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    A History of Sunndi
    Posted on Fri, August 10, 2001 by Tizoc
    rasgon writes "From the hunger of the bullywugs to the god-kings of Enki, this history reveals the glorious past of the Vast Swamp.

    Author: Rasgon



    SUNNDI

    By: Rasgon (notallowedyet@hotmail.com)
    (Used with Permission. Do not repost without obtaining prior permission from the author.)

    The Vast Swamp has always held tribes of bullywugs. The humans who have lived there for millennia respect the toad-people for their older wisdom, and credit them for teaching them how to survive at the beginning of time. The bullywugs, for their part, care little about anything. The universe to them is a cold, hungry place. Their alien gods, too, are thought of mostly as vast, open mouths eternally demanding to be fed.

    The oldest god known to the humans of Sunndi is Enki, a sageous wizard-god also known as Manfather and depicted as a hybrid of bullywug and human.

    After a time, humans began to build large city-states. The greatest of these cities was ruled by a human considered to be the mortal form of Enki. This god-king ruled wisely and justly, creating peace in the region and encouraging trade between man, bullywug, and other.

    The Tyranny of the Summer Stars

    This changed with the coming of the elves. Much has been said about the City of Summer Stars in the songs and lamentations of the elven diaspora, but the other side of the story is not so well known. It's not that the elves were intentionally cruel to the people of what would become Sunndi. It's true they were disgusted with the human consorting with their froglike neighbors, but they didn't hold it against them. It's just that the elves thought it natural that humans and other lesser races should live in toil - the myths of those same races usually agreed with this view - and what did it matter, in the ultimate scheme of things, if their labor was for themselves or the elven kingdom? The human god-king was captured, and he ultimately died in a magical elvish prison; all the races of the land were made to be serfs for the elven landowners.

    Eventually the elves came into conflict with a rising Ur-Flannae-led nation to the north. Mystic secrets of life and death had allowed this people to build an army and industrial base on the reanimated corpses of ancestors and ancient heroes. They began to expand, conquering their neighbors, until they reached the City of Summer Stars. After the magical battle there, the might of the elven race was shattered, the city decimated and eternally cursed, and the warriors of the Ur-Flan with them.

    The people of what would be Sunndi were not hospitable to the elven refugees. Many were crucified or burnt in vengence for their long subjugation. This did not bring their king back, however, and the humans and bullywugs eventually lost interest. After Acererak, the last of the great high leaders of the southern Flan, tried and failed to reach apotheosis without Enki's help, they descended into a semi-barbaric state until the coming of the Suel.

    Wastri

    Wastri was a young but potent mage, a refugee from the Suel Imperium who had settled in that antediluvian nation's Tilvanot colony. Venturing often into the northern swamps, he grew obsessed with the bullywugs, and became determined to find a way to use them for his own glory and that of his people. He found more than he ever dreamt.

    It was an old ruin, seemingly like any of the other ones lying half-submerged in the Vast Swamp. But this was the tomb of the last of the Flannae god-kings, and Wastri broke the seals that had kept its power from the world. Deep within, the corpse of the imprisoned leader crumbled to dust, and Enki was once again free to choose a king.

    Though it retained his name, the thing that emerged from those ruins was not Wastri. He was entirely remade, a champion of the old laws of the Flan and an instrument of vengence against the elves. For the first time in many centuries, a god-king walked through the swamps.

    Rise of the Toads

    The bullywug raids began soon after. The mostly Suel and Oeridian-descended humans of Sunndi were shocked as the normally torpid and reclusive 'wugs began pouring into their towns and villages, carrying off victims to be fed to the god whose strange new symbol they wore. They were even more shocked when some of those of full human blood returned, preaching the faith the bullywugs had taught them. Those who remembered something of the old Flan lore were merely puzzled, at first. Then many of them rushed to convert.

    Tyranny of the Toads

    The whole nation fell under Wastri's webbed grip. The Purging Time began, when thousands of elves and elven sympathizers, including halflings, gnomes and dwarves, were imprisoned or forced to flee. Most of them were put to death, unless they actively worked toward rooting out their kin.

    The Aerdi Tyranny

    Following the Battle of a Fortnight's Length, the armies of the Great Kingdom finally broke the power of Wastri's armies, giving the races the Wastriggi derisively called "half-humans" time to recover. This new oppressive force actually gave the humans and elves of Sunndi something to unite in common cause over, and old wounds began to heal. By the time the Iron League was founded in the 400s, an elven count was asked to sit on the throne by elf, dwarf, vodyanoi, and human alike. And Wastri sat on his throne and stewed. He tried several times to retake his kingdom, but the united races held him back. Then Wastri was gone, imprisoned as was his predecessor, but far away.

    The Present

    Wastri's return from imprisonment heralded a new approach, one based more on evangelizing than military conquest (though smaller military actions still occurred). The followers of the Hammer of Demihumans began to spread themselves across the continent, fanning the flames of intolerance wherever they could in order to gain support abroad. The recent events in the Great Kingdom have made the people of Sunndi more unified than ever, however, so it looks like a long time will pass before they allow a god-king to rule them again.

    "
     
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