Chol'ul
The Chol'ul are the Calmaxtec people native to southern Kalmasa. The Chol'ul are the most numerous of the Calmaxtec and have had the most cultural influence on the Kalmasan Samraj of all the Calmaxtec peoples. The Chol'ul are also the most culturally diverse people, made up of many tribes whose own languages that, though still within the Chol'ul tree, differ greatly.
Chol'ul means People of the Spear in their language. Their name derives from their past when they were themselves an expansionist empire that conquered lands and swallowed smaller tribal groups to the north and west through the power of their bronze spears and bronze shields. At the time of their expansion, no other Calmaxtec people had knowledge of tin alloyed bronze, only copper or incidental, arsenical bronze from copper ore contaminated with arsenic.
This technological advance allowed them to form an empire of many city-states with tribes on the peripheries paying them tribute to avoid the same fate. Eventually though, knowledge of bronze spread and mines of tin were found elsewhere, and the extravagances, brutality and depravity of their nobility combined to dissolve the empire from the inside through rebellions and from the outside through raiders and new alliances.
When the Eshtem came south, the empire was but a shadow of its former glory, but the Chol'ul still offered up the greatest challenge the Eshtem had yet faced to their expansion. They were far more numerous and had well trained, professional armies supplied by rich agricultural lands. However, the peasantry of the Chol'ul, many of whom were people of smaller tribes conquered in years past, were easy to persuade by the Eshtem with gifts of steel and promises of land and a measure of recognition and autonomy.
With this assistance, the Eshtem succeeded in conquering the southern lands. The Chol'ul who resisted and fought were captured and given over to the commoners for justice except for those that fled north or west. Many fled as refugees by boat and joined the Apoxtec past the Cochicoatepetlan Mountains in the resistance that would lead to the formation of the Neztlalpan Confederation.
Those Chol'ul remaining became the Calmaxtec most integrated into the culture of the Kalmasan Samraj. Their dialects over the years merged with Eshti into what became a common trade language, Kalmasi, spoken more widely than either Eshti or Chol'ak languages.
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