End of Empires - Update Twenty-five
Oblivion's Overlook
Five Years
606 - 611 SR by the Seshweay Calendar
495 - 500 RM by the Satar Calendar
321 - 326 IL by the Leunan Calendar
596 - 601 SH by the Sharhi Calendar
1430 - 1435 AR by the Amure Reckoning
The prayer of battle is the incense in Taleldil's temple. ~ from the Kaphaiavai
It is known that all good stories... end with the hero-death. ~ from the Tale of the Moti-Hero Kirost
* * * * * * * * *
The wind sifted through the forest, bearing whispers from oblivion. These were aging trees, but they stood in a young wood. Hundreds and hundreds of years ago, this land had been known for endless stands of pines and aspens, a black wild, hiding scattered villages and dank mines. And the trees had been cleared, one by one, opening into fields and farmland; the people named themselves the Murk. The name had trickled down through history; the river now bore the name Markha, and some here still descended from that ancient tribe.
But the fields had been abandoned, or burnt, and fallow land passed once again to forest. Only the bones, hidden beneath stone or root, gave hint that these hollows one held men.
Between the trees ran a doe, her dappled coat glittering in the morning sun. Her kind had prospered from the decline of man. Their fields and gardens had fed her, and when those vanished with the Oscadians, she had little problem switching to the mast of a million trees. No one even lingered here to hunt them, so thinly scattered were the pe
An arrow struck her in the front, just before her leg. It had the uncanny accuracy of a master marksman; whether it had truly caught her in the heart or not didn't matter. As she bolted from the sudden ambush, the barbs tore a little deeper with each stride, her blood streaming down her flank. Only a few hundred feet later, she stumbled, and, vision clouding, knelt by a quiet stream before falling to the earth.
The bowman went to one knee beside her corpse, the leaves a soft carpet beneath him. A whispered prayer, and swiftly he moved to the work of taking her back to the camp.
Well done, the sentry said upon his return.
The huntsman did not return his smile. We are not alone.
There are others, truly? the other said, startled. I'd started to think the war was a myth. He hesitated. Friend or foe?
Footprints do not profess faith.
The sentry glared at him. Should we risk the fire?
If they are Oscadians, they will never join us if they cannot find us.
But Oscadians are more like to think a campfire is Satar. And the Dahaiaou are like to kill everyone. He shifted, and sighed. I think it doubtful we will find any of our Lady before we reach the mountains.
So, raw meat?
The sentry shook his head. Let's light one anyway. It is not as though we're going to stumble across the gold-masked bastard in the deep woods.
The two men walked to the pit they had dug. The rest of their company had gathered some firewood, and it caught with only a few sparks from their steel. And as the smoke curled up into the evening sky, the company gathered round, and began to chat. It had been a long march, and the Redeemer was many miles away.
Of course, the same could not be said for Prince Sianai.
* * * * * * * * *
It was an army unlike any that had been seen for a hundred years. Men had marched from thousands of miles away, not just in the tens of thousands, but in the hundreds of thousands as though every anthill in the Sesh had emptied and marched in one monstrous host. Men from every corner of the world from Bisria, from Hiut, Helsia, Neruss, the Sesh, Moti, Krato, Duroc, Opios, and a dozen places more, men with spear and bow and sword, and shield. Cavalry marched in columns that by themselves were larger than most armies, and all around walked the enormous elephants, tall as gods and moving through it all like a man amongst insects.
They had marched from the Sesh through the Rath Satar, skirting the edges of the Kotir (men had been buried by the sand, or so it was said). They had taken the great monastery complex at Siaxis without a drop of blood, and Onesca had fallen to their armies. All that remained in the south was the great citadel at Arastephaion, older than most empires.
The Ardavai stone sentinel stood in the middle of the steppe, lonely and solemn. It had been a folly at the time, or so it had been whispered, but in truth it was less fortress than it was city, or perhaps a province minaturized. A river flowed through it, and clean drinking water had been stored for decades of siege. Farms lay within the first ring of walls, and houses within the second. The third ring towered over all of them, and above even that, almost two hundred feet high, the spire of the citadel, an imitation of the Kothai that did not even pale beside those mountains.
And it was here that the Ayasi's army paused, and waited.
What he waited for was a matter of some dispute. Some whispered that the Satar had already been beaten, and that they would take Arastephaion to serve as a base to carve deeper and deeper into the Exatai, to burn Atracta and Alusille and Henan. Others held that the Satar marched to meet them here, and that it was under the open sky of the steppe that armageddon would take place. Still others said that Talephas had turned tail and run, or that First-Lerai would have them break camp to come meet them.
It would be more than a month before the answer came in the form of a Satar army.
The outriders warned them of its approach long before it came into sight, but the noise was tremendous the sound of warhorns echoed off the faces of the mountains, and the army roused itself instantly. Men scrambled from their tents, desperately hoping that they would not accidentally arrive at the end of the world without their helmet or sword.
As the Moti army drew up, the Ayasi did not allow himself to smile. It would have been unseemly, for one thing, and for another, as he well knew, the Satar would be here in only a few hours, and mobilizing a force of some two hundred thousand was no mean task. He saw to it that the vanguard was ready before checking to see if they had sent a rider to the western army, near Katdhi. With luck, they would have noticed the Satar before he had, and their force would come crashing into its rear, trapping them and obliterating them.
Still, one had to assume he felt elated. The Satar had answered his battle-challenge. It was exactly as he had desired.
Even so, as the two armies careened towards one another in the Gap of Phalen, something felt off. The Moti force champed at the bit, and even as their cavalry cantered forward and the Satar fell back in what seemed to be a false retreat, First-Lerai grew more concerned. The Satar looked to be at a half, or maybe a third of their total strength. Was it a trap?
The army cared not for such nuance, and crashed forward, and the Satar met them with the bite of steel. The fighting raged for only five minutes until the Satar pulled back, their cavalry harassing the Moti pursuers as they went.
The Ayasi called to his men. The pursuit slowed to a cautious crawl, perhaps over-cautious. The cavalry nipped at the heels of the Satar, but though they seemed to be winning the engagement handily, he still worried himself. If this had been a testing, his men had performed well. But if it was something more...
Sianai conceded the field. His army had never intended to relieve Arastephaion, not really. The Emperor had not begun the pursuit in full force yet, but this did not overly concern him, either. He had certainly caught the Uggor's attention, and his army had suffered few losses. With the Faronun rabble-rousers among the Oscadians dealt with, it would have been hard to argue that this was not a successful sortie; he had even managed to evade the Ayasi's second force, in the bowl of the Kothai.
It was only the first move.
To the east, the war was fought on wooden walls. The Farubaidan fleet had begun to simply dominate the Kern Sea, as it operated fearlessly through its waters. While any major expedition into Accan waters had to be discounted as a logistical nightmare (not to mention, suspiciously similar to a certain well-known event from world history), minor raids began to stretch in every direction, like a many-tentacled beast. Little attacks burned supply caches, or piers, or even minor fleets from Gallat to the Princedom of Ice, and of course up and down the coast from Onesca to Alma, though it was in this last area that they met their first real resistance.
Even so, the Faronun felt like they could almost operate uncontested in the sea. When the Gallatenes shut down their ports to Aitahist merchants entirely, they could simply retaliate with a series of raids that left a dozen docks in Sirasona in ashes, and all the while they could operate from Aldina without a care in the world.
But though the Ayasi seemed uncontested on land, and the Carohans by sea, it was obvious that the Satar had not been beaten not even close. Scouts reported that Talephas' army remained behind the River Markha, using it as a defensive perimeter, as though daring the Ayasi to come north. And, indeed, both he and the Moti Emperor issued further challenges to one another, and both called the other coward, and both summarily ignored the other.
It might have been the largest and most epic stalemate in world history, but for the simple fact that it could not be sustained. Even with the immensity of funds that the Ayasi poured into his army, the simple fact of the matter was that it was still difficult to supply his soldiers across the steppe and the Kotir, and that though he had taken Siaxis and Arastephaion seemed within his reach, neither of them could really be considered prizes worthy of such an invasion. The Redeemer, one might have thought, would have been just as uncomfortable in his seat, but none of his princes were idiots they knew the difficulty of their task, and had no reservations about defense.
Sooner or later, then, the Ayasi would have to move.
Though he kept a second army in reserve, the immensity of his main force, two hundred thousand strong, with another fifty thousand Carohans, marched north across the Rahevat. Months later, the great tortoise of an army finally arrived in the valley of the River Markha, the same eerily quiet landscape that had been infiltrated by the Faronun the previous year. Here, however, they had to pause the River was quite wide, and though a significant ford existed nearly halfway up the river, First Lerai's scouts immediately warned of Talephas' army on the other side.
However he pushed through, it would have to be very careful, indeed.
* * * * * * * * *
With wars to the north and west heating up, almost everyone expected the rest of the world to get involved in some fashion, starting with the Daharai. Though the Republic had made numerous peace overtures to the Dual Empire, the conquest of Baharr surely could not be the end of their ambitions the island, however holy, seemed almost worthless next to the very real gems around it in the Kbirilma Sea.
But even as the two empires geared for war once more, an envoy from the Savirai emperor in the far north arrived at the very last minute. Recognizing the tenuous position he now held, the Emperor reduced his demands considerably, and made peace with the southerners for a rather smaller sum than he had insisted on for the last few months. As easily as that, the tensions along the shores immediately relaxed, and the very vulnerable rear flank of the Aitahist powers had been secured.
Yet even as their neighbors turned back to wage their wars, the Daharai barely hesitated before striking again.
This time, their target was the Leunan Republic. The ailment of that state has been chronicled for some time now, and the causes and factions of the civil war quite known. But the longstanding difficulties that either side faced evaporated almost immediately when the Red Chamber's ships appeared on the horizon. While the Daharai easily took Pulchas, and secured the Cheidian straits against new campaigns, they learned that things had developed far too quickly in their opponent's heartland. The nobility had verged on taking Leun for quite some time, but the news of imminent invasion spurred both sides to action.
Specifically, the action took place at the negotiating table.
The Senate had been an almost closed affair, power begetting power, the wealth and influence of the merchant elite solidifying their hold over the country. With the army almost entirely in the landed nobility's hands, however, they made a striking series of concessions essentially streamlining the electoral process, establishing limits to how long a member could serve in the Senate, and weighting the representational system quite differently. The effect wouldn't be immediate, but it certainly seemed likely to produce the change they'd hope for.
The new Republican guard had much to worry about. The Daharai invasion had been followed by a ferocious attack from the Fareans across the south of Auona, and the Naelsians took several cities before bogging down in the still-rustic and difficult terrain of the interior. Before they could reach the island's northern half, they were met by a large Leunan field army, which frustrated further Farean attacks.
As the Daharai fleet had actually surpassed the Leunans once more, the latter took a supposedly more cautious approach to the problems near Cheidia instead of challenging them by sea, the Leunan armies simply marched overland, brazenly passing through Rihniti territory, brushing aside any attempts at resistance, and easily overcoming the small Daharai garrison that had been left in the fortresses there. Almost before it had begun, the blockade at the straits broke down, and Leunan ships crept back into the Cyntal Sea.
At the other end of the struggling empire, though, the news got even worse. Parthe, apparently, like most of Leun's neighbors, convinced that the Republic would fall to pieces, dispatched a minor expedition under Crown Prince Genda. The intent was to quickly secure the islands just to the south of Parthe proper creating a buffer against naval attacks versus Parta, and cementing their status as a new and growing naval power.
Even though the Leunan government hadn't collapsed, the vast majority of its forces remained in the west. The Parthecans met little resistance, but instead a diplomatic storm of fury as the Leunan Senate protested the actions vociferously.
Meanwhile, though, most of the northeast Parthe not excluded reveled in the prosperity that peace had brought them. Kitaluk trade was on the rise, as rumor had it that they had triumphed in a titanic war in their own homeland. Iolhan merchants had themselves begun to grow in number after a series of favorable decrees by the Iolhan Senate, but the Parthecans already had a great head start. Their navy still had not quite kept pace with the merchant marine, but with almost no pirate presence on the Kitaluk Sea, no one regarded it as all that important.
Parthecan concerns ranged far beyond the simply monetary, however. With no real enemies to speak of at least until the Leunans could refocus they had the northern seas entirely to themselves. Under enormous pressure from the Archives, and seeking to establish a foothold in lands that until now had almost no civilization to speak of, they increased exploration of the northern coastline, creating its first sustained trade route. Nor did the route terminate in the Ethir lands, nor even Kurchen. Instead, exchange started to pass as far afield as the mysterious lands of the Sevec, and the Galatawen: an enormous coup that might have serious consequences further down the road.
At the same time, Parthecan gifts percolated through the north, befriending almost all of the tribes there. The Berathi, who had undergone something of a resurgence, happily greeted Parthecan travelers where once they had turned aside almost all comers; to their northwest, the Katka coalesced into a growing kingdom. Beyond even them, the Ethir received a Parthecan expedition, which eagerly cataloged the country's strange habits elk-riding and hill-forts the most obvious among them and noted with some interest the Aelonist version of the Aitahist faith that seemed to be spreading almost everywhere.
Indeed, the Cult gained a huge flock among the Lescawen, whose initial patronage of a few temples had suddenly blossomed into a fully fledged popular faith. With members in every Lescawen city, and the official blessing of the ruling dynasty, Lesa had become the latest of the dominoes to fall.
But, perhaps, also the last.
For though neither seemed to be a direct response to the spread of Aitahism, native religious movements had strengthened in both Iolha and Parthe. The Iolhan Assembly, led by their charismatic speaker, Majarsuc Baojur, built a series of temples and monasteries throughout the country. Coupled with a cultural disdain for outlanders, the native polytheism proved even more resilient than it had before, making gains in followers in some of the frontier regions, and even converting a few of the neighboring Berathi.
The Parthecan philosophy of Querjarec saw its origins at this time. On the outside appearing to be a somewhat minor development, the fraternal and individualistic nature of the movement was in fact a minor revelation to the traditionally petrified family structure. In another sense, it almost seemed to mirror the distant Farubaidan Doru o Ierai in its fundamentally intellectual and endeavoring basis; the Querjarecen movement had practically originated in the Archives, after all.
But the island people shared a crowded stage. To their west, the Iolhan Speaker now led the country through a burst of activity that rivaled even Parthe's the religious and merchantile developments we have already mentioned, but an explosion of road construction commenced, too, and alongside that project, new facilities sprang up at every major port. Almost unnoticed in all this commotion, a new policy of expelling criminals to the north did not meet with much approval from the Lescawen, but the latter kingdom could do little about it but weakly complain.
* * * * * * * * *
While their armies readied for armageddon, life for the people of the cradle continued on much as it always had, with a few notable exceptions.
The most prominent of these the war that had suddenly emerged in Kilar was also the quickest to resolve itself. Though Jipha had timed its invasion just as it decapitated the Kilari leadership, and though the first few weeks of the war had gone exceedingly well, the invaded country started to resist all too quickly, bringing a not-inconsiderable force of its own to bear on the problem. In a decisive move, moreover, the Ayasi nullified his protection for Jipha entirely, and passed the problem on to his ally, the Kothari Redeemer.
Kartis did not march in the campaign himself, of course, as he was growing increasingly old, but his generals met the enemy with great aplomb, shattering the Jiphan garrison that had stayed in the city of Kilar without any real trouble. Even as they installed the Kilari king back on his throne, and the little state started to recover, recruiting new armies, the Kothari marched ahead and plunged into the heartland of Jipha.
The thickly forested hills hadn't seen invaders in centuries, and the Jiphan soldiers fought fiercely to defend their homeland at first. But the raiders in the jungles had difficulty communicating with one another, and when the Kothari force won one overwhelming victory after another, it sapped at the resistance's morale. Soldiers began to desert in numbers, and by the time the Kothari besieged Leuce, the war was already practically over.
Immediately, the Kothari turned to administrating the little country, setting up a son of one of the late king's sisters as the satrap, and assessing it with typical bureaucratic efficiency. The country they found was not conventionally rich, but it had an abundance of harbors, with their attendant merchants and fishermen. With surprisingly unabashed gusto, the Exatai took to cultivating their new gains, particularly by integrating it with the preexisting Hanakahi economic network. In only a little time, they had set up quite the impressive trade network, sponsoring voyages to chart the routes between their own coast and the far west, harboring at the distant port of Tsutongmerang, and even establishing a route to the Ilfolk navigating a tricky series of currents that required a somewhat roundabout route.
Even as this proceeded nicely, the Exatai's sailors started to explore at the southern edge of their Nakalani charts, claiming the Isles of Sorrow from their former Jiphan owners, and using them as valuable stopover point on the western route.
The increasingly bitter and by-now extended feud between the Grandpatriarch and the Independent Conclaves of Helsia had to be put on hold, for the Grandpatriarch himself would march with the Moti armies to the north. Of course, that only halted the personal rivalry between Aisen himself and the little churches; the competition between the Conclaves and the rest of the Iralliamite apparatus continued unabated. With enormous funds backing them up, the Church set up a new temple complex in the old Faronun town of Caeru, and a seminary in Trovin. With newly educated elite and a large amount of money to be thrown at the problem, as well as a slightly less hardline stance (essentially, that priests would be free to spread whatever outside of their churches, while remaining thoroughly orthodox inside), it was hoped that the rift could be healed.
Naturally, the hopes were all dashed. Aisen had gone out of the field of public consciousness in Opios, but he had never really been present in Helsia proper (for obvious reasons). Even with his popularity rebounding slightly, owing to his presence on the front-line, the Faronun distrust of the distant Grandpatriarchy continued with just as much venom as ever, and the new priests served only to create a parallel clergy, not exactly pushed out by the Independents, but not exactly pushing them out, either. In truth, the Conclaves seemed to be gaining even more steam, if that were possible: their own clergy had begun to hold assemblies and create a new hierarchy.
That said, the rest of the church's initiative garnered rather more success: the king of Kilar agreed to begin patronizing church activities in the region, including a new group of monasteries at the fringes of the traditionally Zyeshu Haunted Forest, while monastic order proliferated at every corner.
And so life plodded on here, entirely untouched by the great war to the north.
Almost.
* * * * * * * * *
The sound of water murmured at the edge of hearing, but if it tried to tell Covo something, he couldn't tell what. Over it, the sound of the turning wheel, of the clacking from within the mill as the machined gears turned and turned. The grindstone lay dormant the millers had seen to that when they'd abandoned the place, but the rest of the machinery had been left there, for the men to stare and marvel at.
To be precise, it was an overshoot watermill; a channel from the nearby stream ran in a narrow, stone-lined crevice, through a chute that passed above the wheel. From there, the water dropped, turning the wheel with marvelous efficiency. Hard to believe so little water could move such an edifice.
First-Lerai sat astride his horse, mesmerized by the turning motion. Would that we were such builders...
Some of our people are, Ayasi, said Birun. I have seen mills like this before, in the borderlands with the Kothari. It is one of their inventions.
The Ayasi turned in the saddle, frowning. And how would this device have passed from there to here? All my lands lie between, and I have never seen one such as this in Moti, nor even in the Sesh. Surely someone would have adopted such an invention.
The Satar... began a younger Bisrian general, Meral, While they are not in league now, they have been allies before. Perhaps they lent one another aid.
Or perhaps someone just moved, Covo said, annoyed. From the Had to the Markha.
First-Lerai regarded him for a moment, then laughed. Indeed! Ha! I suppose that would explain such a thing. Come then, scribes! he motioned behind him, and a few reedy-looking fellows rushed to join him. Copy down the plans for this construct. It was an instruction they had heard before; Lerai was a curious ruler in both senses of the word and he'd insisted to them that they keep careful notes on how the Satar did anything. The Emperor's obsession with them had certainly earned some mutterings in the ranks, but most seemed to regard it as exactly the sort of dangerous thing a military mind had to do to defeat them.
Lerai gestured the rest of his party forward, and the bodyguards rode in ranks on either side as his war council proceeded. Aside from the Xieni serpent, none of our riders have found the Satar south of the River.
You already have won a great victory over Sianai, began Meral, They are too cowar
Shut up, snapped Birun.
Lerai inclined his head. Do not presume the pack is beaten because we wounded a wolf. He paused, thoughtful, Though this Talephas lad is more clever than I'd thought. And, apparently, has a firmer hold on his rule than I'd have thought. That he would not respond to a battle-challenge!
My lord, perhaps
The Ayasi waved his hand again, and Meral fell silent. It is of no matter. We have already conquered a whole swathe of land. If we must cross the River Markha to defeat him, then so be it.
Birun shook his head. Crossing the river will be dangerous.
But doable, Covo said. He was still astounded that they deigned to listen to him, but overcame the nervousness to continue. The Faronun have a great fleet at our disposal. Rumor has it that it is twice the size of the Satar.
You don't mean for us to sail across?
With a force of two hundred thousand? That would be... something of a nightmare. No we could have the Faronun turn their flank, lay siege to Sacossa. Even with a quarter our own men, they are enough to hold off the Satar if Talephas turns against them. And if he doesn't, Admiral Rafin can lead his own attack, and distract them long enough for us to ford the river.
But what of the Accan Expedition? Meral complained. The Satar are no incompetents at naval warfare; we cannot assume the Faronun will easily turn them aside.
Maybe not, but... Covo paused for a moment, gathering his thoughts. But we should not try to fight the last war. At this, the Ayasi turned to him in contemplation.
Explain, Birun grunted.
The failure of that fleet wasn't all that surprising. No one even worried about the Accan fleet then. This... This is different. We know they have a fleet. Our own is based in Onesca, a mere hundred miles from here. They are well-supplied, well-led, and motivated. And we're not trying to sail across the Kern in some grand armada we're crossing what is, frankly, a rather small river.
As Meral began to raise some other obnoxious objection, a rider dashed up to the rear of the column.
Ayasi! Ayasi! With great gasps, he pulled his horse up alongside the Emperor. Word from the south! They
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