The Axva, Chapter 4
The Se’an:
The Se'an River, located hundreds of miles sunward from the Tele River, was the second birthplace of civilization. The river originates from the vast interior lake called the Chio, and empties into the Nemasian Sea. The Se'an River and its surrounding areas are rich in natural resources, including fertile land and abundant wildlife. The river also serves, even to the present, as a vital transportation route for trade and commerce, linking the inland areas to the coastal regions.
The ancient civilizations that thrived along the Se'an River are known for their unique cultural characteristics. The Open Plate Culture in particular left a lasting impact on the region's history. The Open Plate Culture emerged after the decline of the Coiled Vase Culture. The Open Plate Culture was characterized by its use of open plates, which were intricately decorated with symbolic designs and served as both functional and decorative items.
Despite the lack of written records, archaeologists have made significant discoveries about the Open Plate Culture through the excavation of village sites and artifacts. However, the reasons behind the transition from the Coiled Vase Culture to the Open Plate Culture remain unclear. There are several hypotheses that attempt to explain this shift, including environmental changes, conflict with neighboring societies, and cultural and ideological shifts within the society itself. In the absence of concrete evidence, these hypotheses remain speculative.
Mighty Es Erdon:
In the popular imagination, the Se’an valley is known as the originator of the domesticated Andironback. These goliath creatures once ranged across a large portion of the world’s surface, sitting comfortably in their niche of the ecosystem. As hunter gatherers spread to the furthest reaches of the world, Andironback populations coincidentally declined, likely due to overhunting. Today, only three known wild sub-species survive in pockets around the world.
The Se’an Andironback proved uniquely suited to domestication. Its milk was uniquely full of necessary nutrients, rich in protein, and more easily digestible by humans. Indeed, it is thought that the jump for humans to become more lactose-tolerant started in the Se’an River Valley - with Andironback milk forming a bridge of sorts for humans to adapt to digestion of other milks. Andironback wool was likewise prized for its ability to provide winter clothing during the aphelion months.
Se’an Andironbacks, while large, were also not as colossal or aggressive in nature as their counterparts on the opposite side of the world. This made them more manageable as they made the transition from wild to domesticated animals.
Early on, it is thought that the noble and mighty Es Erdon (a sobriquet given to them for their stature in battle) started out as a humble beast of burden. Trade between different villages of the Open Plate Culture likely was facilitated by the introduction of the Andironback among the barter merchants that traveled the floodplains of the Se’an River Valley. In no small part was this due to the plodding giant’s ability to pull large barges upstream, as well as smaller packages into the interior.
Famine and Fortune:
In contrast to the somewhat stable flow of the Tele river system, the Se’an has experienced multiple disastrous upsets in recent geological history. One of the most recent occurred some thirty-thousand years in the past, when a large wall of ice two hundred meters thick formed across the mouth of the Chio as part of the Ellinri Glaciation Event. With the receding of the ice wall, the dam eventually burst open and caused a wall of water hundreds of meters high to scour across the Se’an River Valley, leaving markings today that can be seen as gigantic ripple marks that make up the hilly landscape surrounding the interior of the Se’an River. This event is known to geologists as the Great Se’an Flood.
While there is no corresponding geologic recording of a similar event during the time of human inhabitation, the aphelion fluctuations at the inlet of the Se’an from the Chio produce a chaotic flow from the river that sometimes inundates the surrounding area in up to a meter of water during the flooding months following the retreat of the aphelion glaciers. Most human settlements within the river valley itself are built on stilts to withstand this environment.
Human agriculture, at least early on, was less able to adapt than human architecture. Not for nothing are the ancient gods of Se’an sometimes cruel and indifferent to the plight of their subordinate humans, especially those concerned with the domain of water. Famine could very easily result if the harvest was flooded for years. Some archaeological findings indicate the presence of cannibalistic tendencies in some Open Plate villages, which has been traditionally attributed to a dearth of food during hard times. Other scholars disagree, asserting that there is a heavily ritualized element prevalent in the dismembered remains that have some markings suspiciously similar to human teeth.
In times of plenty, however, the Se’an could provide quite a bounty to its inhabitants. Choch, Brams, and Erven were all first cultivated in Se’an. All of these plants are water-intensive crops, but produce quite the yield in terms of carbohydrates. The flooded pastures of the Se’an, coupled with the ample light from the sunward Beltland sky and nutrient rich silt, gave rise to an incredibly healthy diet.
The Catastrophe:
In previous decades, it has been the scientific norm to disregard folk myth and oral tradition as belonging to an earlier era of human attempts to understand the world we live in. However, distant echoes of past events may be preserved within the telephone game of the stories told from generation to generation.
Outside influence on the Open Plate Culture is thought to have resulted in the generation of a Proto-Gye’an urheimat within the Se’an River Valley. The Gye’an tribes are thought to have originated thusly as a result of contact between previously unknown nomadic steppe peoples and the rightward part of the Open Plate Culture, who then gradually migrated out of the Se’an River Valley over the course of centuries back to the rightward steppes. Indigenous Gye’an legends speak of a time when the land shook with thunder and a great cataclysmic covering of the land with water took place as a result of the Water God’s anger against humanity.
Various iterations of this myth have found their way into cultures influenced by the Gye’an, including the cultures that inhabit the Tele River system in the present, through our famous Book of the Deluge. It is thought that these stories trace their roots back to a single source within the Se’an River Valley.
What could possibly have inspired the myth of the Deluge? There are both minimalist and maximalist positions on this issue; some would assert that the Deluge is inspired by the volatile flooding seasons of the Se’an River, while others would go further and assert some form of knowledge among the Open Plate Culture - or a similar group - of the Great Se’an Flood. There are headwinds faced by proponents of this camp; geologists date the Great Se’an Flood as occurring well before any settled living within the valley, which means no recorded memory could exist from the time of the Open Plate Culture of the event in question. The truth might lie somewhere in the middle, as it is entirely possible a similar event, though smaller in scale, occurred during the time of the people who lived there.
Monoliths:
One characteristic of every Open Plate village found so far is the central placement of a so-called “village pillar”. These monoliths, ranging from one to five meters in height, are often the most well preserved artifacts from this time. Although their surface has been scoured clean by the passage of time, residue analysis shows that they were often decorated with bright pigments. Speculation rages within the scientific community as to whether or not some of the fragmentary data found indicate the presence of a system of pictographs used to communicate village history.