Harsaana

 

Harsaana Gustalkeen

Was born in a town of Malstern along the banks of the Mastekeena River about 2800 years ago about 150 kms from the mouth of that grand and mighty river.  The waters of the Mastekeena River are at that point swallowed whole by the Great River, and they only leave a turbulent red streak to the flow of the river that is consumed a few kilometers later by the yellow of the rest of the river; the world of the river of his birth, which is grand and mighty and extends for several thousand kilometers, gone in a few hours.  Malstern now rests at the bottom of Lake Nasaal, but in the time of his childhood, the town was centered in a large area of productive farmland.  The New year was marked with a flood from the Great River, its waters surging past the mouth and well past Malstern.  As the waters retreated there were celebrations and planting commenced for the first crop.  Midsummer the Mastekeena river would also flood, the snows from head waters finally reaching the town and second planting would commence.  This is the way the town would run for sixteen of the Greater Cycle’s years.  In the Winter there would be four years where the waters never flooded and the summer too, but the Winter the years would be lean with more hunting and fishing, stores would be reduced and trade from outside would increase.  In the Summer, the almond, olive, and the orange trees that were hibernating most of the year would fill out and fruit; rice crops would be replaced with wheat and other grains.  Sometimes there would be an unexpected flood from the Great River.  Sometimes other dangers would come from other quarters.  So, there was always a need for accurate forecasting for the people.  As such, Harsaana’s family was always in great demand as they were astrologers.  More than just astrologers, the matriarch and a few select family members were wizards; diviners to be precise.  The quality of the predictions of the family forecasts was such that there was a local saying, Gustalkeen is very keen; keen meaning in the local dialect accurate, the sword had a keen edge.

Harsaana grew up with this expectation and never wanting to disappoint, she out shone all her siblings and cousins and drew the eye of the Matriarch.  For seven years her predictions and forecasts were dead on, predicting which crops would work best for a coming year and when the rains would come and the floods of the rivers.  Spotlessly.  Until one year she predicted no crops would be harvested.  She cast her predictions forth into the next three years and each came back with no crops harvested, on the fourth year out she saw there would again be crops but only the lightest of harvests and only enough for a population of a small village for the coming Winter.  She approached her great grandmother with these predictions and her grandmother looked at her charts and made her predictions and determined that she was wrong.  The forecasts showed that there would be good weather, and the floods would be on time and not too great.  Harsaana grew desperate because, she knew all that, but her predictions still showed no harvests but in the neighbouring towns and villages a day’s travel would be normal.  After seven years of grace, the Matriarch cast her down from her position at the age of seventeen.  Harsaana tried her predictions repeatedly with different approaches and she kept getting the same result.  She was a pariah within her family and the rest of the town.  But the reason for her predictions came a few months before harvest.

Fame of the town Malstern spread far and wide along the Mastekeena River and even into the lands near the Great River.  It was said that there were a family of witches that could control the weather and make harvests exceptional, free of pests.  Others said that the family just had extraordinary forecasting abilities.  There was the warlord Gute of Markel, that was hoping that it was the latter of the two suspicions and planned to launch a trading expedition into the Mastekeena and capture one or more of these forecasting witches to forecast the battles that he waged.  Gute emptied his stronghold and purchased forty of the largest ships he could find and packed them all to the gunnels with as many men as could fit and not sink the ship and set forth.  His own astrologer had told him that his descendants would rule a huge expansive nation for millennia to the south and west and his name would be forgotten in the land of his birth in a generation.  He took that as a blessing and launched his plan.  They traded little with people along the way and crept up on Malstern with stealth, unloading the troops outside and in a Banyan glade outside the town and then docking outside the town making overtures of trade for famed quality of foodstuffs.  Which he found in quantity, owing a prediction that almond and olive oil would hit new heights of value if held on to for longer than would seem prudent.  Gute a large feast in the town for the fortune that he would get for selling such prized merchandise to the Kingdoms of the North in their time of Famine.  It was a ruse to occupy the town and allow his forces to sneak in from the countryside and take the town and capture the powerful predictive witches.  The attack was almost a failure.  The witches did not attend the festivities and when the attack occurred, the towns folk were less inebriated than he had hoped.  The witches it turned out included several potent wizards and although the attackers carried the day nearly two in three soldiers was dead and over half the ships were sunk.  Gute enraged with his failure sought out any living witch and found none, they were all dead but there was one rumoured to be living by herself in the country ten kilometers from town.  He gave orders for the surviving men to be cut down along with the old and the young and allowed the surviving soldiers to despoil the women, while he led a small cadre to capture the last witch, Harsaana Gustalkeen.

Harsaana was taken on to Gute’s ship and brought to his cabin where she was raped regularly but kept alive as long as she provided forecasts that were accurate and favourable to Gute.  She did what she was told, but only gave Gute the predictions he wanted to hear, not the best predictions though.  She knew the best outcome for herself lay on this path, since she purchased the cottage ten kilometers from Malstern a month before its sacking.  As a prognosticator she had always been focused on further goals than the immediate future; she planned for the long term.  She birthed five children of Gute’s and three of his commanders.  When he discovered the treachery, he flew into a rage and killed the commander that was not in her control and she seized power by killing Gute in the open before his men without the use of magic; she used poison, but she hid that from them. 

The Death of the Warlord Gute was met with joy for the local region, his army had grown out of nothing over such a short time to become a feared threat, undefeated and seemed to have some sort of spy network that had sapped every nation of advantage.  Not all Gute’s Commanders accepted rule by Harsaana and many thoughts of rebellion.  This was because it was not known that the successes of the past ten years were due to her guidance and not the prowess of Gute.  Even the survivors of the initial battle with Malstern who knew why they attacked the town new little of this guidance.  But they did understand success and Harsaana did provide that success, and she was able to put her most unstable detractors into positions where they were killed, and her own supporters were able to assume control.  Where Gute played a game of rapid expansion, Harsaana played the long game; the conquests of Gute were forged into a nation and the nation was transformed into a Kingdom with grand ambitions: to rule the watershed of the Mastekeena River.  In her servitude to Gute she refined her skills as a diviner and developed many rituals and arcane incantations that would make her spell more powerful and accurate.  All the futures that she foresaw lead her to one conclusion, if her work were going to last beyond her life, she would have to live to see its final shape and its final shape could never exceed the watershed of the Mastekeena River.  She plotted the course of the empire that she would rule and knew that there was only one course that would allow it to happen.  She trapped her soul on a phylactery of her own devising and sealed it in a tomb that only she knew about and proceeded to construct a great dam that she promised would be a symbol of the power of the Empire.  The resulting dam was said to be one hundred kilometers wide and fifty meters tall, twenty meters thick at the base, and ten meters thick at the top.  It required most of the resources of the nation for one year to create and a lock system to lift all trade to the surface of the lake behind.  The accepted reason for this expenditure was to prevent invasions like that of Gute the Terrible from ever happening again.  She then created another set of locks that would hold back the Great River when it would flood and prevent the flooding of the city ever again.  She then built her capitol, Gutral Mastekeena, literally, in the forgotten language of her people, The Mouth of the Mastekeena. 

Eventually the city would fill the entire length of the river between locks and dam with villas and estates and extensions of the city, so that by reputation it was the biggest city in the world.  The Empire would not see to itself.  There was need of administration and it could not be left in the hands of unsupervised mortal hands, but also, she could not leave the seat of her power either.  The Empire is remarkably stable under her rule.  She can foresee any rebellion to her rule and shut it down quickly and she has learned to pass most of the appearance of rulership to her children and their descendants, the best of the best of them gains the title of King or Queen and the rest are held as subjects to the Crown and left to do what they might.  As time passed the rules changed gradually.  Citizenship was not a right of birth, but a right of service and citizenship could be stripped away, and their rights given to the nearest by relationship citizen.  Citizenship was granted only after 10 years of faithful service to the Empire.  All peoples gained by conquest are enslaved and relocated, dispersed through the empire, gifted to new citizens.  Opposing forces that surrender must join, but only are granted citizenship after 10 years of service.  All citizens take loyalty oaths and disloyal oath takers die.  The army is forbidden from taking liberties of captives, except when the need arises to make an example of a town or city and then the entire populous is put to death right down to the last chicken.  Most often this happens when the army is called to knock over any nation outside the watershed of the Mastekeena river.  Any nation thought of as a threat to the stability of the empire receives such a visit. 

But the Empire is very stable.  Trade is very stable, and the population is incredibly happy.  There are no famines and most people away from the army have never known war, there is a constant invigoration of new blood from the front lines and the population is constantly growing.  Education is an exceedingly high priority and there are many vocation schools for citizens and the children of citizens.  Monasteries, Warrior Schools, Bardic Colleges, Wizard Schools, and trade schools abound with the best and most prestigious located in the capitol.  All graduates are required to take loyalty oaths, which are binding, and attract a wide group of candidates from many nations.  One of the nicknames of the empire is: The Empire of One Hundred Million People, this has not been true for many centuries; the population is much greater. 

There have been over one hundred rulers under Harsaana since she became the Emperor, all related to her and Gute.  She has learned that there is a ritual that will make her immortal, but it requires many spells that she can not cast yet; they are effectively spells of the twelfth order and her blessings of knowledge will only allow her to cast five of the six spells.  She is holding on to the hope that her military can uncover more mysteries so that she can gain the power to cast these spells, but should a threat come, that would require her to use the blessings in another way, she will not hesitate to do so.  Woe to anyone who does that.  She is currently a Lich with 20 levels as a Wizard and 10 levels as a cleric.