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attempt was ever made in the western hemisphere to convert
nonAngaraks as became the practice in Mallorea.
It was perhaps the Disciple Ctuchik who was ultimately
responsible for giving an elemental class prejudice the force of religious
sanction. Ctuchik, mindful of the deterioration of Church authority
in Mallorea as a result of the growing secularization and
cosmopolitanism of Mallorean society issued his pronouncements on the
subject from his theological capital at Rak Cthol in the wasteland of
Murgos. He reasoned (probably correctly) that a society faced with
both a legal and religious obligation to avoid contact with foreigners
would not encounter those new ideas which so seriously undermine
the power of the Church. There is, moreover, some evidence which
suggests that Ctuchik's decrees were in some measure dictated
by the increasing friction between him and his two fellow Disciples,
the newly converted Zedar, and Urvon. Urvon in particular had
embraced the idea of converting non-Angaraks with great
enthusiasm, reasoning that this could only increase the authority of the
Church. Zedar, of course, was an enigma, and was soundly detested
by Ctuchik and Urvon both. It was to counter Urvon, however,
that Ctuchik strove to maintain Murgo purity. It is entirely possible
that Ctuchik reasoned that following Torak's ultimate victory' the
maimed God would welcome the delivery of an absolutely pure
Angarak strain to function as the ultimate overlords of a captive
world.
Whatever may have been Ctuchik's ultimate motivation, Murgos
and western Grolims vigorously contend that Mallorean
cosmopolitanism is a form of heresy, and they customarily refer to Malloreans
as 'mongrels'. It is this attitude, more than anything else, which has
led to the ages-old hatred existing between Murgo and Mallorean.
Following the upheaval which accompanied the destruction of
Cthol Mishrak, Torak himself became almost totally inaccessible to
his people, concentrating instead upon various schemes to disrupt
the growing power of the kingdoms of the West. The God's absence
gave the military time to fully exploit its now virtual total control
of Mallorea and the subject kingdoms. One of the oddities of this
period was the lack of a supreme commander at Mal Zeth. Although
powerful men had dominated the high command from time to time,
the authority of the military was normally dispersed among the
senior generals, and this condition prevailed until very nearly the
end of the fourth millennium. Now that their authority in ancient
Mallorea, Karanda and Dalasia was firmly established, the High
Command once again turned its attention to the problem of the
Melcene Empire.
As trade between the Melcenes and the Angaraks increased,
so did Angarak knowledge about their eastern neighbors. The
Melcenes had originally inhabited the islands off the east coast of the
Mallorean Continent, and had, until the catastrophe caused by the
separation of the two continents, been quite content to ignore their
mainland cousins. The vast tidal waves (estimated to have been a
hundred feet high) which swept across the oceans of the world
during the readjustment of the two great land-masses, however,
swallowed up more than half of their islands, leaving the survivors
huddled fearfully together in the uplands. Their capital at Melcene
itself had been a city in the mountains where affairs of state could
be managed without the debilitating effects of the climate in the
tropical lowlands. Following the catastrophe itself, however, Melcene
was a shattered city' destroyed by earthquake and lying no more