Chandara: Empire of the Sand

by Midnight

The first "civilized" (making cities as opposed to small villages) group of humans to make contact with Dinotopia were the Egyptians. (pg. 127,128, &129 in Dinotopia) They, by all accounts, were not shipwrecked on our Island, but arrived here intact. It is thought in some circles that this could be the elusive "Hand of Dinotopia", a safe sea route from our shores to those of the Outside. They were, at this time, a far cry from the timeless civilization that would arise from the banks of the Nile. These people were just beginning to develop an identity as a separate group from the "people beyond the cataracts". They and their saurian neighbors were able to coexist peacefully (a trait that was exported from Chandara to the rest of the Island) and began the groundwork for a great society.

(This is next section is taken partly from a "fringe" scroll, that is, it is not what is usually accepted as "correct" in many historical circles. However, I believe that it has enough circumstantial evidence to be considered anyway.) There was once a time where humans could leave Dinotopia and (if a storm didn't hit them) go back to the Outside. It may have been that a group of humans either came here and took a portion of Chandaran civilization away or that a group of humans left Chandara and ended up in Egypt and laid the foundation for ancient Egypt.

Chandara was the second of the Great Four to reach dominance on the Island. (Armakia, then Chandara, then Pellendrine and then Poseidos.) At it's height, the Chandaran Pharaoh was receiving tribute from the Khagan of Armakia and the new Advocator of Pellendrine (Poseidos was not settled as of yet) and controlled territory from the eastern bank of the Polongo to Cape Turttletail to Crackshell Point (skirting the Forbidden Mountains) to Deep Lake (excluding the Rainy Basin).

Chandara had a long period of dominion over Dinotopia, but that all changed at the end of the 14th Kingdom. Two events coincided to, as one historian put it, "smite the Chandarans for their belief that they were superior to all others."

First there was an invasion from the Outer Island that took Chandarans northern holdings from the northern edge of the Great Desert to Prosperiene. These people called themselves, Poseidiaie, or "of Poseida". We now know these people as the founders of Poseidos.

Now with Chandara's Northern Plains separated from Chandara, the Pellendrine Advocator Sphrenzes decided to strike back at Chandara's "impudence". The Northern Plains and the northern portion of the Backwood Flats (from halfway between Sauropolis and Cape Turttletail to the southern tip of the Forbiddens) away from Chandara. (The eastern Northern Plains would later be taken from Pellendrine).

The final event was a drought that swept through the mid-desert cities. This caused a large amount of humans and saurians to be displaced and put enormous pressure on the already over-taxed resources of Chandara. This sped-up their decline faster than would normally have occurred.

Chandara's tenuous dominance began to wane. The northern portion of the Great Desert was taken by them at about the same time as Pellendrine was moving its capital to Pooktook. Both Pellendrine and Chandara had now lost territory to Poseidos. It was decided in the Treaty of Thermala that Pellendrine, Chandara and Armakia should attempt to stop Poseidon aggression and work for a common goal.

By this time Chandara and Pellendrine had been in contact with each other for centuries. They had argued, traded, lived together and, at the same time, influenced each other. They had come to share so many of the same ideas, ethics, laws and ways of life. They had almost become socially indistinguishable and were slowly moving toward merging into one nation when the Great Fall made it a moot point.

However, many of those ideas still live on in many ways. The Code of Dinotopia is thought to have originated under Chandaran influences along with many of the ways that humans and saurians relate to one another.

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