Arquehites

The **Arquehites** (oarq. *Arkwéhesu*) were a major ethnolinguistic group of the *Homo sorodensis*, residing in and ruling over Arqueh during the Awakening Era. They developed a culture centered around familiar ties, ancestor worship and honour, as well as a study and contemplation of the natural world, believing that everything is a part of a single divine being, containing the whole universe. They mainly spoke various dialects of Old Arquehite, though some southeastern communities, especially ones recently assimilated, used the Bahlaci language or older native tongues for day-to-day communication.

## History

### Before The Awakening

Originally a tribal confederation of sea-faring nomads living on the shores of southern Sorod and neighbouring isles, the Arquehites invaded their future homeland around 1500 BTA, subjugating and assimilating the local peoples, thanks to their superior knowledge about many crafts, such as woodworking and copper annealing. They soon adopted a more sedentary lifestyle and started practicing wide-spread agriculture, which allowed their population to grow massively in the following years.

## Technology

### Mining & Bronze Smelting

While plowing their fields in the southern hills, some Arquehite tribes began to find an abundance of copper, which they knew could be shaped when heated. Using primitive shovels and picks made with it they find large copper veins deeper in the ground. Then they smelt the metal in primitive kilns and hearths, but in the process tin, also appearing in the veins, makes some of the resulting tools stronger. Seeing this, Arquehites experiment with smelting other metals, especially tin commonly found on the riverbanks, with the copper, thus producing the first rudimentary bronze alloys.

### Stoneworking & Organized Settlements

With the rise in power of the southern tribes, many of them build and settle in outposts closer to the ore veins, which they carve into the hillsides using their stronger tools. In time these settlements grow considerably, becoming large and influential towns, known for their extensive usage of stone, both in the architecture itself as well as decorations. Thanks to large deposits of bitumen, which could be found near the sites, they were able to build impressive structures, insulate their new homes and create better vessels to store grain and other goods, which enabled more efficient trade. Seeing this, numerous clans decided to fully join the rapidly developing communities and share their skills, manpower and resources with others, creating the most organized society in Arqueh.

### Urban Expansion

The numerous quarry-towns on the hilltops of Paar and agricultural centres in the lower basin of Laita experience massive growth in population and standard of living. Neighbouring settlements merge into powerful city-states, ruled by centralized governments formed around influential clans. Longer and much more vivid trade routes are established between the south and north, both on land and at sea, while some cities, like Osphar and Teinún, opt to enrich themselves by imposing payment of tribute for trade rights and (illusory) protection among the villages around them. Remaining nomadic tribes of the Bahlaci migrate eastwards, but are forced to take up trading in order to sustain their ancestral lifestyle.

### Organized Warfare & Pictography

Soon after the eastward expansion, Arquehite settlements began to be harassed by the region's natives, less acquainted with the coastal people's lifestyle and much more hostile towards their ways. To combat this threat, a coalition of city states located in the borderlands was formed under the leadership of Teinún, ruled at the time by Sárkan I. Not long after the league was established, it successfully crushed their enemies in the first large and strategically organized battles on the soil of Arkwéh. To commemorate this great victory, an image depicting Sárkan was carved on an obelisk in the centre of Teinún, with symbols, previously used only to keep track of goods, being engraved beneath him to remember and mourn the dead, but also say: "Long live the God-king!".

### Beaurocracy

When more and more Arquehite cities rapidly expand and the villages around fall under their sway, while warlords recruit ever larger armies among the people of different lands, it becomes necessary for a group of the army commanders to focus entirely on logistics. This emerging caste of bureaucrats quickly finds employment in the cities as well, with God-Kings in desperate need of skilled advisors.

### Domestication & Caravans

When the eastern cities fell, nomadic merchants of the Bahlaci reached the furthest lands both west and east since the dawn of their existence. While traversing the mountains, they came into contact with people twice their size (which wasn't a very unusual sight), followed by giant beasts of burden (that's something new tho), which carried large bags of goods, the amounts of which a whole Bahlaci tribe could not handle even in a whole migration. After the trading was concluded, the *Uhlûknaji* [oʊ̯ɬú:knadʒi] (beast-tamers) invited some of the Bahlaci to stay and learn how to care for the animals, which greatly interested them. After the groups met again a few weeks later, the Bahlaci returned west with plenty of goods, carried by the *Gəlâci* [gəlá:tʃi], known also as the *Kurát*, versatile cattle domesticated by the Ivrít far away, over a thousand years earlier.

### Writing

One of the resources introduced to Arqueh with the popularization of transsorodian trade was *šotár*, a reed-like plant, which fibers are used to make papyrus - a much easier to produce and work with writing material than previously available stone and metal plates. Alongside it, a writing system native to Ivrutún was also brought to the eastern Arquehite city-states, where it quickly supplanted the old pictographs, being influenced by them in a few ways however.

### Irrigation

The new eastern state, created from the remains of Thúl, proved successful in lessening the impact of the great droughts which hit the region, by using technology known for centuries in Ivrutún - irrigation. A series of channels and dams were created, carved out of mountain stone, to regulate the flow of Laita's tributaries and redirect water to fertile plains between the cities incorporated into the Arpan Empire.

### Cartography

Not long after the settlement of land in Arsix began, trade relations increased with the south as well. The delegations from the cities of what the Arquhite scholars named *Sauqqakkanéh* [sɑʊ̯̀kʷʼɐkʼɐnêː] brought better shipbuilding knowledge, allowing the Arquehites to sail further against the wind and sea currents, which gave them access to the southern fishing hotspots. During the visit of Shunhanese travelers, they presented a map of the known world made by them following their journeys. Though the diplomats couldn't understand each other, the Arquehites quickly realised that the map clearly showed the homeland of the visitors as being on a continent in the south, separated from Sorod by a narrow sea. They were greatly stunned by the discovery of a rather advanced and (somewhat) peaceful civilization in the lands of the dead, haunted by spirits, from the Arquehite mythology - *Taús* [tɑʊ̯́s]. Intrigued by what else may lie outside of their immediate surroundings, the scholars studied and copied the maps, creating their own during the maritime expeditions which followed.

### Pottery

The art of forming mud into different shapes wasn't unheard of in Arqueh, but the lack of good-quality clay limited the use of such products, and they were not even considered a viable way for the creation of vessels for carrying goods. Interactions with the tribes of Arsix, who managed to use such materials in an efficient way, however, allowed the technology to spread into Arqueh proper, where pottery quickly supplanted wooden baskets and basins carved out of stone in small households, used for storing liquids and many other goods with relative ease.

### Statehood

Many Ivrít and Elakien dynasties managed to secure their power in the east of Arqueh after Thúl had fallen to the House of Mithan, but they were then threatened by the force that gave them a chance to rule. The newly formed Arpan Empire, encompassing all the lands of the Eastern Confederation, quickly became the mightiest realm ever seen in Western Sorod. Thanks to Ohark Mithan's efforts to unite his dominion as a single, centrally governed state, he and his descendants were able to bring stability and prosperity to the East, before being ravaged by wars of petty kingdoms and constant conflicts for resources over the centuries past. To consolidate power further, Ohark encouraged the use of a more practical currency first invented in Ivrutún, which allowed for easier tax collection and insight into the trade of goods flowing in and out of the Empire. He also invested heavily in education, sponsoring lectures and workshops for poor but talented people of Sarán descent, earning him their loyalty and making the state work much more efficiently.

### Roads & Mathematics

In the first decades of the 27th century academic communication between the east and west of Sorod greatly increased, with many scholars travelling along the Mashatian trade routes in hopes of finding more students or like-minded people in the various kingdoms of Ephirqéh or Arqéh, thanks to the safe passage the Arpan Empire provided to anyone willing to cross the desolate highlands of Mashat, perhaps helping to expand its influence in the region and beyond it. This has led to great engineering projects taking place south of Kirêgus, where long stone roads were constructed to make the demanding journeys a little easier - on these roads, then, the discovery of an eastern mathematical notation took place, which was quickly adopted by the bureaucrats of the Arpan Empire and managed to spread even further west.

### Furnaces & Steel

In the meantime, the Emperor, wanting his realm to become more powerful than the western city-states, poured almost all gold reserves into expanding his army and building new, larger than ever, forge complexes, where iron began to be smelted and wrought into weapons superior to the bronze ones commonly used in the region for at least two thousand years, in furnaces built specifically for this purpose - yet it was still not enough to overpower the west. A breakthrough in these state-wide efforts came, when a blacksmith in a town on the shores of Lake Takkel managed to bind melted iron with the right amount of other minerals, notably chromium imported from the west, so that the resulting alloy was far stronger than anything that came before. He guarded his secret recipe, however, and even though weapons made of Arquehite Steel were sought after and used by the Arpan military, nobody else knew how to recreate the precious metal. This situation, as one may deduce, ended in a tragedy, as the steel’s creator was one of the first people in the Empire to be struck down by the Plague, which, ironically, through his own invention he helped to spread during the conquest of the Ancient Coast.

### Medicine

Even though the Arpan search for a cure during the Plague did not achieve its primary goal, this focus on health and illness enlightened the people of Arqueh, who became interested in anatomy and the medical practices outside of simple folk treatment, which dominated before the times of the Black Flesh.

### Palace Economy

The newly reorganized communities, with much smaller numbers of inhabitants compared to the pre-BF Arquehite civilization, became highly centralized, concentrated around the palace complexes of local rulers, where people exchanged goods, settled and worked, while being given accommodation, protection and nourishment by the state.

### Legal System

The fall of the Arpan Empire brought many changes to the Arquehite society, which had to be taken into consideration by kings and their advisors. This prompted them to develop a set of standardized rules and regulations, which would allow for public order where chaos reigned after the Plague.