In a similar manner to that of the Kharal, it is pertinent to introduce an overview of the Nikkad prior to relating the expedition's arrival in one of their great cities. Outwardly, this people would appear the most familiar of all those who reside in Shdustu to the imperial reader. They till the soil, consume bread, fruit, and vegetables in most meals, and live within settlements bounded by walls. While there is perhaps some truth to this, in terms of the most basic of daily rhythms, it should not be over-emphasized. The Nikkad have developed long in the isolation of Shdustu's rivers, lakes, and oases, and no matter how they appear on the surface, they differ greatly from the Sairn or other peoples of settled states.
Most importantly, though the Nikkad live along rivers and lakeshores and rarely venture more than a day's walk from a water source, they are a people with desert souls. Shdustu's rivers are born of wild mountains and hills and meander wildly across the vastness of the steppe, they are whirling, ill-tempered waterways little suited to navigation and prone to severe flooding. Though the cities rely upon their water utterly, managing the shifting patterns of flood and drought and maintaining irrigation canals against the silting infiltration of dust and sand is an endless effort. Failure brings famine. As such, the Nikkad lack the casual relationship to water found in lands where it is abundant, regarding it always as precious. Though they may stand amid fertile fields, verdant orchards, and fine gardens, their eyes are always upon the empty grasslands and barren wastes just beyond the horizon.
This attitude, strange as it often seems, offers a glimpse to the outsider at the origins of this people, though like the Nikkad themselves, it is obscure, beguiling, and tantalizingly incomplete. The Kharal have a clear origin story, and while its specifics may be questionable and the legends attributed to their foundational figure exaggerated, the general outline is consistent across all Shdustu and the course of events it plots plausible. They came from the west, they conquered, and they remained. A simple narrative, one that is sorely lacking in the case of the Nikkad.
Even the use of this unifying term is contentious. The Kharal are divided beneath three great grassland lords but share a single fellowship. The residents of the cities and towns do not hold such commonality. Each resident identifies with their settlement and the prince who rules over them, whether directly in the case of large cities and towns, or by proxy when treating smaller and more isolated villages. Each such city-state deems itself sovereign, subordinate to none but the Divines. This, of course, involves considerable self-deception. Almost every Nikkad settlement pays regular tribute to one of the Khagans, and they have even marshaled soldiers to fight for the Kharal at times. The princes do not, however, consider this subservience, but rather bargaining. They regard ancient agreements with the Tunan Emperors in much the same fashion. 'The Prince stands alone before the Divines,' is a well-known saying of these people. Equally well-known, but spoken only in private and in whispers, is the counterpoint 'Upon their land, all are princes.' That contrast does, I believe, explain a great deal about this seemingly contradictory population.
Despite the localized nature of their government and the fractured distribution of city-states across the wilds of Shdustu, the Nikkad are still distinctly one people in both my judgment and that of all other known observers. The differences in dress, diet, and dialect found across the region are modest and dictated primarily by the availability of certain commodities. Together they all speak the same language, write in the same script, maintain the same form of government and practice of the faith, and display distinct commonalities of physical appearance. They are relatively pale of skin, though often tanned. Their hair is black and straight and is usually worn not past the ear in men, but grown out long down the back in women. They have tightly drawn facial structure, and their chins are notably pointed. In these traits they resemble neither the Kharal nor the former residents of Shdustu of the distant past, nor any population found in the Sanid Empire. Their skin tones possess some commonality with that of the mountain-dwelling Bahab, but that would seem to be a correspondence born of cold and northernly realms, for their physiques and faces do not match. Bahab are tall, broad, and rounded, nothing like the Nikkad, who are sharp and tend towards shorter stature.
Instead, one must look to history to seek their origins. In the great canyons carved out by the flooding rivers there are many caves, high above where the water now reaches. These, in the time before the Enlightened Revelation reached Shdustu, were long used as tombs. The ancient gravesites feature walls painted with murals that are, in some places where the air is very dry, still discernible. Such images, as well as the crumbling bones of ancient dead that Lady Indili inspected, reveal at least one distinct possible origin.
Persons displaying many features similar to that of the Nikkad, especially the highly pointed chins, are depicted in images of shining cities with soaring desert backdrops, red sands, and vast wastes. Landscapes such as those that are found in the Shdus Desert and the wastes to the east. Though these lands are desolate and all but empty of any but hermits now, perhaps they were wet enough long ago to allow people to live where rivers flowed and springs bubbled to the surface. Inscriptions on pottery in the Imperial Archives preserve a script that flows in a manner strongly suggestive of that used by the Nikkad today, though of course the language is long lost. These have long been sourced to the Shdus Desert, and script carved in the walls of those canyon tombs and upon standing stones, now mostly fallen, placed in dry gorges match this as well.
These hints suggest that the Nikkad were born from a people who drifted out of the desert and claimed the rivers and lakes of Shdustu after their prior residents had been destroyed or driven off by the Kharal. Even then they must have possessed great skill at irrigation, for without such knowledge the steppe cannot be tamed even where rivers flow. I found no trace of such works predating the Nikkad, suggesting that the peoples who lived here before the Enlightened Revelation farmed only the floodplains and lived lightly on the land. Perhaps the Nikkad were once several peoples, one sourced to each of the bordering deserts, who each claimed the river closest to their old homeland. Over time their traits must have merged together, leaving only the one group that remains today. Nothing can be said for certain, the evidence of history lies lightly on the steppe, but this is my best understanding as to their origin.
It is not a conclusion that pleases the Nikkad, and I soon learned not to broach the subject with them. They claim to have been given dominion over all the waters of Shdustu by the Divines themselves. Despite this, their ancient legends name significantly more rivers than the present three, including rivers that ran through what is now empty desert.
A final piece of evidence that I feel I should mention comes from the realm of mysticism. The Nikkad, compared to many other peoples, are resistant to essence manipulation through sorcery, and are very difficult to heal, but are vulnerable to degradation, responding easily to alchemical formulae and the deformation of wizardry. Lady Indili called them a people 'wide but shallow,' and suggested this indicated a blended origin. Others, upon consultation, agreed that this was a suggestive trait. Perhaps those lost desert cities still remain, preserved beneath shifting sands, that bear the truth, but it would take the will of emperors to unearth such hidden secrets.
Of the early ages of the Nikkad, little remains. They seem to have warred with the Kharal as long as they have existed, and perhaps even with the remnants of those the Kharal drove away, as evidenced by arrowheads of a design the herders do not use kept in the vaults of some princes. There are no good records from that period, as there was, shortly after the division of the Khagans, a great uprising of the Sunfire Cult in Shdustu, and many records were lost before the faith reasserted itself properly. That very disaster is extremely poorly known, and whether it resulted in a backlash against the arrival of the Enlightened Revelation in these lands, or from some other source is not known. It does seem to have facilitated the blending of the Nikkad from their disparate origins, possibly due to forcing the relocation of many settlements and sending refugees crisscrossing the region. The Prince of Stinger and Shadow, a figure of legend widespread among all settlements, is credited with the destruction of that uprising and the monsters unleashed by the wizards who allied with the heretics.
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Prince, it must be said, though it will doubtless be shocking to many readers to learn this, is used without reference to gender among the Nikkad. The legendary hero of their past was a woman, one of the few attributes consistently assigned to the character, and this foundational fact has had profound influence across the entirety of their society. While the majority of Nikkad rulers, as among rulers anywhere, are men, there are also female rulers, and they may reign in their own names, not merely as agents of fallen husbands or regents for children. Within their society women own property in their own names, may divorce their husbands freely, and may serve in the armies of their city-states not only as auxiliaries or mystics, but as proper soldiers. This role is facilitated by the open embrace by the Nikkad of the use of poison in warfare, something many peoples forbear. Overall, Nikkad women possess a strange combination of freedom and subordination. Men in their society, just as in most others, remain able to take multiple wives if they have the will to do so and the means to support them. Men remain the workers on the farms and women work within the homes, just as almost all settled people do. The oddly contradictory exceptions of these people are simply one of the intriguing and mysterious traits Shdustu displays to visitors.
It is much easier to explain the daily life of these people than their relationships and laws. Their lives are settled around isolated city-states and villages. These settlements are highly centralized and surrounded by stout walls that shelter the totality of the population. Whether one works in the fields, the orchards, the rivers, the mines, or elsewhere, all sleep within the walls and walk back and forth to work each day, even the slaves. Though in the busiest seasons, when they know the Kharal are likewise occupied, they may at times sleep beside their workplaces, this is done only when the needs of planting or harvest overwhelm the hours. The threat of raiders or attack by beasts is otherwise deemed far too high, and with good reason.
A complex network of irrigation works, mostly hidden underground and thereby covered from the brutal summer sun, runs beneath all Nikkad lands. This is absolutely critical to supply the fields and orchards. Without this supplemental water, crops wither and die in the late summer. Forests, used for the production of tools and fuel, are planted of fast-growing trees in the sandy floodplains or up the sides of the gorges. All of this combines to produce compact, tightly-spaced settlements. The roads are narrow, and no space is wasted. Even the ditches are devoted to production, used to raise hemp, grapes, and other scraggly plants that require little care. Compaction is at the center of Nikkad life, a people squeezed into narrow spaces where water cuts through the steppe, surrounded on all sides by those who embrace endlessness. Only in such places can the primacy of the horse be contested.
Unlike the Kharal, where all share in similar tasks needed to maintain the clan with gender and age as the only divisions of consequence and even those barriers are dropped in favor of overlap when needs arise – as the Kharal women guide their herds when their husbands ride to war – the Nikkad have developed considerably greater specialization. Truthfully, the division between such major paths as farmer, artisan, soldier, and scholar is considerably more advanced among these compact settlement than even within the villages of the empire's Core Provinces. Such specialization allows high output from small territories, though it does seem to have induced the development of a paranoid and scheming culture and community, something often attributed to the Nikkad in stories and by travelers. I cannot say that reputation is entirely unearned.
Farming is the foundation of Nikkad life. This is divided between the production of grains in carefully irrigated fields, fruit from trees and vines planted in precise orchards, and vegetable gardens squeezed into ubiquitous courtyards, onto roofs, and even in boxes atop the city walls. While there is some overlap, the farmers themselves specialize in which form of crop they produce, including those who care for domestic animals. The Nikkad keep camels, donkeys, and horses in small number for labor, along with a small number of cattle kept mostly by princes. Ducks are the most common food animal. They keep a small number of goats, mostly to control weeds, but no sheep, the Kharal producing more than enough of those for all of Shdustu.
Artisans specialize in individual crafts, training from very young ages. Many who begin apprenticeships for pottery, weaving, tanning, or smithing, and similar roles start with the most basic tasks as soon as they can walk properly. Similar early beginnings are made for soldiers and scholars. Failure by children to meet the benchmarks set by their teachers is likely to result in their reduction to farming status, assuming the family is able to support the cost of inefficient laborers, or to slavery. Some Nikkad, despairing of their ability to meet expectations, flee into exile, becoming bandits or cultists.
The Kharal keep slaves, of course, but they are few in number, mostly war captives or those who have committed certain severe crimes, and these are often soon traded back to the Nikkad. The limitations of life on the open steppe make enforcing captivity very difficult. Slaves are therefore significantly more common among the settlements, and include peoples of all kinds. These are most often put to work in mining, a practice well-known for its brutal hardships, doubly so in a land with weather as punishing as that of Shdustu. Female slaves are most often used as prostitutes. The Nikkad refuse to utilize slaves as personal servants under any circumstances. They believe such persons can never be truly loyal to their masters and are therefore equivalent to pointing a knife at your own throat.
I suspect there is a dangerous degree of truth to that suspicion.
Unlike the Sanid Empire, which is primarily administered by those members of landholding clans great – such as the Nassah – and small – such as my own – at the behest of the Emperor, or the many states ruled by kings claiming sanction from the Divines or legendary ancestors, or those tribes and dependencies throughout the world controlled by their warrior class, the Nikkad are highly unusual and possibly unique in that their society is one ruled by assassins. The princes and their key advisors are trained in the arts of combat, stealth, deception, poison, and how to kill unnoticed. They deploy this knowledge quite readily, as few princes die of natural causes, but are instead killed by their relatives or their agents when there is turmoil in the courts of the city-states. Assassin training includes knowledge of the principles of warfare and the basics of scholarship, in order to master the proper use of poisons and powders, and the elite among the Nikkad are no less capable or educated than those of most states as a result, but this decidedly cruel approach has a range of curious consequences.
The origin of this methodology no doubt has many sources, but one among them, of vast importance, is the Nikkad exaltation of scorpions. The Kharal confine their distortion of the Enlightened Revelation to the appointment of certain predatory birds, mostly falcons and eagles, to the role of messenger between the Lord of the Sky and the Lady of the Earth. The Nikkad have given the scorpion a similar intermediary role, but between the Lady of Earth and the Lord of Death. Though not any worse an error from a theological perspective, the societal consequences are at least more obvious. Scorpions, which will be familiar to most readers from the Core Provinces, are a far more prominent presence in Shdustu, and one who finds open earth amid the steppe can easily spot dozens by placing a torch upon the ground. They are, of course, venomous, many deathly so, and the placement of such a dangerous animal in a position of prominence has a great impact. Among many people, including those as different as the Sairn and the Kharal, the use of poison is considered cowardly and dishonorable. The Nikkad see it as merely efficient, and utilize such mixtures as ordinary. It is fascinating and frightening at once, and the alchemists of this people – I will not call them apothecaries, given the bizarrely bent focus of their scholarship – hold places of great prominence and are consulted for a great many reasons.
Despite this oddly terminal focus, the states of the Nikkad are recognizably courtly, with well established procedures, dress, and ceremonies. The Dragon Expedition entered amid their affairs quite easily. Extraction from them proved rather more difficult.