Pandalan

A pandalan, pangzalan, or dalan (from Daunic pangdalan, 'path-man') was a heroic, wandering adventurer who formed the center of various western Ausarean polities in an era from the 5th century BCE to the 9th century CE. They organized most of the efforts coordinating groups larger than basic tribes and clans or sedentary communities, forging confederacies that typified the nomad-dominated Kataran-adjacent regions, and travelled extensively to that end for which they probably derived their name. This came from their proficiency in military matters, as well as cultural devices which could unite communities and obtain support for themselves as charismatic leaders.

In their early days the nature of pandalans made most states in western Ausarea ephemeral enterprises, with their own competitive nature preventing the consolidation of larger structures, while their efficiency and charisma allowed them to crush attempts to impose empires such as those in Varasan &mdash; even though other influences from Varasan such as Pastism were very important in creating the kind of society led by norms and laws that the pandalans could be entrusted to uphold. The larger political units which structured the conduct of the pandalans were the yols, bodies of law and etiquette that individual pandalans operated according to.

From the 2nd century CE, with the rise of states that centred themselves on the yols, the pandalans became enforcers and delegates of empires such as Byggal and Aza, acting essentially as plenipotentiaries that provided those states with considerable dynamism. After the Cremation Wars these entities were demolished by Arpalism, and from the 6th century pandalans served darskus as new yol-like arrangements. However, they were steadily replaced by more institutional tabs in their Arpalic role, and the consolidation of bureaucratic, economic states across Ausarea slowly brought their model of society to an end. By the 9th century they had ceased to be a feature even in the Kataran.