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Ultimately, word of this surreptitious war reached
Torak, and the
God of Angarak took immediate steps to halt the bloodshed. He
summoned the Military High Command and the Grolim Hierarchy
to Cthol Mishrak and delivered his commands to the warring
factions in blistering terms. There were to be no further sacrifices of
military officers and no further executions of Grolims. Exempting
only the enclaves at Mal Yaska and Mal Zeth, all other towns and
districts in ancient Mallorea were to be ruled jointly by the military
and the priesthood, the military to be responsible for civil matters,
and the priesthood for religious ones. He told them, moreover, that
should there be any recurrence of their secret war, he would
immediately order the abandonment of all of the rest of Mallorea and
command all of Angarak to repair immediately to Cthol Mishrak
and to live there under the direct supervision of his disciples.
In retrospect, it is quite obvious that Torak had plans for the
future which necessitated both a strong military and a powerful,
well-organized Church. At that moment, however, it was only his
threat and the cold-eyed stares of the dreaded disciples which
whipped the military and the hierarchy into line. Shuddering at the
prospect of living in the hideous basin which surrounded the City of
Night under the domination of Torak's Disciples, the military and
the priesthood made peace with each other, and the matter ended
with their return to their separate enclaves where they could exist in
at least semi-autonomy beyond the range of Torak's direct scrutiny.
This enforced truce freed the commanders of the army to pursue
other matters. It had become evident almost as soon as the Angarak
migration had reached the continent that there were other
inhabitants of Mallorea. The origins of these people are lost in the mists of
pre-history' and scriptural references to them are notoriously
inexact. The traditional view that the Gods each selected a people and
that the unchosen - or Godless - people were then driven out must,
in the light of more modern perceptions, be regarded with some
scepticism. Whatever their origins, however, three separate and
quite distinct races inhabited the Mallorean continent prior to the
coming of the Angaraks; the Dalasians of the southwest, the
Karands of the north, and the Melcenes in the east. Once Torak's
intervention had established some kind of internal stability in
Mallorean society ' about nine hundred years after the original
Angarak migration - the military at Mal Zeth was forced to focus its
attention upon Karanda.
The Karandese were not a wholly unified people, but lived in
a loose confederation of seven kingdoms stretching across the
northern half of the continent from the Karandese Mountains to the
sea lying beyond the mountains of Zamad.
* This derives from the Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy of pre-Norman England, seven
kingdoms
that didn't co-exist very well. Their dissension opened the door for the
Vikings.
There is some evidence
to suggest that the original home of the Karands lay around the
shores of Lake Karand in modern Ganesia. Their expansion over
the centuries was largely the result of population pressures and
climatic conditions. There is abundant evidence that there had long
been periodic glacial incursions reaching down onto the plains of
north central Mallorea out of the frigid trough lying between the