History of the Gaals

The Gaals were a strong, matriarchal society. Ethnically they were probably a group who left Miyarous hundreds of years earlier, and settled in the gentle uplands of what today is northeastern Orror. The Gaals were ruled by a council of matriarchs, members of which rose to their position through various trials and elections amongst the tribe. The matriarchs controlled the mysteries of food and fire, and by this controlled their male warriors.

Their society was regarded as unnatural by the surrounding tribes in the Cavann hills, and in early history the Gaals were constantly threatened by war. In response the matriarchs crafted from their menfolk a small but elite force of warriors, who were all but unstoppable and eventually won victories over the tribes and smaller city-states in the region.

Expansion of the Gaal Empire

As their empire grew, the matriarchy found it increasingly difficult keeping the balance of genders equal. The partriarchal tribes they conquered found it very hard to accept the rule of women. So in newly conquered lands, non-Gaal men were confined, kept in chains (often ornate) within houses and fields, ruled over by the matriarchy and the elite Gaal warriors. Trusteeship of estates was given over to the women, who were initially weak and easily swayed, but quickly came to appreciate the liberation the Gaals had granted them.

Gaal Matriarchy

Gaal women were the landowners, and were in charge of trade and industry. As time passed, the matriarchs devised a culture and mysticism that kept the matriarchy in power.

Women were the font of life, and rituals surrounding birth and their blood became the foundation of Gaal mysticism. The womb was the very basis of Gaal society, and only women had control over it. Young Gaal women were initiated in sacred secret rituals at the time of their first blood-flow. Enemy tribes were terrorised by tales of the magic of Gaal women, and the curses of madness, death and infertility they could bring.

For example, Gaal women were never raped in war, for it was believed that adepts had such control of their mystic wombs that they could cause instant death to any man who violated them - biting their penis with venomous mystical teeth. In truth this was one of the most secret devices of the matriarchs: a cup-shaped piece of kalip-wood (having antiseptic properties) or gold, with barbed spikes inside the cup, coated with poison. The cup was inserted into the vagina, so that any man who entered without the woman's permission would die within minutes, frothing and writhing in agonised pain.

Male Warrior Culture

Warriors accrued honours that passed to their sons, so that bearing sons became integral to a man's honour and vitality. Warriors depended on women to bear their sons, so this was became another method of social control.

Male Slavery

The practice of male slavery only developed as a means of keeping the men of conquered, patriarchal territories under control. Gaal men originally had an equal position in the tribe, respected as warriors, workers and defenders of the home. Men who could prove pure Gaal blood were always born free within the empire.

All other men were 'slaves'. Slavery was not seen as cruel, but as a necessary means of keeping the natural aggression of these 'wild' non-Gaal men under control. In Gaal male mysticism, these men were possessed by their ganna, the beast-spirit of depravity and destruction formed part of the human soul. Only strength and magic could suppress this possession.

In city households, menslaves had a special quarter of the house, which was usually kept locked at night. In later years, men, particularly criminals or very tall strong youths, were often gelded. The status of eunuchs was a challenge to the traditional structure, and many gained high positions in government administration, and were even allowed to run businesses and own property. The disgust at the prevalence of eunuchs in Gaal government was ostensible evidence of corruption, and one of the triggers of the civil wars.

There were several ways to freedom for a manslave, besides gelding. Firstly, powerful non-Gaal families could aquire Gaal citizenship, by swearing their loyalty and the compliance of their men, and paying large sums, in trust, to the Empress. The families were then placed under Bond for a certain number of generations. If they demonstrated troublemaking or disorder during that time, their status was revoked and the whole family had their estates and status confiscated.

In later periods the Bond period was reduced or waived, and almost any man or woman could buy citizenship for the right price.

The second means was manumission through education and matronage. Menslaves working for powerful Gaal families, or for the Matriarchy itself, could be given freeman status through education, and in reward for years of proven loyal service. Initially the sons of freemen were also slaves, but Freemen usually retained close ties to their Matron so that their children were on a fast-track to free status. In later years, all men born free were declared Freemen.

The last and most important route to freedom, available to all, was military service. Any manslave could sign up to the military, but the programme of training was extremely competitive, arduous and dangerous, particularly when numbers of entrants was high. Training took up to four years, not only in physical fitness, stealth and weapons, but in endurance, strategy, Gaal moral and civic virtues, and mysticism. Drop-out rate was high, not only through voluntary withdrawal. The mortality rate in advanced training averaged 40%, but this produced troops who were fierce, skilled, battle-hardened and fearless - perhaps one of the strongest military forces the world has ever produced. This small but powerful fighting force was the greatest reason for the rapid expansion of the Gaal empire.

Towards the end of the Qedjeen dynasty however, the military training scheme became very corrupt, partly because the newly expanded empire had vast numbers of socially ambitious non-Gaals for whom the training process was merely a means to an end. Rather than buy Gaal citizenship with all the payments and stipulations it required, non-Gaal families began to bribe training officers into letting their sons through the system more lightly. The training scheme became lax, and the quality of soldiers rapidly declined, to the extent that for the first time ever, the Kings began to lose battles. The ultimate humiliation came when Gaal troops actually broke ranks and fled in the face of the enemy. After the 970s HM the Gaals failed to win any more territory, and had difficulty even keeping hold of what they had. This was one of the reasons the Kings were forced to hire mercenaries as their elite bodyguard.

Insitutions of Gaal Rule

The Matriarchy

Originally consisting of all women in the tribe who had raised at least one child to adulthood, the Matriarchy later became a council of ranking women in Gaal society. The child-bearing rule was important for religion, but became less so in later years. Under the late empire the matriarchy expanded, to include non-Gaal women and even eunuchs working in the imperial bureaucracy. It was discredited and abolished by the Gobalay, who executed its outspoken leaders as "chattering old women".

Religion

Matriarchy and religion were inextricably linked. The High Priestesses were key leaders in the council, though they were forbidden from attaining executive rank.

Gaal Leadership

The Gaal tribe was traditionally led by a Chief Matriarch, and a War Chief. In the later Gaal empire the Matriarchy elected an Empress, who ruled for many years, until either her death or retirement. Her male counterpart was the King (the terms are only vague equivalents), who was exclusively head of the military.

The rulers were originally appointed separately: the Empress by ballot of Matriarchs, and the King by trials of war-skills, tactics and cunning. The two originally had no formal relationship, and the King was subordinate to the Matriarchy, but within two hundred years the positions became hereditary, under a dynasty called the Qedjeen.

The First Dynasty

The founders of the Qedjeen dynasty were a Empress and King who fell in love, and their combined will united and expanded the Gaal empire to its greatest ever extent. They had a daughter and three sons. Their daughter was elected Empress, in time, and the second son the King. They were officially married but this was political: they had no children.

Instead they each of them founded a line of Empresses, and a line of Kings. Power ebbed and flowed between these two closely related families, but the balance was always held by the Matriarchs.

In the late 9th century HM, the Qedjeen kings tried to wrestle more and more power from the Matriarchs, aided by a succession of weak Empresses. The King abolished the military council and its mystic priesthood who were a check on his power, and established the King as supreme commander of all military forces. Men were even appointed to the Matriarch's council, causing a riots and revolt by both men and women.

Gobalay

In the 10th century the King and Empress negotiated various treaties with the Gobalay, fierce warrior tribesmen who lived in the rugged uplands beyond the northern borders. It had long been Gaal policy to set these tribes against each other, but the King, mistrusting his corrupted and weakened troops, hired a squad of fierce Gobalay mercenaries as his bodyguard.

The Gobalay Guard spearheaded battles in the Civil Wars of 1021-1023 HM, and for 70 years were a crucial support to the weakened Qedjeen Dynasty.

In 1045, after winning support from a number of powerful families within the empire, the head of the Gobalay guard turned on the King, murdered him, and seized power.

Gobalay Dynasty

The Gobalay era was not so much a dynasty as a period of successive tyrannies. After the first coup by the Gobalay Guard, which ended the Qedjeen rulership, the Guardsmen tried to assert control over the Gaal military but failed. The military fragmented into bands and battalions split by regional and political loyalties, and fought one another in the streets and fields.

Though the initial Gobalay coup had been supported by many powerful families, when these foreign mercenaries tried to seize the government the Gaal people revolted and laid seige to the palace. In turn, with the turmoil and collapse of central power, the frontier garrisons were abandoned and Gobal tribesmen poured down from the mountains, looting northern towns and eventually organising a march on the capital. The seige broke when a ramshackle Gaal army smashed the palace barricades and butchered the elite Gobalay Guard - but at massive cost in Gaal lives.

The Gaals suffered such heavy casualties that they were incapable of mounting a defence against various barbarians that assaulted the capital. Wave after wave of vicious warlords sacked the city, looting and burning, dividing up the spoils of the empire and appointing themselves Kings until they were cut down by a rival.

In time things settled, and miraculously many imperial institutions survived intact, used by Gobal Warlords to consolidate their hold. Gobal politics in this era was brutal. Few warlords survived for more than a few years, but each utilised the vestigial Gaal bureaucracy, which managed to survive under their rule. It was the only thing that kept the steadily crumbling empire together.

Matriarchal power was curbed but strangely not eradicated. Gobal warriors were quite happy to continue the system of women organising households, trade, artisanship and farming - essentially doing all the work - so long as it was clear that the Warlords were firmly in control.

Magic & Matriarchy

Despite their origins in Miyariss, the Gaals had no knowledge or heritage of true magic, Magistry.

Instead, the matriarchy was founded on a mystery religion. Its temples cowed the supplicants, particularly male ones, with a variety of illusions and psychological tricks.

Gaal sanctuaries were dark and brooding, with huge statues whose luminous eyes glowered on the supplicants beneath. Many parts of the temples had narrow funnels that carried sounds and voices. Priestesses could whisper into these tubes, so that the voice of goddess could seem to speak directly to the supplicant. In others it was the wind that wailed, and drugged priestesses interpreted the ethereal drone into prophecies.

The matriarchy also used many pharmacological methods to both reward and punish. Hallucinogens were combined with flames and nightmare images to punish wrongdoers, and euphorics used to create mystic rapture. The priestess-adepts used ritual sex as a reward, using mystic balms to create extreme sensitivity and pleasure.

In the middle imperial period, the Great Mother - the high priestess of the matriarchy - wore a characteristic robe and mask and was believed to be all-seeing. She appeared in many places, sometimes hundreds of miles apart, to officiate, observe and pronounce judgement. In fact there were many 'doubles' of the matriarch, and this was designed specifically to create awe, reverence and fear, the prime instruments of Matriarchal rule.