Sectini

Sectini word for "chief" in native script.

The **Sectini** (Sectinian: *Swetini'ila*), also called the **Sectinian horsemen** were a early Ahremian people who inhabited the region of Sectinia from around the 8th century NSY until the beginning of the first century SY, when the language and culture of the people had effectively gone extinct.

The Sectini were known to most of their contemporaries as marauding nomads who were both masters of the horse and blade, living off the spoils collecting from their raids on poor villages across arhaic Ahremia and the Ahrem Kingdom (~400 NSY-50 SY). Later writers from the time of the kingdoms of Estergaald and Mershye (400s SY) noted that the Sectini had come from central Ahremia bringing the influence of their language and religion to the region. By the time that the traditional Sectini script and language had gone extinct the Sectini had effectively replaced the native Mercian populations, a group called the *Pteres.*

Aspects of Sectini culture can be found by examining the traditions of Mercians living in the most rural areas of the country, and using the very few surviving Sectini monuments that still exist. Although originally from the area of modern Sectinia, the Sectini people left practically no trace of their inhabitance there - except for the name Sectinia. All Sectini structures still standing or visible as ruins are located in Mercia.

## Etymology

The relationship between the words Sectini and Sectinia is not an uncommon etymological phenomenon in Ahremia - many names for areas of Ahremia come from a name of an ancient group that sported the more archaic "-i" suffix (equivalent to '-ans' or '-ians' in English) instead of the modern "-a" or "-ala". Examples include Mesralla and the *Mesralli* and Pteria and the *Pteres/Pteri*.

The word by which the Sectini themselves referred to their people is estimated to have been *Swetini'ila* or simply Swetinila. When the vast majority of Sectini people migrated eastward during the third and fourth centuries NSY the language mixture between the Sectinian language and native Mercian dialects produced *Swetini* as a name for these people - which became Sectini. Meanwhile, those still residing in Sectinia during the time of Estergaald and the earliest Sectinian estates used the more traditional *Swetinla* to refer to their ancient ancestors. By the time of Exelon these two words had mixed to become Sectini, the word by which we call these people today.

## History

### Urdan Origins

In the earliest periods of Ahremian history, even before the Ahrem Kingdom (the first recorded large-scale state in Ahremia) there was the shadowy Urdan civilization, centered on the city of Urda in modern day Althura, along the lower Slorend River. The Urdan language is considered to be the ancestor of both Sectinian (the language of the ancient Sectini, not to be confused with Sectinian-Ahremian which is a modern dialect) and Old Lohnian. It is evident from oral tradition that the city of Urda was a uniquely advanced population center of ancient Ivlon, having a population of around 30,000 at its height.

Urda, however, met a grim fate at the hands of an unknown group of marauders who burned the city to the ground at least 300 years before the founding of the Ahrem Kingdom. It is theorized that after this catastrophe the dense population of Urda scattered across the neighboring regions, abandoning Althura (a fact which has not changed much to this day, the modern population of the entire province of Althura is not even close to thirty thousand). A group of these Urdan refugees fled to the northeast of Lohn, near the modern city of Lindset where they established multiple settlements and were known as the "lake people" by some early foreigners. Another group of Urdans went north to inhabited the most fertile region of Ahremia - the confluence of the two Slorend rivers and the surrounding area.

### Sectini in Sectinia

Although there are no physical remnants of the Sectini people in their homeland, it can be assumed that upon establishing themselves in Sectinia the Sectini began the process of diverging from the Urdans in the form of the creation and development of their own language and culture. It was in Sectinia that the very archaic script of the Sectini was created, a abjad which began as nothing more than a primitive pictographic alphabet.

In Sectinia the Sectini founded a number of small villages while also retaining a semi-nomadic lifestyle. The mixing of Urdan culture with that of the native population of Sectinia, if any, may have further led to the distinction of the Sectini as a separate people from both the Urdans and the "lake people". The Sectini also established, according to legend, two Sectinian population centers - the cities of *Antelonne* (Antilogne) and *Peshivaren* (Nareen).

Tracking the exact movements of the famously migratory Sectini during the period before entering Mercia is a extremely difficult, if not impossible task. Most of the knowledge on the early Sectini comes from oral tradition recorded by a Mercian monk in 500 SY, in a scroll titled "The History".

### Movement into Mercia

#### Background

The first century SY was an eventful one for the Ahremians. In 66 SY the prolific ancient Zedian civilization collapsed. 66 SY marks the date that Igansinc was sacked by Trellans. Zedia was then swiftly invaded from the south by the Buthenians, a people from Buthenia - a land north of Ahremia. After gaining a flimsy rule over Zedia, the Buthenians went south crossing the Lagbern Mountains, expecting to encounter nothing more than open land with the occasional paleolithic-esque tribes - as recorded by Zedian explorers hundreds of years before. Instead, they encountered the mighty Ahrem Kingdom, the Kingdom of Itiom, and the barbaric nomads which surrounded these pockets of civilization.

The Buthenians were swiftly defeated, and the spoils collected from this war gave rise to several Ahremian kingdoms including Estergaald, the most powerful. Meanwhile, the Sectini began a long journey on horseback eastward - possibly fleeing brutal vassalage under the Kingdom of Herth - sacking any towns they found along the way. When the Sectini reached Mercia laden with riches they immediately began to conquer the native people, a sect of the Ahrem people called the Pteres.

#### Cultural Influences

The biggest marker of the Sectini having inhabited Mercia and assimilated into the population comes from cultural cues in the traditions of both old and modern Mercians. Although surface level things, such as the type of kilt worn in Mercia after the Sectini incursion, do exist it is mainly language that marks the arrival of the Sectini. The Pteres used a pictographic syllabary related to the Ahrem syllabary. The syllabary contained around 300 or 400 characters and was read left to right. The Sectini alphabet (still not fully deciphered), however, was written top to bottom and contained more simple characters and by all means was *not* pictographic in nature. It was also an "abjad", meaning vowels were implied not written. For instance, the word for king or ruler in Sectini is estimated to have been *charin*, but was written as c - ch - r - n.

The nature of the Pterian alphabet saw a change upon arrival of the Sectini. The script of Mercia became a alphabet of around thirty characters yet was *not* an abjad. The script also adopted the more flowy simplistic style of writing characters in Sectini than the rigid, archaic look of the Ahrem syllabary. This alphabet eventually spread throughout Ahremia, and was the precursor to the current Ahremian alphabet.

#### Records of the Sectini

Considering that the Sectini existed in a time in which very little record was kept and 95% of those that were kept were of either a mercantile or religious nature, only a few scant contemporary references to the Sectini exist. A few old scrolls written in the Mercian script exist in the Royal Library in Nazka, written around 200 SY by a scholar known only as Figlen. In his documents he is recording the events of the past one hundred years from his hometown of Lanturr (Dilare). He writes:

> "(and) the *Swetini*. On horseback, they came from the far west in the time of Prevy. With them, the Swetini brought their language to us. Gone now, the monuments of the horsemen still stand on the beaches where they defeated those (...) the *Pteres.*" - Figlen of Laturr, c. 200 SY
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These three sentences, although short, are important to Ahremian scholars today hoping to reconstruct the history of their kingdom. According to Figlen the Swetini arrived during the time of Prevy, a ancient king of the Ahrems who ruled around 100-120 SY.