A CONCISE HISTORY OF THE SUHNDI PEOPLE



About 500 years ago, the Suhndi civilization had spread across their entire
continent and reached a peak of prosperity. At this time, they founded a small
colony on the shores of a continent not very far to the East, and this colony quickly
grew into a prosperous city called Hephiontias.

Shortly after its founding, however, the prosperity in which the Sundhi so reveled
became their downfall, for they became decadent materialists who grew cynical in
their ancient faith, the worship of the lone deity Salaman.

Salaman, then, saw fit to erase the offense from the world, and he caused the oceans
to rise up, and in one terrible cataclysm he sank the entire home continent of the
Sundhi to the bottom of the ocean forever, destroying its unrepentent people.

Now only the colonists in Hephiontias survived, and the terrible loss of their homeland
initiated three centuries of vicious self-reproach and unforgiving re-dedication to
the laws of Salaman. They swore they would never fail in their vigilance against
impurity as their fathers had, and they swore to honor Salaman further by instituting
a new civilization of continent-wide law, order, and piety--here, on Landen, the
new home Salaman had provided. Surely Salaman had spared them for just this purpose;
they must not fail.

Quickly from the city of Hephiontias a nation was founded, a theocracy called Zymyria,
a sprawling imperium of righteous law. And in the early days its people spread
far south into the Halida Desert, northward braving the swamps and battling the
evil orcs, and as far East as they could before being halted by the mighty
Syaxat Mountains and the forbidding forest of the mysterious, pagan Elves.

Those who traveled far from Zymyria's influence established new towns and declared
them the capitals of new states, all dedicated to the reverence of Salaman, all
proclaiming their allegiance to the Caliph in Hephiontias. This long era of expansion
and rededication to the worship of Salaman was called The Terrible Renewal; it saw a
flowering of philosophy, the sciences, and of great riches; the University System was
founded for wizards, the War Academies for fighters, and the legendary Paladin Circles
were formed to clear the lands of evil; but all the while these great achievements
were haunted by the memory of an entire drowned continent, a million lives lost in
a single day, in a kingdom much wealthier, much larger, and much more advanced.

Today, the sense of purpose that once united the Suhndi is not as universal as it once
was, and the culture is enduring an age of defensiveness and uncertainty which it can
not admit even exists. The Caliph in Hephiontias remains the undisputed religious
leader of all Suhndi (which makes him, in truth, the most powerful human in Landen).
But the outlying kingdoms, so far from Hephiontias, over the centuries have evolved
subtle differences with the Zymyrian culture, sowing unspoken tension. All Suhndi
lands continue loudly to proclaim their undying allegiance to the Caliph--but
behind closed doors, many people sometimes murmur a more complicated opinion...
and though he feels he must force himself to turn a deaf ear to such impure thoughts,
the present Caliph Aledd Watid is not entirely unaware of these goings-on.

It seems likely today, though, that the Suhndi will continue their present
drift through paranoia, and persecute rather than heed any voices of dissent. Their
religion and its tragic history prevent them from mixing comfortably with other creeds
and races, and without this freedom they've experienced relative isolation and
cultural atrophy. It seems likely they will sink further into xenophobia and inflict
on their own people many more "purges" before they emerge from their present darkness,
but the tools for success lie closer to their hands now than ever before. Numyria's
recent completion of the Emshi Highway (and, unofficially, of the smuggling route
known as the Moush Kedah) means they are ready to open the Midlands for business--they
just need to find the political will to do so.



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