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They were, it appears, a secretive people with little desire for
contact with outsiders. They were also, insofar as we are able to
determine, largely matriarchal, and the institution of marriage among
them was strangely under-developed. No stigma seems to have
been attached to out-of-wedlock birth, and casual liaisons appear to
have been commonplace. Beyond these few tantalizing hints, little is
known of the Marags.
HISTORY
We must assume that the Marags migrated to the west during the
first millennium as did the other peoples of the west, although there
is no way to substantiate this. Cities and temples of stone were
erected in the Vale, but when they were constructed and by whose
order, we have no way of knowing, only that the legions which
destroyed the country did attest to their existence. The cities appear
to have been oddly-constructed assortments of stone buildings
without protective walls around them, and the temples, standing
alone on the plain, were vast constructions of enormous stones
erected with incredible amounts of primitive labor.
The only body of historical documents we have relate to the nine'
teenth-century war between Maragor and Nyissa. The causes of that
war are unclear, but the Marags mounted an invasion of the
jungle-Country of the snake people and pressed rapidly on to the Nyissan
capital at Sthiss Tor. The reports of the field commanders of this
invasion provide certain chilling hints about the nature of Marag
religious practices. The conclusion of each report of the capture of a
Nyissan city or town lists - by name - those luckless inhabitants
who were 'assumed' for the greater glory of Mara. We can only
shudder at the thinly veiled meaning of that term.
The Marag invasion, of course, came to grief after the occupation
of Sthiss Tor. The cunning Nyissans had, before evacuating the city'
poisoned everything edible in the vicinity. Marag soldiery sickened
and died in appalling numbers, and the desperate field commanders
frantically appealed to their superiors back in Maragor for food.
Ultimately, they were forced to abandon the city and flee. back
through the jungles to the mountains and thence across to Maragor.
The trail of dead and dying soldiers they left behind them gives
mute testimony to the virulence of Nyissan poisons.
The only other contact between the Marags and outsiders came
just prior to the destruction of the entire people. Tolnedran merchants
attempting to enter Maragor in search of trade were driven out of
the country. No amount of official remonstrance on the part of the
imperial Court could persuade the Marags to relent, and eventually
the city of Tol Rane was constructed on Maragor's western
boundary to provide a suitable site for trade. The few Marags who took
advantage of this commercial opportunity paid handsomely for the
wares they purchased in fine gold. It was the discovery of this gold
which sealed the fate of Maragor.
The events leading up to the Tolnedran invasion and the details of
that ruthless campaign have already been discussed and need not be
repeated here.
When the campaign was over, the few pitiful survivors were sold
to Nyissan slave-traders who promptly chained them together and
drove them in long columns across the mountains into the jungles of
Nyissa. Their ultimate fate is mercifully hidden from us.
Thus perished Maragor - the living Maragor at any rate. The
horrid reality of the dead Maragor remains to haunt us fully three
millennia after our ill-advised adventure there.