Trolls and human hunter-gatherers who had come before them.
For several
The History of Hothior
Many parts of Minaria suffered Cataclysmic devastation, but Hothior, on the con-
trary, owes its very existence to the incredible upheavals of those decades.
Prior to the Cataclysm, the city of Bihestag was a thriving seaport of the Lloroi
Empire. But the transformations of the Cataclysm warped the sea floor, raising
up the silts and sands of the continental shelf, leaving ruined Bihestag far inland.
The Cataclysm created a warm, humid climate for proto-Hothior, but the
exposed sea floor for a long time supported merely the rankest weeds. Only a
few wretched family groups could eke out a livelihood in a land so raw, and
these subsisted mainly on shellfish and waterfowl at the ocean front.
Gradually the growth and death of vegetation enriched the land, while the swift
streams carried mature soil from the north in time of flood. The new fertility
allowed the beginnings of forests and grasslands. The first noteworthy people
to benefit from this virgin wilderness were wandering Trolls, who had estab-
lished themselves at the Face. But the Trolls were not a settling race, and only
an occasional circle of stones from some old Trollish roasting pit remains as evi-
dence of their occupation.
The Ruby Crown ot the Hothiorian kings
Outside proto-Hothior, men had fallen into deep barbarism. As they leaned to
survive in the new world of the post-Cataclysm, their population increased.
Tribal war raged over planting and hunting grounds; the smaller and less war-
like peoples had to migrate to the less-desirable territory of ancient Hothior.
These men were more acquainted with village life and agriculture than were the
1
generations the tribes fought the Trolls and savages and each other, until they
staked out more-or-less permanent tribal territories.
At this point, the latter Seventh Century after the Cataclysm, written history
begins to fill out the vagueness of myth and conjecture. The best sources for
the early periods are the state archives of the trading city of Zefnar, whose mer-
chants had begun to sail far afield to provide goods for the growing markets of
the South. To their account is added that of the traders of Mivior, who arrived
only slightly later, and the city-state of Plibba, which knew the proto-Hothiorans
as barbarian raiders.
The Zefnarites called ancient Hothior "Soraskier," which meant "Barbaria."
They exchanged civilized wares for furs, amber, honey, timber, and slaves.
They were the first to label Hothiorans as fools, mainly from the unfair trades
they were able to foist upon them and in scorn of their different customs.
Particularly, the Zefnarites ridiculed the barbarians' goddess religion and the
high status of their women.
The Soraskier tribe to benefit most directly from the visits of the Zefnarites were
the Milkyatens. The merchants built a trading town in their territory at the head
of Kartika Bay. From this town, called Rocazha, they acquired civilized goods
and knowledge of sophisticated ways, quickly achieving superiority over their
less-well-favored neighbors. Tribes that did not keep on good terms with the
Milkyatens were denied access through their lands to the trading posts; hence
the great men of Rocazha grew politically as well as economically powerful.
Exposure to foreign merchants and visitors acquainted the tribes, especially the
Milkyatens, with new modes of warfare and social organization. The old religion
could not accommodate the new ideas awakening in the people. Soon god-
dess-worship declined in favor of a patriarchal system on the Zefnarite model,
but the woman's place in Hothior remained a relatively high one.
Eventually, the Zefnarites fell out with the Milkyatens, who were becoming too
wise to fall for their unfair bargaining methods. Furthermore, the sea-farers
resented Milkyaten interference in their trade with interior Soraskier. When they
brought in Zefnarite soldiers to instill more respect into the obdurate tribesmen,
the angry Milkyatens grew mutinous.
Envious of Zefnarite trade so close to their own borders, the Miviorans came to
the aid of the Milkyaten rebellion. Provided with Mivioran arms and advice, the
tribesmen stormed into Rocazha and expelled the Zefnarite garrison. Yakami,
the chief of the Milkyatens, donned a ruby crown and proclaimed himself king,
adopting Rocazha as his capital but renaming it Port Lork. Lork was the father-
god who, Yakami claimed, had presented him with the regalia proclaiming his
royalty and, henceforth, represented the guardian spirit of the Hothioran king-
ship.
Mivior replaced Zefnar as the major trading partner of the Milkyatens, while the
Zefnarites founded a new town in Soraskier farther east, among a different trib-
al confederacy. This settlement later acquired the name of Castle Lapspell.
The founding of Hothior-proper is attributed to Orenburt the Wise. By means of
some cunningly-applied force and much skillful diplomacy, Orenburt managed
to gather his neighbors into an inclusive confederacy. From this union was born
Hothior, a name which translates (from Mivioran, the language of tribal diplo-
macy at this point) as "Great Confederacy" (Hoth = Confederacy; Ior = Great).
Orenburt's reign was successful in foreign matters, too, making good Hothior's
claims to extensive territories. To protect the northern wastes, Orenburt built a
fortress on the ruins of Bihestag, called Tadafat. But it must be recognized that
as king, Orenburt's authority was largely personal; the country had as yet
scarcely accepted kingship as an institution. Political development took the line
of local privileges which were gradually augmented by an aristocracy of nobles
and priests. Against these obdurate magnates, Orenburt's heirs had to contend
doggedly, and the struggles between the aristocracy and the kingship formed
the central point of Hothioran politics during this period.
By the early tenth century, internal strife is all the chroniclers have to record.
Even so, despite the disorganized condition of the kingdom, the Hothiorans
rendered northern Minaria a signal service by holding a dangerous invasion at
bay.
A nomadic people whom the Hothiorans called the Wisnyo, the "enemy," burst
upon Southwestern Minaria, conquering even mighty Zefnar. In his old age,
Simir Raveen, their chieftain, turned his aggressions northward against Hothior.
Craftily evading the army waiting for him at the River Deep, he used the
Zefnarite navy to land his troops at Castle Lapspell -- still a Zefnarite colony.
The Hothioran army was outflanked and destroyed at the Battle of Standing
Stone. The Wisnyos swiftly captured and burned Port Lork, putting thousands
to the sword, while spreading their dominance over most of the terrified and
demoralized kingdom.
Fortunately, the Hothiorans still held out in Tadafat. In the following spring, seri-
ous revolts called Simir Raveen south. His chieftains stationed in the north
quarreled amongst themselves once their charismatic overlord was out of sight.
Moreover, the army was unused to rainy weather, impassable swamps, rugged
mountains, and dense forests. The summer campaign failed to bring the mat-
ter to a decision and the Wisnyos' impulse to expand ended with the death of
Simir Raveen the following year. The new imperial frontier settled down in the
area just south of Tadafat.
The second generation of Wisnyo warriors, softened by civilized luxury, began
to lose ground to a determined Hothioran reconquest. Their garrison captains
feuded endlessly and Simir Raveen's son, a lazy voluptuary, supplied no strong
hand from the center. In a remarkably short time, the Hothioran counterattack
became a victorious march, ending in the glorious liberation of Castle Lapspell.
sustain themselves indefinitely against a united people, and so the royal policy
of those years was to suborn the natural leaders of the Hothiorans. This meant
corrupting the nobles, to whom they gave wide estates both in Muetar and in
Hothior, and to educate young Hothioran nobility as Muetarans -- with the inten-
tion of making the common people appear to be foreign serfs in their lords' eyes.
Cautious and pragmatic, the Muetarans managed to induce most of the
Hothioran nobility to accept privileges in exchange for working against their own
country's interest. In all the pledges and treaties exchanged between the
Hothioran mighty and the lords of Muetar, the interests of the common
Hothiorans were hardly acknowledged at all.
Aided by self-interested and suborned Hothiorans, the Muetarans, by fits and
starts, seized all the lands east of the Ebbing and put lords of their own choos -
ing over them. They conducted themselves with unbearable arrogance, regard-
ing common people as dimwitted savages fit only for slavery and serfdom. No
one supposed that these folk had a conscious will of their own.
But they did, and that will did not favor being ruled from Basimar. The
Hothiorans, toughened by the events of the recent past, found leaders from their
own ranks and assailed Muetaran garrisons with stubborn partisan warfare. As

The Hothioran kingship emerged with renewed prestige. A great hour seemed
to await the nation, when all of the sweetness of victory was swept aside.

In the mid-tenth century, Minaria suffered one of the most terrible disasters
since the Cataclysm: An invasion by monsters called "the abominations of the
land and the horrors of the air." The few surviving contemporary accounts shun
any detailed description of the creatures, but they seemed to have been unlike
the ogres, unicorns, and sea serpents that roam naturally about Minaria. They
struck Mivior first, but erupted into Hothior on the peninsula at the mouth of
Kartika Bay, since then called "Cape Horror." They rapidly overwhelmed Port
Lork and Castle Lapspell, both still physically damaged from the recent war.
Veteran armies broke and ran, leaving the countryside to unimaginable devas -
tation.

The monsters may have been amphibious, for they tended to concentrate in the
vicinity of the interior rivers system, which meant that Hothior's choice land was
overrun. Despairing that even Tadafat would hold, the king, Urashim, fled with
his family across the Wet Lands, seeking the Mivioran town of Addat. According
to legend, while crossing the marshes on a raft, Urashim was attacked by
"abominations" and drowned, though his children escaped to report the details
of the tragedy, not the least of which was the disappearance of Yakami's ruby
crown into the swamp.

Soon even the interior town of Tadafat had to be abandoned. A civilized nation
had overnight plunged back to the level of the early post-Cataclysm. Unable to
plant and harvest, subject to attack in broad daylight, the population decreased
rapidly. For the next generation only hunger could drive the terrorized family
clans out of their hiding places. The art of government and writing was all but
forgotten. The Lay of Dyer recounts these years, but for all its heroic wording,
it cannot disguise the prevailing desperation.
Years passed. Suddenly the Hothiorans sensed that the monsters were
decreasing in number. At long last, whole days might pass before hunters sight-
ed even one.
After the trauma of the "abominations," the Hothiorans picked themselves up
very slowly. Tribal conflicts reasserted themselves and chieftains quarreled
over the kingship, the Yakamite line being extinct. A legend grew up that the
gods would choose the next king and that he would be the man who recovered
the ruby crown from the marshes. Yet, while disputes prevailed in Hothior,
another invasion penetrated the unhappy land. The Muetarans had completed
their conquest of Kalruna-Sasir and were eager to subjugate "Barbaria."
Popular legend remembers the Muetaran tyranny as a glorious age when com-
moner and noble united in one body to rid their country of the intruder. But this
is certainly not true. The invaders were not as formidable as they appeared. For
all its outward strength, the Muetaran kingdom was beset by internal problems
and a myriad of weaknesses. The enemy king knew that his armies could not
This rock painting may be an eyewitness depiction of at least one type of
‘Abomination.’ The inscription under the illustration translates ‘This is what
chased me.’
the situation developed, many a collaborating Horthioran noble saw his stock
run off and his buildings burned. And more than a few men in service to the
enemy experienced capture and trial at the hands of peasant insurgents.
Sometimes the sentence could be as light as branding with the traitor's sign, or
being tied naked and backwards on a donkey and sent that way back to his
friends. But when the insurrection was at a violent and deadly-serious stage,
many collaborators ended their lives kicking empty air at the end of a gibbet.
It was a cruel war. Sometimes Hothioran nobles supported one side and then
the other. Occasionally leaders even betrayed the faction to whom they were
pledged in the midst of a battle. A band of high-born turncoats actually lured the
peasant-general Sheldric to a parley and seized him for the Muetarans, who
then condemned him to a torture-death for treason. But the invader's high-
handed act only created a martyr which increased the fury of the resistance.
After the death of Sheldric, Hothior started drawing more leaders from the nobil-

2
ity, many of whom were coming to realize that the rebels were going to win in
the end. Many collaborators fled the dangers in Hothior and took up residence
on the Muetaran estates that they had earlier acquired as bribes and gifts;
hence their valuable services were lost to the beleaguered Muetarans. Their
emigration does explain, however, why so many names with a Hothioran sound
are to be found on the list of Muetarian nobility.
One day, before anyone realized it, Hothior's cause had become ripe for a final
victory. The epic poem Mandorai tells the story of Walkort of Mandora, the
young heir of a great house who judged that the kingdom of Hothior might fall
into chaos after victory unless a legitimate king soon emerged. He decided that
he should be that king and consequently went seeking the lost crown of Yakami.
A character in the poem describes its hiding place:
The crown-fabled pool with old blind fish filled
Is stagnant amid the reeds centuries old
Under a low sky with thunder rolling
There Trolls cast torchlight upon blackened mold
Sinister and deep, the pool is revealed
By the fearful sound of croaking only,
Made by sluggish frogs. The moon emerges
And observes its own face, strange and lonely,
A death's head lighted from within itself.
On the still, murky waters reflected
One red ruby eye in the old moon's skull
Awaits the king that Fate has selected.
History records that Walkort returned to the tribes with what seemed to be the
crown of Yakami on his brow, thereby founding the Mandora Dynasty. The free
lands beyond the Ebbing made common cause with their enbonded brethren,
inciting Muetar to launch a major invasion of the west to attempt to destroy their
support. Walkort skillfully decoyed the mailed knights into the dense woods near
Port Lork and ambushed them. Only a few Muetaran knights escaped back
across the River Flood Water in what is remembered as one of Muetar's great-
est military disasters. Bereft of soldiery, the Muetaran colonizers fled back to
their own country. Hothior had been reborn as a nation.
But the reborn Hothior was a very different creature from that which had per-
ished under the attacks of the abominations. Walkort had grown intolerant of
his disunited and quarrelsome chieftains during the war of liberation. The
Hothioran king saw his victory as a golden opportunity to expand royal power;
moreover, he possessed the military prowess and the moral authority to carry
out his program. Walkort reestablished the crown's title to most of the aban-
doned and exile-owned lands of Hothior and created a new and loyal aristocra-
cy dependant upon royal patronage, awarding them with land seized from exiled
and executed collaborators.
Unfortunately, Walkort went too far too quickly in centralizing the Hothioran gov -
ernment and his less-apt successors went even further. These monarchs
believed they were enhancing their personal authority by encroaching on
regional and municipal rights, but in fact they were merely transferring power
from the people to a class-conscious bureaucracy. Soon the establishment had
grown too large and protective of its own privileges to be properly controlled by
royal supervision. During reigns of strong kings it paralyzed worthwhile initia-
tives, and under weak kings it was actually the Hothior chiefs of government, the
chancellors, who exercised the real power.
Nonetheless, during this transition from strong kingship to rapacious bureau-
cracy, the nation's material prosperity grew. The most talented people of
Hothior turned away from agriculture on the poor sea sands of the country and
entered trading in a large way. Hothiorans built their own ships for the first time
and vied with foreign merchants in the important market towns at home and
abroad. The royal family established vast horsehide tanneries as a state
monopoly, enriching themselves and the exchequer. At times, Hothioran sol-
diers adventured in foreign lands, such as when Muetar fell into habitual weak -
ness in the latter Twelfth Century and they sacked Plibba, bringing back many
captives for ransom or slavery.
But the general prosperity began to suffer as the self-interested bureaucracy
3
increasingly pursued a program of ever-increasing taxes and inept centralized
control. Many persons fled Hothior to save their wealth from rapacious imposts
and a humiliating subservience to men who were actually nothing but clerks
raised high. Fewer and fewer prosperous people remained behind to meet the
ever-heavier exactions of the chancellor and his corrupt underlings.
A situation which was unhappy grew tragic in the early-middle 1200's when a
demonist named Mornard rose up through the ranks by scurrilous means and
became chancellor. A master mage as well as a crafty power-grasping politi-
cian, Mornard's dreams of dominance were held in check for a time only by the
wizard Farelann, the chief counselor to the weak and feckless King Pitheon.
When Corfu took power in Muetar, Mornard sought his support and alliance.
Then, hoping to outmaneuver his rival Farelann, Mornard found local support by
pretending to favor the growing merchant class against the nobility. He
bypassed the traditional assemblies and gave arbitrary power to the bureau-
cratic chiefs and judges, whom he alone had the power to appoint. By the late
1230's the schemer had become the effective ruler of Hothior, though he paid
lip-service to a helpless king. But Mornard's tyranny created fierce opposition,
among which was a band of rebellious knights known as the "Forri," whose goal
was the fall of Mornard and the restoration of the king to full power.
These quixotic heroes ranged the Mivioran border and the Bad Axe Forest, rout-
ing tyrannical magistrates, judges, and tax collectors in a brave if rather unor-
ganized way, thereby giving heart to all of Hothior's disaffected. In 1243, when
it became evident that the wizard Farelann was consorting members of the
Forri, Mornard's men moved against him. According to the famous story, the
good wizard committed suicide while trapped behind the stone door of his own
magic room. With his opponent's death, Mornard moved harshly to repress
domestic opposition. Before long no one dared speak against him and only the
small band of Forri knights managed to evade his determined dragnet for known
enemies.
Mornard more and more openly betrayed his occult interests and summoned
many sinister cultists from foreign lands to serve him. The chancellor's alliance
with Corfu was now open and common knowledge. It is said that the wizards
conspired to place other dark wizards upon the various thrones of their neigh-
bors, but this never came to pass.
Through a long decade of year of despotism, patriots such as the Forri did bat-
tle with the minions of Mornard in fields, forests, mountains, and even the dark-
ened alleyways of Hothior's cities. The contest might well have gone to Mornard
in the end had not the forces of right found a powerful new ally in Sheladeann,
a rebel sorceress who was widely believed to be Farelann's daughter. The lady
championed Melwert, the exiled son of Pitheon, as the legitimate successor to
the discredited king and she proved an effective rebel ally, armed with magical
powers which seemed to rival Mornard's own. In many a strange and daring
escapade, this mysterious woman fought for her country's freedom.
Mornard's fortune took a tumble when a disastrous tidal wave struck the gulf,
damaging all the coastal towns and doing great harm to Hothior's merchant
fleet. Although Mornard had not been to blame, people blamed the black sor-
cery that Yoritom of Adeese had used the previous year and, as more and more
people realized that Mornard was a black magician himself, the usurper's job-
approval consensus fell. The rebels used the incident to call Mornard "unlucky"
and a "curse upon Hothior," winning more support for the revolution.
Overlooked in the passion of the times, was the fact that Hothior had suffered
less from the wave than had most other maritime nations, being sheltered to
some extent by foreign shores.
At last, discomforted in the guerrilla war and facing a general uprising, Mornard
hunkered down in Port Lork where, it is said, he sought to call upon the dark
gods, promising a holocaust of victims in exchange for life and power. It is said
that Sheladeann destroyed in a duel of sorcery within the palace itself in the
year of 1253.
Afterwards, the surviving knights of the Forri were justly remembered as heroes.
The remarkable Sheladeann abandoned her adventurous ways once her work
of restoring the legitimate line was done, married a knight of the Forri, and
retired young to what seems to have been the quiet life of a healer, wife, and
mother.
The coalition which placed Pitheon's son Melwert upon the throne of Hothior
recognized the evil inherent in Walkort's system of rule. As zealots seized con-
trol of the revolution, the servants of the former regime were savagely purged;
some of those with true crimes on their record fled to the protection of Corfu in
Muetar. The power of appointed officers was greatly reduced in proportion to a
diet of citizen-legislators from the gentry and merchant class. Thereafter it was
the diet who chose and dismissed the chancellor, many of whose initiatives
thereafter required a majority vote. Limited tenure of judges and other appoint-
ed officials prevented the recreation of the earlier bureaucratic fiefdoms which
had for so long savaged the liberty of the people and made tyrants like Mornard
possible.
The system of Melwert, though harshly established, had proved itself a good
one by the time of Boewenn's invasion from Elfland in the time of King Silvon.
The Elves seemed bent on eliminating all human life from northern Minaria and,
augmenting their modest-sized armies with frightful spells and magic devices,
the Neuthans sacked Tadafat and advanced south committing atrocities in every
town. Fortunately, an alliance of northern kingdoms turned back the invaders
and advanced rapidly upon the collapsing Elven military, pillaging their capital of
Ider Bolis in 1308.
The rest of Silvon's reign was peaceful and prosperous. Less devastated than
Mivior, Zefnar, and Parros by the tidal wave, Hothior's trading fleets recovered
earlier and prospered for several years, until Mivior recovered. Even so, by then
Hothior's status as a sea and trading-power had been greatly enhanced.
Silvon's son Melwert II had a good reign also and passed a strong and well-run
country over to his noble son Boarhort.
A detail from a mural illustrates a patriotic vision of the armies of Hothior defeating a troop of Wysnio invaders
4
The first part of Boarhort's reign has coincided with frequent wars of shifting
alliances -- few of which seem to arise out of deep or significant issues, and
seem to be more a result of excessive national energy undirected to worthwhile
aims. The geographic position of Hothior places it at a distinct disadvantage,
with too many avenues to defend with its modest-sized population.
Boarhort has made an effort to keep Hothior strong on the sea, but has seen
some of his kingdom's trade be diverted into neutral hands by the growth of
Freeport on the other side of Lapspell Bay. He has made efforts to suppress the
center, but has been thwarted to date by Shucassam, and sometimes even
Rombune, who support Freeport's independence for policy reasons of their
own.
On the other hand, the endemic vulnerability of Port Lork to sudden attack from
fleets based in Colist has been to a great extent countered by his construction
of the Boom, sometimes called "Boarhort's Boom" -- a heavy chain operated by
an advanced system of counterweights and pulleys and able to be raised or low-
ered to protect the harbor. The recent humiliation of a Mivioran descent, lead-
ing to heavy losses of ships and an ignominious withdrawal, has given King
Boarhort the reputation of a military innovator of the first rank and made him, for
the present, one of the monarchs most popular with his own people.
Hothior has perhaps known too many wars. The suffering, the loss, the spirit of
fatalism and sacrifice in one is much like in another. This song comes from the
days of the Wisnyo invasion:
The Hothioran War Chant

Dark sits the night o'er the king's wall;

The dense clouds hide the moon;
Soon shall their white be cast with red!
Destroying fire shall be unleashed!
Here comes fire, the conqueror of castles!

Observe Fire's blazing pendant:

His red silk tasseled coy with black!
It waves proud o'er the warrior's fight
Its pride is in the clash of swords;
How flame loves to lick the dark red wound!
All must perish! The blade breaks the helm;
Strong mail is pieced by the driven lance;
Flame devours the pride of lords
Like rams break down the parapets of battle.
Grieve! The youth of promise shall grow no older.

All must perish! The times of peace are gone --

The pacific days endure no more!
Let steel summon blood and blood flow like wine;
Feast thee well through halls of slaughter
Under the torchlight of blazing castles!

All must perish! Strong be thy sword arm

And neither spare a man for pity or for fear
Since vengeance's chance has but an hour!
Soon strong hate itself must perish
And even songs of suffering must die!