb, and, of course, the building of the north dike on the Nedrane River. When the last Emperor, Ran Honeth XXIII, died without issue, the Empire was thrown into consternation.
THE FIRST VORDUVIAN DYNASTY 1373–1692 (319 years, 16 Emperors)
By the sheerest good fortune, the commander of the Imperial garrison at Tol Vordue—and, incidentally, the primary civil official as well—was a strong-minded, talented man who, less from ambition than from a powerful sense of personal responsibility, marched to Tol Honeth at the head of his legions to assume the Throne. It was at that time that the procedure for orderly Dynastic succession was established, thus saving the Empire from disintegration.
The Council of Advisors, a broad-based group of representatives from all districts of the Empire, gathered in emergency session and concluded that the commander of the Tol Vordue garrison was going to be the next Emperor with or without their consent, and they therefore carried his name to the Temple of Nedra where the priests consulted with the God himself.
NOTE
Popular superstition has it that in the early years of the Empire Nedra was physically present in the temple, sustained and served by the priesthood. Modern theologians, however, have discounted this and hold the more rational view that, while Nedra has always been with us in Spirit, his physical presence at any time in our long history is incapable of substantiation.
When the priests emerged from the temple with the blessings of Nedra upon Ran Vordue I, the FIRST VORDUVIAN DYNASTY was established, and the orderly succession was preserved.
The Vorduvians were vigorous and energetic Emperors, and they soon turned their attention to the lands south of Nedrane. Early in the Dynasty, our southern border was pushed to the banks of the River of the Woods, and the essential part of the Empire was complete.
Tol Borune was constructed in the center of the southern plain, and the remainder of the Dynasty devoted its efforts to the construction of the south dike on the Nedrane River.
THE SECOND HONETHITE DYNASTY 1692–2112 (420 years, 19 Emperors)
The years of this Dynasty were a period of consolidation and development. It was also a period of our first significant contacts with other nations. As so frequently is the case in Tolnedran history, it was the merchants who led the way. The initial contacts with the Arends and Nyissans were peaceful and profitable, but the Marags steadfastly refused to permit the entry of strangers into Maragor. The Emperor Ran Honeth XVII attempted to solve this problem by the construction of Tol Rane on Maragor’s western border. The purpose of Tol Rane was to provide a commercial center where the Marags could come to trade, but it soon had another, grimmer purpose. It quickly became evident that the Marags had considerable quantities of fine gold, and the accidental discovery of free gold in the streams of the border region set off a stampede of fortune-hunters to Tol Rane.
Creeping across the border into Maragor by night, these adventurers sought gold in every stream-bed until the Marags became aware of their presence. It was only then that we learned the horrid truth about our eastern neighbors.
It was in 2115 that a survivor of one of those groups of gold-seekers stumbled back to Tol Rane with his tale of horror. His companions had been taken by a band of Marags and, one by one, they had been ritualistically killed and then eaten.
While human sacrifice in one form or another was not uncommon in certain religions, the cult of Mara was the only one we have ever encountered which practiced ritual cannibalism. The news spread throughout Tolnedra like a grassfire, growing with each telling, until the entire nation was aflame with it. Speeches by officials fanned the fury of the populace, and there were soon deputations in Tol Honeth demanding war.
The Emperor, Ran Vordue I of the SECOND VORDUVIAN DYNASTY, still only three years from the investiture of his reign and the beginning of his Dynasty, submitted finally to the importunings of the people and began preparations for war.
THE SECOND VORDUVIAN DYNASTY 2112–2537 (425 years, 20 Emperors)
It is to the eternal shame of the Vorduvians that it was during one of their Dynasties that the extirpation of the Marags occurred. Although the fact that the Marags were cannibals was undeniably true, that fact might well have been ignored had it not been for the presence of gold in Maragor. The border could easily have been sealed and other means taken to persuade the Marags to abandon their revolting practice; but the war party in Tolnedra, thinking only of the gold, pushed the inexperienced Emperor into the ultimate sanction of war.
The campaign in Maragor lasted for four years and
was marked with the kind of savagery seldom seen in the west. Tolnedran legions operating out of Tol Rane quickly encircled the relatively small nation, then turned and struck inward at the heart of Maragor. The Marags, still weakened after their disastrous expedition in Nyissa, were no match for the might of the legions. The commanders of those legions, imbued with a kind of religious fervor, systematically slaughtered the entire populace as they went, and only at the last when the remnants of the Marags had been harried into a single valley in central Maragor were they persuaded to relent. Unfortunately, it was not humanity which moved the Tolnedrans to mercy, but once again our national vice— greed. The surviving Marags were spared in order that they might be sold to Nyissan slavers, who, like vultures, hovered on the outskirts of the battle.
Thus perished Maragor and with it no small measure of Tolnedran pride.
The horde of Tolnedran gold-seekers and commoners greedy for land which had hovered on the border awaiting the conclusion of the war swept into Maragor like a wave, frantic lest some other find more gold or take more land. But, as we learned to our sorrow, the grief-stricken spirit of Mara, God of the Marags, still abode in the land. The wave which had descended broke and recoiled back as Mara took his vengeance upon the adventurers. The tales which returned from that haunted land have fed nightmares in Tolnedra for over three millennia. The wailing of Mara is heard from one end of Maragor to the other by day, and by night, the fearful shades of slaughtered Marags stalk the land shrieking, their blood-smeared faces glowing with a ghastly light.
The weaker among the treasure-seekers soon went mad and cast themselves into rivers or hurled themselves off precipices; the stronger returned, shaken and ashen-faced to Tolnedra without gold, without land, and often only marginally with their sanity.
It was one of these survivors who devoted his fortune and the remainder of his life to the establishment of the great monastery at Mar-Terin where the monks for three thousand years have sought to propitiate Mara and to comfort the spirits of the slain Marags. The simple courage of the monks of Mar-Terin in the face of unspeakable horror is a testament to all that is best in the Tolnedran character.
The remainder of the Dynasty was uneventful until the reigns of the last four emperors. Trade was expanded with the Arends to the north and to a lesser degree with the Nyissans to the south, and the great ship-yards at Tol Vordue and Tol Horb were erected. Tolnedran vessels began to ply coastal waters in search of trade, and by 2400 had reached as far north as the Sea of the Winds off the northwest coast of what is now Sendaria.
It was at that point that we first encountered the Chereks. In 2411 a Tolnedran commercial flotilla was set upon by a Cherek fleet which emerged from the Cherek Bore. Tolnedran vessels, slow and wide, are built to carry cargo, and have never been a match for the swift, narrow war-boats of the Chereks. The battle was short, and the loss of lives and goods appalling.
Emperor Ran Vordue XVI quickly armed every available vessel and mounted a punitive expedition against Cherek. The results, of course, were lamentably predictable. Like wolves, the Chereks cut the fleet to pieces and sank every single ship.
Advised of Tolnedra’s presence by these two unfortunate encounters, Cherek pirates soon began to appear off the west coast of Arendia and Tolnedra.35 The city of Tol Vordue was sacked and burned eight times in those bloody centuries, and Cherek vessels, groaning under the weight of Tolnedran treasure, wallowed back to the north like some great sea-caravan.
Finally, in the first years of the 26th century, Ran Vordue XIX fortified Tol Vordue, building high walls to the seaward and increasing the garrison of his ancestral city ten-fold. Three expeditions of Chereks were beaten off, and they soon turned to easier prey. Tol Horb was sacked twice, and only the great iron chain across the Nedrane River prevented the Cherek fleet from ascending the river to the gates of Tol Honeth itself.
At about this time the last Emperor of the SECOND VORDUVIAN DYNASTY died without issue, and, in addition to its troubles with the pirates from Cherek, the nation was thrown into the turmoil which always accompanies Dynastic succession.
THE FIRST BORUNE DYNASTY 2537–3155 (618 years, 24 Emperors)
It had been generally assumed during the closing years of the reign of Ran Vordue XX that the Throne would once again pass to the Honethite family, and several worthy members of that numerous clan had already begun the expensive but necessary task of bribing various members of the Council of Advisors (which body incidentally had increasingly assumed certain legislative functions to relieve the Emperor of that tedious task in the increasingly complex Tolnedran society). But by that very maneuvering, the Honethites effectively barred themselves from the Throne when Ran Vordue XX died, since the Council found itself deadlocked with no one noble of the Honethite Family receiving a clear majority. After eleven months of bickering, the Council was finally forced to turn elsewhere.
When the name of a young Borune noble was put forward by those members of the Council elected from his district, the Vorduvian and Horbite factions in the Council quickly swung their votes in his favor, since it is unfortunately true that the Honethites have never been extremely popular with the nobility of other cities, given their propensity to be a bit over-proud and their habit of dispensing Imperial largesse preponderantly to the citizens of Tol Honeth.
The Honethites reacted with a vigorous campaign against the young Borune noble, making a very large issue of his questionable background. (His mother was a Dryad.) But in the end the coalition of Vorduvians, Borunes and Horbites pushed the vote through the Council, and the name of the young Borune was carried to the Temple and presented to the Priests of Nedra. Following the confirmation by the priests, Emperor Ran Borune I was crowned and assumed the golden Throne in Tol Honeth.
The young Emperor soon proved to be a happy choice. After examining the problem of Cherek depredations along the coast, he set the legions to work constructing a highway along the coast between Tol Vordue and Tol Horb. There was much grumbling among the legions about this, for the men had grown accustomed to garrison life in the cities and were unhappy at being forced to lay aside their dress uniforms and the abundance of young (and not so young) women who always find soldiers attractive. Powerful friends of legion officers protested to the Emperor about this unseemly disruption of the social lives of the soldiers, but Ran Borune remained firm.
The import of his plan soon became evident. The legions were spaced at intervals along the entire northwest coastline with each legion assigned its own section of road to complete. Thus, wherever the Cherek freebooters came ashore there was a legion awaiting them. The benefits to the nation achieved by this single plan were enormous. A fine highway was constructed, the legions (softened by garrison life) were restored to fitness, the Chereks were persuaded to seek entertainment elsewhere, and the unhealthy influence of idle soldiery on the political, social and moral life of the cities was removed. Following a wave of resignations by young officers and private soldiers who no longer found military life attractive, a new and tougher breed entered the legions, and the service was much improved. Since the benefits obtained from putting the legions to work were so obvious, the Borune Emperors laid out a vast network of highways reaching to all parts of Tolnedra which was to occupy the military for a thousand years.
It was also during the FIRST BORUNE DYNASTY that the Diplomatic Service was instituted. At first the Service consisted mainly of merchants who regularly visited foreign nations, but they were soon replaced by genuine professionals whose skill in handling relations between Tolnedra and frequently difficult and much less civilized nations is legendary. Evidence of that skill is to be found in the fact that there was a full diplomatic mission in Vo Mimbre during the later years of the lengthy border dispute between the Mimbrate Arends, who sought control of the forest of Vordue, and the Empire, which insisted that its northern border was at the River Arend. Further proof of the brilliance of the Service is found in the fact that Tolnedra maintained full diplomatic relations with al
l three Arendish factions throughout the entire Arendish Civil War with missions to Vo Mimbre, Vo Astur and Vo Wacune.
The major thrust of Tolnedran policy (which is to say Borune policy) throughout the period of the Arendish Civil War was to maintain, insofar as possible, a balance of power between the three contending duchies. So long as Arendia remained divided, Tolnedra’s northern border remained secure. When a philosopher delivered a formal remonstrance to Emperor Ran Borune XXII about the immorality of fomenting war and untold human suffering in Arendia simply for Tolnedran advantage, the Emperor replied blandly, ‘But this is politics, dear fellow, and has nothing to do with morality. One would always be wise to keep the two completely separate. Morality deals with what we might like to do, but politics deals with what we must do. There’s no connection between them at all.’
The diplomats of the Borunes also made their way to the north and established relations with the Chereks and Drasnians at Val Alorn and at Boktor. The Chereks were eventually persuaded to cease their attacks on Tolnedran shipping in the Sea of the Winds, and a healthy three-way commerce soon developed as goods from Drasnia moved in Cherek vessels from Kotu through the Gulf of Cherek and the Cherek Bore to the port of Camaar in what is now Sendaria for transshipment to Tolnedran vessels. Profits to all three nations were enormous as a result of this arrangement, and the Chereks soon discovered that more could be made in honest trade than could be reaped by piracy.
The Rivan Codex: Ancient Texts of THE BELGARIAD and THE MALLOREON (The Belgariad / The Malloreon) Page 12