Waertagi notes

[davecake]

Obviously Waertag is an ancestor of the Waertagi, and Waertag is descended from Triolini, so ultimately from Triolina. Triolina is a child of Sramak and Daliath. Waertagi are mortals, so via Phargon (child of Triolina and grandfather mortal) and Mirintha (child of Nelat and Triolina).  So merfolk can trace their ancestry back to Nelat and Triolina, and so can Waertagi. 

Sogolotha, and other undines, share Triolina as an ancestor, and so are relatives of the Waertagi, but descend from Heler and Triolina, so are cousins. 

But really Sramake and Daliath are Mind and Body, Framanthe is Spirit, and any water being with a spirit also has some connection to her. There is enough connection for the Waertagi to revere Framanthe as well. And via Framanthe and Daliath (so also cousins) Manthi and Natea, rulers of the oceans, and the third child of Framanthe and Daliath, Magasta. 

Triolina, the undines including Sogolotha, Framanthe, Manthi and Natea, and Magasta are all gods of the Waertagi. And also relatives, if not directly human.

The Waertagi see Magasta as part of the 'family', but not Magasta's other wife (Robber) and child Wachaza, who are Death and Darkness beings, so they are mostly shunned by them. Wachaza was mostly a god who opposed the Waertagi (and was revered by the God-Learners for it) not worshipped by them. 

[Joerg]

1 hour ago, Tcneseleis said:

They are able to live at sea for a very long time and almost do not need to land. When they come near inhabited lands, and usually their dragonships never enter ports, it's for trade or perhaps occasional raids, so I favour the beach landing theory, using large canoes, as in the Aftal story.

Aftal's city was quite degenerate after having been beached and anchored for most of the Closing. The Waertagi used ot have a great variety of support craft that didn't work well around the beached city ships, and either were lost to the Closing or cannibalized for repairs of their city ships. Waertagi in canoes is about as sophisticated as Praxian beast riders on foot.

1 hour ago, Tcneseleis said:

The Waertagi are afraid of the land, and they don't go too far IMO. If they met any serious resistance, they wouldn't insist and risk dying to the last man. It is likely they'd seek mercenaries' help in such situations.

Those mercenaries would have to be ferried in, and they'd be corrupted by interaction with the enemies of the Waertagi, acquiring knowledge of overseas cultures. Unless the Waertagi brought them along with their families as settlers in the new lands, they would have to strand these mercenaries away from their homes.

There are known cases where the Waertagi aided emigrants e.g. from Slontos or Jrustela to establish new colonies, in exchange for service as mercenaries. I cannot think of any cases where they brought mercenaries that expected to go home after the campaign, though.

1 hour ago, Tcneseleis said:

Flooding enemy ports with tidal waves would be a tremendous attack. I remember reading somewhere that some Second Age Jrusteli port city was destroyed by the vengeful Waertagi.

This is a tactic not limited to the Waertagi - Terthinus employed these methods, too.

1 hour ago, Tcneseleis said:

Some of the Waertagi are naturally amphibious so they must be very good with shallows, reefs, etc. but most coastal people can count on Ludoch help too.

Counting on the Ludoch can be a fatal error - even if the coastal folk have long standing cooperation by submitting to the Ludoch, the Waertagi have ancestral ties with the Ludoch, and they bring their sea sorcery as a help to neutralize any Ludoch interference - if only by threatening to use it.

The Waertagi had a long tradition to interdict any overseas travel by anyone but themselves. In this, it is suspected that they were aided by the Triolini, regardless of their cooperation on a local level.

 

[Tcneseis]

On ‎21‎/‎06‎/‎2017 at 8:17 PM, Joerg said:

On ‎21‎/‎06‎/‎2017 at 6:14 PM, Tcneseleis said:

They are able to live at sea for a very long time and almost do not need to land. When they come near inhabited lands, and usually their dragonships never enter ports, it's for trade or perhaps occasional raids, so I favour the beach landing theory, using large canoes, as in the Aftal story.

Aftal's city was quite degenerate after having been beached and anchored for most of the Closing. The Waertagi used ot have a great variety of support craft that didn't work well around the beached city ships, and either were lost to the Closing or cannibalized for repairs of their city ships. Waertagi in canoes is about as sophisticated as Praxian beast riders on foot.

They could last for quite a long time. The city ships might work as small islands. They probably had tanks for rainwater, or used magic to produce it, and might grow some vegetables and raise fowl or other small animals on their giant ships. But considering their anatomy and usual environment, they may have a diet of fish, seagull eggs, algae, etc.

I think it's stated in the Guide that they used other types of ships too. But canoes are not so bad if only short distances have to be covered. I think about islanders who live in archipelagoes, or just rowboats used for beach landing.

On ‎21‎/‎06‎/‎2017 at 8:17 PM, Joerg said:

Quote

The Waertagi are afraid of the land, and they don't go too far IMO. If they met any serious resistance, they wouldn't insist and risk dying to the last man. It is likely they'd seek mercenaries' help in such situations.

Those mercenaries would have to be ferried in, and they'd be corrupted by interaction with the enemies of the Waertagi, acquiring knowledge of overseas cultures. Unless the Waertagi brought them along with their families as settlers in the new lands, they would have to strand these mercenaries away from their homes.

There are known cases where the Waertagi aided emigrants e.g. from Slontos or Jrustela to establish new colonies, in exchange for service as mercenaries. I cannot think of any cases where they brought mercenaries that expected to go home after the campaign, though.

Ok. It's impossible to bring mercenaries anywhere for fear of revealing who lives there, if it's far enough from the battleground, but anyway I suppose all Waertagi wars were naval wars against competitors.

On ‎21‎/‎06‎/‎2017 at 8:17 PM, Joerg said:

Quote

Some of the Waertagi are naturally amphibious so they must be very good with shallows, reefs, etc. but most coastal people can count on Ludoch help too.

Counting on the Ludoch can be a fatal error - even if the coastal folk have long standing cooperation by submitting to the Ludoch, the Waertagi have ancestral ties with the Ludoch, and they bring their sea sorcery as a help to neutralize any Ludoch interference - if only by threatening to use it.

The Waertagi had a long tradition to interdict any overseas travel by anyone but themselves. In this, it is suspected that they were aided by the Triolini, regardless of their cooperation on a local level.

Ok.

 

 

Edited June 24, 2017 by Tcneseleis

[scott-martin]

39 minutes ago, Tcneseleis said:

I suppose all Waertagi wars were naval wars against competitors

It might be worth refreshing what we know about these wars and these competitors to see how their mercantile monopoly evolved as well as how it was "maintained" (enforced) in the centuries before Tanian. Various far-flung cultures have "pirate" gods, for example. Others cultivated independent relationships with the oceanic powers. 

[Joerg]

The Waertagi preceded all other naval activities by an age - they traveled Sramak's river before there were seas invading the dry lands. They mostly stuck to the western edge, and ventured inward after Togaro, Hudaro and their children had conquered parts of the surface.

There aren't that many pirate deities around. Ygg Seastorm was the  ancestor-chief of a coastal people that lived on the edge of the Glacier and Winterwood (was that forest ever covered by the Glacier?), and while any Vadrudi group has much in common with pirates, they didn't make themselves known elsewhere but their homelands before the Opening.

Most of the early fleets in the Storm Age started out flying - the Artmali sailed down from their moon, the Zaranistangi from their planet, the Helerites from the clouds. The Sofali traveled along their four big ancestral turtles and founded four colonies around the inner seas, but the western two were destroyed in the Gods War. Possibly with Waertagi agency in one case.

It isn't clear when the Vadeli took to the seas. Given the Awesome Bridge erected by the Mostali to connect Tharkarn with the Vadeli Lands, they seem to have been landlubbers when the Helerites were active in the region. Their activities in Chir and Poto may have given them access to the Artmali sailing tradition, their presumed activities in the Janubian waters would have brought them into contact and conflict with the riverine and limnic Waertagi of that region. (Without wanting to over-simplify Pelanda, would the riverine and limnic Waertagi have been identical to the Bethegusite reed boat manufacturers whose heirs construct the moon boats? Or was this a Veldang group with its very own Lunar connections? What kind of vessels did the riverine Waertagi live on?)

The Vadeli conquest of the Brithini fell into a time when the seas were at a record low and few if any Waertagi were active in the region. The Neliomi Sea was separated from the western oceans by Valind's Glacier, and while the Waertagi just might have maintained contact using their submarine variant and their vessels, it appears that they either were trapped in the evaporating seas of Neliomi or roaming far out on Sramak's River during the great Vadeli Empire.

Zzabur's Breaking of the world ended both the glacier blockade and the Endernef dry phase, and the Waertagi spilled back into the new Homeward Ocean. They may have served Zzabur in mopping up surviving Vadeli presences, thereby distracted from Artmali activities.

 

The Waertagi don't appear to have penetrated into Kahar's Sea or the East Isles, or into the Nargan Sea before the Sky Spill. Nothing is known of their interaction with the Indigo Conquest, the big naval expansion of the Artmali. The Artmali interactions with the Thinobutans are the best record we have, and that consists only of rather vague hints.

Teleos became known for its pirate activities only after the Battle of Tanian's Victory. Vormain and the East Isles had naval and pirate activities long before, but the East Isles appear to have been an exception to the Closing.

The Thinobutans inherited their outrigger sailing from a Sendereven shiip far off their usual course. We know that the Waertagi were active near Maslo because of their presence at the Edrenlin archipelago where some city ships were beached and presumably destroyed.

At the Dawn, the Waertagi ruled the open seas supreme. They didn't dominate the East Isles or stamp down on all coastal sailing, but they reserved the long range sailing for themselves.

 

Their best known war against competitors is of course the one against the Jrusteli. It is likely that they had a war with the Artmali of Fonrit before the arrival of Garangordos, and that they were instrumental in putting the blues of those lands into their wretched state that enabled Garangordos enslavement of the land. Thinokans and Masloi may have had their own hostile encounters when straying away fro their coasts.

On the Genertelan coasts we have no surviving records of naval activities clashing with the Waertagi. The Seshnegi seem to have been content to hire Waertagi services, and the Manirians of Slontos are known customers of the city ships, too. The worshipers of Tolat around Teshnos may have given battle now and again, but the Zaranistangi used their teleportation Magics to move around, avoiding direct conflict of interests with the Waertagi. The Pelaskites and the Manirian coastal fisherfolk were firmly under Ludoch domination and interacted friendly with the Waertagi.

Troll navies might have been a worthy opponent of Waertagi fleets, wiith the sea trolly as their own submarine auxiliaries. I don't see the Only Old One waging battle against the dragonships, though, and the Kenyrian troll navies were separaated from Waertagi seas by the Glacier.

It isn't clear when the Mostali started trawling out of Slontos on their concrete castles - possibly only after the sinking of most of Jrustela. The Errinoru fleet was active after Tanian's Victory.

 

The giant cradles don't appear to have been meddled with by the Waertagi. It isn't clear when or how the giants adapted their prepoduction to this rebirth through Magasta's Pool - they cannot have done so before the Greater Darkness, because the Spike blocked that waterway. They may have had allies a the base of the Spike guiding those cradles into its interipr and onto a tributary of the Styx in its interior, though. Even so, this pattern can only have started after Sshorg  or Seolinthur sent out one of its tendrils, named Zola Fel, into giantland. This makes me wonder whether there used to be a tributary of the Styx reaching into Giantland whose path was broken.

 

[Tcneseis]

On ‎23‎/‎06‎/‎2017 at 8:44 AM, Joerg said:

The Thinobutans inherited their outrigger sailing from a Sendereven shiip far off their usual course. We know that the Waertagi were active near Maslo because of their presence at the Edrenlin archipelago where some city ships were beached and presumably destroyed.

It was after the Closing, so the presence of an ancient base here is speculative.

On ‎23‎/‎06‎/‎2017 at 8:44 AM, Joerg said:

It is likely that they had a war with the Artmali of Fonrit before the arrival of Garangordos, and that they were instrumental in putting the blues of those lands into their wretched state that enabled Garangordos enslavement of the land. Thinokans and Masloi may have had their own hostile encounters when straying away fro their coasts.

Not until they were able to recover from their destruction at the hands of Sshorg's children, after which they were likely under firm Ludoch supervision in the Maslo and Marthino Seas. The question is did they fight against the Ludoch and win?

There are chances that the Maslo, using their famous outriggers, could soon enough come and go between their ports and Teleos and perhaps the East Isles with little Waertagi interference. IMO, when they were able to sail out of the Maslo Sea, they looked around for Sharzu as the Waertagi are doing for Brithos. The Waertagi perhaps had serious engagements for control of this area, on a par with their great war against Mokato.