21: Of Uuk Zephar
Uuk Zephar was the finest city ever to be built by the race of Klemn. Of little account are they held in the annals of most ages: barbarous dwellers in the waste places, beggars and thieves in the vile places of cities built by others, slaves, spear-carriers and eyeless mad priests in murky pools. But there was a time when the other races of the West were weakened by plague, and led astray by venal leaders and vain philosophies, and the insane Gods that plague the inner eyes of the Klemn slept. In that time a drought in the south drove out a strong race of Klemn from the forests of Chellon, a race that were brave and cunning and thick-souled, and they made a great journey around the Golden Sea to cast down the Empires of the West and rule there for a time. For their capital they took a place in the midst of a land in L'dron that had lately reverted to marsh, where they alone could live and fight with surety. The leaders of the Klemn in the time of greatness were the family called Uuk Phnom, and they called the city after themselves, Uuk Zephar. For sixty years they caused to be built this city. Twenty-nine great stepped pyramids were raised in the marsh, none less than a hundred metres high and half a mile to a side, and each of these was covered over with palaces and workshops and the dwelling places of men of all races. For from out of all the nations of the West the Uuk Phnom had brought artisans, scholars, and clerks and soldiers, to ornament their capital and govern their Empire. In between these pyramids the water rose and fell with the seasons, and the greatest part of the dwellers of the city lived here in boats, or hollow houses of borogove wood. They were klemn of each of the companies that had marched from Chellon, and also many fishmen, and t'sai lho boatmen of old L'dron. Atop the greatest of the pyramids of Uuk Zephar was built a meeting house for representatives of all the nations of the Empire of So-Phnom, a parliament of wise men to advise the enlightened dynasts of the Uuk Phnom. And for a hundred years Uuk Zephar was the seat of a vast empire, and a home to all that was finest and wisest in the lands of the west, and filled with boats of all nations. For a little time – less than a breath in the long life of thinking beings on Tsai - the klemn truly possessed one of the greatest cities of the world.
From the date of its founding to the date of its founding, the age of Uuk Zephar was less than a thousand years, so it may be held to have perished a mere child among cities. Furthermore - loud be the lamentations - for the most part its time on Tsai was a melancholy time, where the great things that had been raised up by the Sisters of Uuk Phnom were pulled down and despoiled by lesser beings. For the last of sisters was slain by an assassin as she dictated a letter in the palace. And three newly-gendered sisters of the family of Ur Geph, which had envied the Uuk Phnom since before the Leavetaking, made themselves masters of the city. These quarreled among themselves, and there followed seasons of fear and seasons of dearth and war, and three years passed before one empress alone crouched on the high table at Uuk Zephar. She was Vromon the Absolute; and at her word the parliament of the Empire was dissolved, and the building where it had met filled with golden images of the gods. She had been a scribe to the last of the Sisters of Uuk Phnom, and she was not advised and restrained by a council of the wise, but rather flattered and moved from one whim to another by a council of the cunning, who sought their own power. These were nobles and sorcerors of the race of t’sai lho, mostly of those families which had ruled L’dron before the coming of the Klemn. They disliked the impermanence of Uuk Zephar, its newness, the shape of its pyramids, the very taste of its water and odour of its air. Thus in the reign of Vromon many of the ministries of the empire were removed to other cities, to Irpizar or Alun or Hlea K’ron, and many of the wealthiest dwellers in Uuk Zephar also removed themselves. After Vromon ruled in Uuk Zephar Zramuur of the family called Orn Phnom, and then Vramekh the Black, and Zul, and Vlekkuuk, and Gjamok, and Keebol the Weak, and Keebol the Strong, and Vramekh the White, and Vromon called the Younger, but these were all creatures of the same kind, and while each of them sat upon the high table Uuk Zephar diminished. The third empress to be named Vramekh is called the Red in the histories of the West. She was one thought by the sorcerors of Udnon to be of the same kind as these others, but she was of a different nature, and her inner eye burned like a mirror in the sun. She listened quietly to all her advisors said, and indicated her agreement, and then one day at noon her voiceless guards fell upon them wherever they were lying, whether in Irpizar or Cimmiril or Uuk Zephar itself, and cut them into pieces. The history of Uuk Zephar cannot be cut free from the history of the West, and all the threads of the time of So Phnom meet and tangle there. Vramekh the Red commanded that every Elder in the empire suffer the fate of her advisors, for she saw in each of them a link from which a new chain to bind her might be made. In most places this command was not carried out with any vigour, due to the devotion of the t’sai lho for their Elders, their inventiveness in concealing them, and the smallness of the klemn armies. But horrible was the slaughter in Uuk Zephar in those days, where her command could be least gainsaid. When the first line of execution pits beneath the pyramid of Toor was filled, and the digging of the second line of pits was near complete, it was found that Vramekh was dead. It was said that she was poisoned.
A group of nobles who had survived the massacres named Empress Xur, of the family of Orn Phnom, who was skilled in divination and had one withered limb. The incidents of her reign were not memorable, and there reigned after her Avhak, and Bregakh, and Xom, Zophror, Krevhak, Yomon, and Xur-Phnebar. In those years many of the pyramids of Uuk Zephar were abandoned, and those who had dwelt there dispersed, as more and more of the offices of the city were removed to K’ralho and given into the hands of the t’sai lho of that most ancient place. In the empty palaces atop the abandoned pyramids met companies of klemn who had sickened of So-Phnom as it was at that time; one such was the Nine Banners Horde, which later was to have such great fame throughout the West. At the time they met in Uuk Zephar they were not yet bold, and did little more than break into the houses of the rich and despoil them with tokens of the old gods of the jungle. In all the reigns from Xur to Xur-Phnebar, there was never a nine-day without some trouble between the factions of the klemn - between those who would break down and those who would build up, and those who would have nothing done. Or between the poor of the t’sai lho and the poor of the klemn. Or between t’sai lho of different kinds of philosophies. All those who lived there, of whatever race, were given to disputation, and ‘in a calm night in Uuk Zephar’ were words used to signify ‘at no time’ in the speech of the streets of So-Phnom. And in their caverns far beneath the surface of Tsai the insane gods stirred and woke.
At that time each of the pyramids of Uuk Zephar fell to be the portion of one of the great houses of the Klemn, to hold as though they were emperors over it, and at times there was open war between these empires. In the lamentable reign of Xur-Phnebar, it is said, the pyramid of Klom was destroyed by fire, and thousands of the servants of Klom and Porok perished in the struggles that followed. The kindler of the fire was found to be in the thrall of the people beyond the mountains, the dwellers in darkness. This was but a warning of the greater evils which would befall Uuk Zephar in times to come.
In the reign of Zramegh who followed Xur-Phnebar the thralled armies of the dwellers in darkness came over the mountains and descended to the Sea Impudicus and the Gulf of Chelt, destroying and subduing a vast and populous land. K’ralho was then finally lost from the nations of the west, after nine thousand years of greatness, as well as lesser cities without number. And because of the cunning talk of those who came from beyond the mountains, the remnants unconquered did not bind themselves together in alliance. Instead, the subjects of So-Phnom everywhere sought to renew their old nations and quarrels, and many lands no longer heeded any command of Zramegh. So the emperors Zramegh and Vraal, and those t’sai lho who were their secret masters, rebuilt Uuk Zephar as a city for war. A wall of brick and double wall of thorn were raised about it; fortifications were raised on each of the twenty pyramids which remained within the walls, and their old masters made to obey the emperors. The greatest of these fortifications was erected upon the pyramid of Klom; the Armoury of Vraal, guarded with traps so numerous and cunning as any fortress of the Empires that are gone. Very many sturdy soldiering folk of the old marchlands were settled in Uuk Zephar, Klemn of Aa-Kamn and Argandarr of the dry plains of the Bowl Country, and it became a less shifting city, with causeways and walls built between the pyramids for these dwellers in the fixed lands. Thus were half the days of Uuk Zephar spent.
Vorrom, the sister of Vraal, had cultivated the Klemn of Aa-Kamn, promisjng them the restoration fo their homeland under her rule, and when her sister was eaten she used them as weapons against the great ones of the t’sai lho, who would rather wait for others to defeat the dwellers in darkness. Among the t’sai lho today she is remembered as little better than Vramekh the Red, but this is due to tales invented by her enemies, for she killed few. Testing stones were placed at each gate of Uuk Zephar in her reign, forged with knowledge which is now lost, to find all those in thrall to the phthon who sought to enter. Foundries and other sorts of manufactories were made in Uuk Zephar in her time in great numbers, as in all the cities of So-Phnom, as she strove mightily to regain the lost lands. Also in that time were the great hospitals of Uuk Zephar built, to hold those maimed and maddened in the endless wars, the hospitals atop the pyramids of Xeghal and Vel and Zrolghovrom. The reigns of Vorrom and of her sister Vad, in which the wars continued, were the last great age of Uuk Zephar, though to those who dwelled then it seemed like the morning of a new age, as the dwellers in darkness were driven from province after province.
Xevad who ruled after Vad was a venal ruler, and extravagant. The moneylender descended on Uuk Zephar like biting flies, and the food intended for the soldiers was stolen and sold in the markets. Then came four years with little rain, and famine and sickness, and always war, war, until Xevad wearied of seeking to restore Aa-Kamn and sued for peace. Then there were three years of good rains, and then another famine, and Xevad was killed when there was a shaking of the earth that brought her palace down upon her. A third part of the dwellers in Uuk Zephar were killed on that day. That day was the ending of So-Phnom, for from that day onward there was never one empress who was called the empress of So-Phnom. Hjarmugh of the palace guard, a farseer of the race of Aa-Kamn, made herself ruler of what was called Zepharud, which extended no more than a day’s ride beyond the edge of the swamp in which Uuk Zephar lay, in the crook in the arm of L’dron. For the rest of the years of Uuk Zephar, it was never again important in the alliances and campaigns by which the west was lost to the dwellers in darkness, but for a little time it was still a large and prosperous city. Hjom after Hjarmugh lost all of Zepharud to the t’sai lho of L’dron, and in the confused years that followed after Uuk Zephar became itself subject to the T’sai Lho of L’dron.
Never was there a klemn empress there again: but its rulers for a time were good and wise, and it was kept as a great redoubt of the free peoples for ninety years, thanks to the defences built by Vorrom. When Uuk Zephar was ruled by L’dron it was named T’zar C’phar. There came noather great earthquake, in the ninth year of the governor H’tal K’hl N’ym, and afterwards the hosptials of Xejhul and Vel were not rebuilt, and neither was the Armoury of Vraal (which was called then the Cage of F’sai), and many of the testng stones were taken away to Irpizar. Those were the days when the withering of the free peoples of the West was swift, and Uuk Zephar withered with them. The walls were rebuilt around the dimniished city, high and wide, but only six of the great pyramids remained within them, and no men of any great repute.
The ending of Uuk Zephar in the annals I have followed is obscure. It is certain that it succumbed wth the other cities of L’dron when that land fell before the ancient enemy. There are no records of Uuk Zephar, or T’zar C’phar. or Urrash in Zepahrud (as it was called by the Argandarr) in the annals of the enemy in their age of pestilential greatness, so ti must be that they erased it from the face of Tsai. Such was the ending of the finest city ever to be built by the race of klemn.
From the date of its founding to the date of its founding, the age of Uuk Zephar was less than a thousand years, so it may be held to have perished a mere child among cities. Furthermore - loud be the lamentations - for the most part its time on Tsai was a melancholy time, where the great things that had been raised up by the Sisters of Uuk Phnom were pulled down and despoiled by lesser beings. For the last of sisters was slain by an assassin as she dictated a letter in the palace. And three newly-gendered sisters of the family of Ur Geph, which had envied the Uuk Phnom since before the Leavetaking, made themselves masters of the city. These quarreled among themselves, and there followed seasons of fear and seasons of dearth and war, and three years passed before one empress alone crouched on the high table at Uuk Zephar. She was Vromon the Absolute; and at her word the parliament of the Empire was dissolved, and the building where it had met filled with golden images of the gods. She had been a scribe to the last of the Sisters of Uuk Phnom, and she was not advised and restrained by a council of the wise, but rather flattered and moved from one whim to another by a council of the cunning, who sought their own power. These were nobles and sorcerors of the race of t’sai lho, mostly of those families which had ruled L’dron before the coming of the Klemn. They disliked the impermanence of Uuk Zephar, its newness, the shape of its pyramids, the very taste of its water and odour of its air. Thus in the reign of Vromon many of the ministries of the empire were removed to other cities, to Irpizar or Alun or Hlea K’ron, and many of the wealthiest dwellers in Uuk Zephar also removed themselves. After Vromon ruled in Uuk Zephar Zramuur of the family called Orn Phnom, and then Vramekh the Black, and Zul, and Vlekkuuk, and Gjamok, and Keebol the Weak, and Keebol the Strong, and Vramekh the White, and Vromon called the Younger, but these were all creatures of the same kind, and while each of them sat upon the high table Uuk Zephar diminished. The third empress to be named Vramekh is called the Red in the histories of the West. She was one thought by the sorcerors of Udnon to be of the same kind as these others, but she was of a different nature, and her inner eye burned like a mirror in the sun. She listened quietly to all her advisors said, and indicated her agreement, and then one day at noon her voiceless guards fell upon them wherever they were lying, whether in Irpizar or Cimmiril or Uuk Zephar itself, and cut them into pieces. The history of Uuk Zephar cannot be cut free from the history of the West, and all the threads of the time of So Phnom meet and tangle there. Vramekh the Red commanded that every Elder in the empire suffer the fate of her advisors, for she saw in each of them a link from which a new chain to bind her might be made. In most places this command was not carried out with any vigour, due to the devotion of the t’sai lho for their Elders, their inventiveness in concealing them, and the smallness of the klemn armies. But horrible was the slaughter in Uuk Zephar in those days, where her command could be least gainsaid. When the first line of execution pits beneath the pyramid of Toor was filled, and the digging of the second line of pits was near complete, it was found that Vramekh was dead. It was said that she was poisoned.
A group of nobles who had survived the massacres named Empress Xur, of the family of Orn Phnom, who was skilled in divination and had one withered limb. The incidents of her reign were not memorable, and there reigned after her Avhak, and Bregakh, and Xom, Zophror, Krevhak, Yomon, and Xur-Phnebar. In those years many of the pyramids of Uuk Zephar were abandoned, and those who had dwelt there dispersed, as more and more of the offices of the city were removed to K’ralho and given into the hands of the t’sai lho of that most ancient place. In the empty palaces atop the abandoned pyramids met companies of klemn who had sickened of So-Phnom as it was at that time; one such was the Nine Banners Horde, which later was to have such great fame throughout the West. At the time they met in Uuk Zephar they were not yet bold, and did little more than break into the houses of the rich and despoil them with tokens of the old gods of the jungle. In all the reigns from Xur to Xur-Phnebar, there was never a nine-day without some trouble between the factions of the klemn - between those who would break down and those who would build up, and those who would have nothing done. Or between the poor of the t’sai lho and the poor of the klemn. Or between t’sai lho of different kinds of philosophies. All those who lived there, of whatever race, were given to disputation, and ‘in a calm night in Uuk Zephar’ were words used to signify ‘at no time’ in the speech of the streets of So-Phnom. And in their caverns far beneath the surface of Tsai the insane gods stirred and woke.
At that time each of the pyramids of Uuk Zephar fell to be the portion of one of the great houses of the Klemn, to hold as though they were emperors over it, and at times there was open war between these empires. In the lamentable reign of Xur-Phnebar, it is said, the pyramid of Klom was destroyed by fire, and thousands of the servants of Klom and Porok perished in the struggles that followed. The kindler of the fire was found to be in the thrall of the people beyond the mountains, the dwellers in darkness. This was but a warning of the greater evils which would befall Uuk Zephar in times to come.
In the reign of Zramegh who followed Xur-Phnebar the thralled armies of the dwellers in darkness came over the mountains and descended to the Sea Impudicus and the Gulf of Chelt, destroying and subduing a vast and populous land. K’ralho was then finally lost from the nations of the west, after nine thousand years of greatness, as well as lesser cities without number. And because of the cunning talk of those who came from beyond the mountains, the remnants unconquered did not bind themselves together in alliance. Instead, the subjects of So-Phnom everywhere sought to renew their old nations and quarrels, and many lands no longer heeded any command of Zramegh. So the emperors Zramegh and Vraal, and those t’sai lho who were their secret masters, rebuilt Uuk Zephar as a city for war. A wall of brick and double wall of thorn were raised about it; fortifications were raised on each of the twenty pyramids which remained within the walls, and their old masters made to obey the emperors. The greatest of these fortifications was erected upon the pyramid of Klom; the Armoury of Vraal, guarded with traps so numerous and cunning as any fortress of the Empires that are gone. Very many sturdy soldiering folk of the old marchlands were settled in Uuk Zephar, Klemn of Aa-Kamn and Argandarr of the dry plains of the Bowl Country, and it became a less shifting city, with causeways and walls built between the pyramids for these dwellers in the fixed lands. Thus were half the days of Uuk Zephar spent.
Vorrom, the sister of Vraal, had cultivated the Klemn of Aa-Kamn, promisjng them the restoration fo their homeland under her rule, and when her sister was eaten she used them as weapons against the great ones of the t’sai lho, who would rather wait for others to defeat the dwellers in darkness. Among the t’sai lho today she is remembered as little better than Vramekh the Red, but this is due to tales invented by her enemies, for she killed few. Testing stones were placed at each gate of Uuk Zephar in her reign, forged with knowledge which is now lost, to find all those in thrall to the phthon who sought to enter. Foundries and other sorts of manufactories were made in Uuk Zephar in her time in great numbers, as in all the cities of So-Phnom, as she strove mightily to regain the lost lands. Also in that time were the great hospitals of Uuk Zephar built, to hold those maimed and maddened in the endless wars, the hospitals atop the pyramids of Xeghal and Vel and Zrolghovrom. The reigns of Vorrom and of her sister Vad, in which the wars continued, were the last great age of Uuk Zephar, though to those who dwelled then it seemed like the morning of a new age, as the dwellers in darkness were driven from province after province.
Xevad who ruled after Vad was a venal ruler, and extravagant. The moneylender descended on Uuk Zephar like biting flies, and the food intended for the soldiers was stolen and sold in the markets. Then came four years with little rain, and famine and sickness, and always war, war, until Xevad wearied of seeking to restore Aa-Kamn and sued for peace. Then there were three years of good rains, and then another famine, and Xevad was killed when there was a shaking of the earth that brought her palace down upon her. A third part of the dwellers in Uuk Zephar were killed on that day. That day was the ending of So-Phnom, for from that day onward there was never one empress who was called the empress of So-Phnom. Hjarmugh of the palace guard, a farseer of the race of Aa-Kamn, made herself ruler of what was called Zepharud, which extended no more than a day’s ride beyond the edge of the swamp in which Uuk Zephar lay, in the crook in the arm of L’dron. For the rest of the years of Uuk Zephar, it was never again important in the alliances and campaigns by which the west was lost to the dwellers in darkness, but for a little time it was still a large and prosperous city. Hjom after Hjarmugh lost all of Zepharud to the t’sai lho of L’dron, and in the confused years that followed after Uuk Zephar became itself subject to the T’sai Lho of L’dron.
Never was there a klemn empress there again: but its rulers for a time were good and wise, and it was kept as a great redoubt of the free peoples for ninety years, thanks to the defences built by Vorrom. When Uuk Zephar was ruled by L’dron it was named T’zar C’phar. There came noather great earthquake, in the ninth year of the governor H’tal K’hl N’ym, and afterwards the hosptials of Xejhul and Vel were not rebuilt, and neither was the Armoury of Vraal (which was called then the Cage of F’sai), and many of the testng stones were taken away to Irpizar. Those were the days when the withering of the free peoples of the West was swift, and Uuk Zephar withered with them. The walls were rebuilt around the dimniished city, high and wide, but only six of the great pyramids remained within them, and no men of any great repute.
The ending of Uuk Zephar in the annals I have followed is obscure. It is certain that it succumbed wth the other cities of L’dron when that land fell before the ancient enemy. There are no records of Uuk Zephar, or T’zar C’phar. or Urrash in Zepahrud (as it was called by the Argandarr) in the annals of the enemy in their age of pestilential greatness, so ti must be that they erased it from the face of Tsai. Such was the ending of the finest city ever to be built by the race of klemn.
posted by Dr. Clam | 4:09 AM
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