The Ancient Jantaran League, sometimes called Elder Jantara, was real. Of this there is no longer serious dispute. Though poorly recorded and often mythologized, it existed as a concentrated jackal civilization spanning much of what is now central and southern Bantos, with reach into the easternmost margins of Bruwa.

Unlike later jackal regimes, Elder Jantara was not defined by constant raiding or slaver economies. Contemporary accounts describe a people who were strange, insular, and ceremonial, yet broadly non-hostile.

They wore gilded masks and long robes, spoke a language that resisted translation, and traded widely and fairly. Their caravans moved along stable routes, their camels bearing goods rather than captives.

Their southern settlements were built into rock formations closer to what would later become the Kartongan wastes, though the exact extent of these cities is lost.

Their rulers were described consistently: tall, piercing blue-eyed, deep-voiced figures whose presence commanded without brutality. They followed an esoteric religious order centered on gemstones, particularly sapphire, not as ornament, but as symbolic moral anchors. Later scholars argue this gemstone reverence functioned as a metaphysical restraint, a cultural doctrine that limited cruelty and enforced internal discipline. Whatever its nature, it worked.

Elder Jantara endured for roughly two thousand years after the Cataclysm, withdrawing gradually into decadent obscurity rather than collapsing in fire. Its neighbors prospered alongside it. Trade enriched surrounding regions. Stability followed jackal roads.

Then it ended.

No heirs survived into the modern age. No dynasties persisted. The culture vanished not with a final war, but with a long extinguishing—like embers smothered beneath their own excess. What remained was memory, and the temptation to claim descent from something greater.

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The History of Jantara

• The Tragedy of The Elder Jantaran Decline
• The Later Jantaran Union

The History of Bantos

• Old Jantara
  • The Northern Doglands
• The Bantos Rebellions
• The Last Days of Old Jantara
• The Bantos Uprising
  • The Border Wars
    • The Townshend Battles
    • The Battle of Northwall Cross
    • The Battle of the Barrier
    • The Ruination of the Jantaran Gates
• The Burning of Jantara
• The Rise of Bantos

The Jackalands of Yorozh

• New Jantara