Lost Lore, The First Men

Lost Lore, The First Men.

Excerpt from the diaries of Prince Doran Nymeros Martell:

The First Men are one of the four ethnic groups that inhabit Westeros, they were also the first to arrive on the continent. But little is known of their origins. Where do they come from? Why did they migrate here? What was their original culture? What gods did they worship?

If I were to ask these questions to some maester but referring to the Andals, Rhoynar or Ironborn he could answer, but when I asked these questions referring to the First Men I found few answers and more questions.

Among the books of the First Men I found the answers to many of my questions.

The First Men, or Novii as they were originally called, come from the most mysterious of known continents: Ulthos.

They were part of the so-called Novii Empire, an empire that controlled the southern half of the continent (pretty impressive considering Ulthos is even bigger than Essos for what I read).

The Novii Empire was born about fifteen thousand years ago when the legendary warrior Aslan gathered the nine most powerful tribes of southern Ulthos under one banner, Aslan the First became the first king on Ulthos. His descendants continued the expansive policy of Aslan I and after almost half a millennium a descendant of the first king named Aslan IX (the Ninth) became the first Emperor and founder of the Novii Empire.

According to the tomes, the Novii Empire was formed by the union of more than a thousand tribes, which is why it was also called the Empire of the Thousand Kingdoms.

The books say that the smaller tribes had around a thousand members while the larger ones could easily have over 100,000 members. In my opinion there were more kingdoms than tribes but that is the word they use to describe each group (I don't know if it is an error in my translations or if the word tribe had a more complex meaning for them).

Their religion was monotheistic, that is, they only worshiped one god. They worshiped the Goddess of Creation Nova.

The information about the goddess Nova was not much in the books that I brought with me. After a visit to my friend Tywin in 255AC on my way back I stopped at Oldtown and brought with me the other books and artifacts from the vault of the First Men. Luckily in the other books I found more information about Nova.

Nova, the one and only Goddess, the Mother of All Creation.

She created the universe in nine days, from the planets to the animals; everything.

Novism (Nova`s worship) was a religion that denied the existence of any god other than Nova. The goddess was not represented by any statue or humanoid image (in fact trying to represent her that way was considered a capital sin), Nova was represented with a simple circle.

It was tradition that a child was given a pendant with a circle when they turned nine years old (one of the great milestones for the novii, it was the official age of majority), the circle could be made of any material, the richest had circles made of silver or gold while the poorest had wooden circles. That pendant was sacred, losing it or damaging it was considered a sign that the person was cursed or that they worshiped some demon. Depending on the era that person was either executed (in the earliest days of the Empire) or ostracized (in later days of the Empire).

Nova had priests and priestesses, but only a woman could become the highest authority of the goddess in the mortal world: the High Priestess. The men and women dedicated to the goddess could not marry or have sexual relations, they must remain pure (virgins) throughout their lives because they have to dedicate their body, heart and soul to the goddess. If a priest or priestess had sex with someone and was found out he or she was publicly mutilated, a rope was tied to each of their limbs and the other end to a horse. The mutilated body was then thrown into a ditch and sentenced to eternal suffering in hell.

The priests and priestesses lived in large circular temples, in fact most of the buildings of the empire were circular due to the influence of the goddess.

Knowing that women have the most important role in Novism, I thought that their religion was matrialcal but I was wrong. Women had the most important role in religious affairs, but only men could have positions in the government of the empire. Women and any type of female were treated with great respect. Women, although they could not participate in the government, had for the most part better rights than men. For a husband to beat his wife was punishable by death (early days of the empire) and exile (later days of the empire).

The Novii year had nine months, each month had nine weeks of nine days each, therefore the Novii year had 729 days. Taking that into account, it is no longer so strange that children were considered adults at nine years old, since nine novii years is equivalent to about seventeen Earth years.

The ninth month of each year was the holiest month of the year. During that month nine sacrifices were made to the goddess each day. The sacrifices changed every day, I only have information about what they sacrificed on some of the days. On the first day they sacrificed nine cows, on the second day nine dogs, on the fifth day nine trout, on the twelfth day nine sheep, on the twenty-fourth day nine doves, on the thirty-fourth day nine horses, on the forty-eighth day nine bees, on the fifty-sixth day nine elephants and the last day nine men.

Human sacrifices did not take me by surprise, I already expected something like this because it is something very common in many religions. The sacrificed humans were not criminals, nor were they forced men. The sacrificed men were volunteers, it was considered a great privilege because it was believed that those sacrificed for the goddess would go on to live for eternity in the kingdom of Nova, the holy afterlife.

Another curious thing is that the sacrifices were all male, both animal and human. Sacrificing a female was considered an insult to the goddess.

The sacrifices had to go through a purification ritual that lasted nine days. I found little information about this ritual, I only know that it involved nine daily baths. I wonder how they managed to bathe the bees.

Another Novii festivity is the ninth day of the week. That day no one worked and everyone went to the temple to pray (similar to Sundays), in preparation for the ninth day (called Nova Day) everyone had to purify their body on the eighth day (take a bath). That tells me that the novii had much better hygiene than the westerosi, here not even the nobles bathe that often (something I've been fighting for for years, hygiene is important!). The Novii had public bath houses similar to those of the Romans.

The Novii language was called Noviian and in fact it was different from the language spoken by the First Men when they arrived to Westeros (that language was a very different one, a language formed mainly by a bastard dialect of Dawnian with influence from other languages ​​such as High Tongue and Sea Speech). I did not find any text written in Noviian, I only know one word in this language: Novii (which translates as The people of Nova or the Children of Nova).

The reason the First Men didn't call themselves Novii, nor did they speak Noviian is because they were exiles. They lost the right to use the language created by the goddess Nova, or to call themselves Novii.