[Author’s Note: Realmgard Amazons are Elves; just ignore that the woman in the header image doesn’t have pointy ears…]
The Rise of the Amazons
Long noted for its resemblance to a bird, the region of Realmgard now known as the Land of the Phoenix came by that name due to the adoption of its Amazon inhabitants of the phoenix as their primary cultural emblem.
A longtime territory of the Elven Empire, though historically disconnected from the majority of Imperial affairs due to its remoteness and rugged terrain, the Land of the Phoenix was first occupied by the ancestors of the Amazons during the fragmentation and fall of the Elven Empire, arriving as a largely female community of refugees from the Elven heartland.
At the same time, much of the Land of Phoenix had been conquered by the armies of the sorcerer Angeron, who was capitalising on the withdrawal of Imperial authority in the remote region to carve out a kingdom for himself.
This put him in direct conflict with the refugee women, who were forced to take up arms to defend their families. This is generally regarded as the origin of the longstanding Amazonian martial tradition, which endures down to the present day in the form of mandatory military training given to all Amazon girls.
However that all Amazons are warriors is incorrect. After receiving this basic military training, Amazons are free to pursue whatever profession they wish and there are also celebrated traditions of scholarship and art among the Amazons.
Notably, Eurydice, viewed as the finest dramatist ever produced in Realmgard was an Amazon and remains of the most celebrated figures among the Amazons.
How exactly he accomplished it is unclear and debated by both historians and scholars of magic, but Angeron was somehow able to place a curse upon the entire Amazon community, preventing the women from ever giving birth to sons, reasoning that no women would ever be strong enough to defeat him.
Such a spell is unprecedented in the history of Realmgard with no similar magic ever recorded before or since. Remarkably, Angeron’s curse seems to have had perpetual consequences on the Amazons and it is generally held as fact that an Amazon woman will only ever have daughters who will go on to have daughters.
In the end, Angeron’s belief that no woman could defeat him was proven wrong and ultimately defeated by an army of the first generation of Amazons. Angeron’s fortress has torn down and the first settlement of what grew into the Amazon Decapolis has built over its ruins.
While the Amazons retained many traditions of the old Elven Empire, the virgin warrior goddess Parthene gradually became the central figure in Amazonian religion, held as the tutelary deity of the Amazons and the Decapolis.
Additionally, the Amazons practice a form of ancestor worship, honouring and invoking the intercession of previous generations of Amazons. In particular, the ten great Amazon heroines known collectively as the Ten Most Worthy Women are secondary only to Parthene herself and are the namesakes of the ten cities forming the Amazon Decapolis.
The most sacred religious site for the Amazons is the island located at the centre of Lake Koron (forming the “eye” of the Land of the Phoenix), held to be equidistant from every village in the Decapolis.
With that, we’ve passed the halfway point of 30 Days of History. Follow along with the rest here:
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