2600-2550 BCE - Chapter 9
Aramya before the descent.
The Descent
Aramya, the exalted state that had steered Levean politics for over 400 years, had four times split into new Exaltations by Winter, 2550 BCE. Roughly fifty years after the, initially confident, war with the Formans brought staleness to the Aramyan military, northern, southern, eastern and central Aramya contented themselves to new kings, new bureaucracies, and new history. After the uneasy treaty with the Formans, the Northern army attacked the last remaining town of Hyak independence. The small cavity of hope within that last southern Hyak town held great enough emotional power over the Hyaks that upon the capture of the town they rose up, in a slew of revolts. That is the tale recorded in the Great Library of Sarte; the spring of rebellion in the region was more likely the combined bureaucratic stagnation of Aramyan rule, intense racial prejudice towards Hyaks by Aramyan emigrants, and general disorganization of the military. These revolts began the great decline.
In the year 2587 BCE the Southern King died by a dagger to the neck. Internal bickering within the Southern Kings family lead to a near civil war, but the Northern King, alerted of the situation, visited Danae with the army, and southern Aramya, for his first time to quell the disorder. Banditry in the north was intensified with the redistribution of soldiers to the south, and trade declined after its short burst after the war ended. With the slow starvation of wealth in Aramya the plutocrats began a phase of consolidation. By the time Aramya ended, only a few prominent families were left, many rulers of the new exaltations.
The system of slavery loosened significantly in the south where it had been taken well. The slave population, although overall increasing in size, primarily did not compose native Aramyans. Hyaks were often sold to southern plutocrats, a joint effort by both the elites and the government to integrate the Hyak people into Levea. Additionally there was a surge of migration northwards in search of jobs and land by native southern Aramyans.
High government regulations and government intervention fought directly contrary to plutocratic goals. The government was target of constant bribery to avoid regulation, and criminal organizations grew plenty wherever the government guilds were too strong to benefit the rich. The rich also began bribing military officials in southern Aramya, who had the leash on the northern commanders. Those northern commanders began seeing less of the southern wealth; their equipment degraded, their soldiers couldnt be paid or trained, and eventually the commanders themselves couldnt keep subordinate to the bureaucracy.
The commanders, lead by the Northern King, mounted a full invasion of the Southern lands in 2575 BCE to punish the child king and his regency council that had been setup in the previous military incursion. Upon his conquest, a new puppet king was placed in leadership, a priest from the north, devout to the Northern King, and goods began flowing to the military branch again. Over the next several years the Northern King, carefully, slowly, began demanding more of the souths wealth, until he had their surplus, and then some. The enormous redirection of goods angered the upper classes, some of whom were slaughtered in several southern revolts.
The south and north, for a period, were unified and energetic again. The Hyak revolts had stopped too, temporarily, and the Northern King, (who often was referred to as the Last Dual King, for his son would take the whole throne, with no contest from the heirless priest-king in the south) prepared operations for another war with the Formans. The cabinets rationalization was very long term, the Last Dual King wanted his sons or their sons to continue his plans, just as the great kings of the past had set out his parents to build the chariot army. Those parents did, and he now reaped the strategic benefit from that ever long quest by his ancestors.
The operation intended for the population, construction, and military outfitting of three new towns along the east side of the Tigris. The region had always been populated, small settlements even dotted the region, but the Aramyan plan demanded these settled people be completely displaced by Aramyans, and their small villages be rebuilt into serious establishments. Trade had flowed from the peaceful tribes of the region for centuries, mines, pastures, farms had all been created along the river banks. The Last Dual Kings chariot army marched across the plain, and brought Aramyan order to the area; the local rulers were promised wealth immeasurable, and the Aramyans promised only to make policy on military grounds; so long as Aramyan migrants were allowed to live there, and the military allowed to build barracks and house soldiers, the locals would have full control over domestic matters.
For all the influence of the Last Dual King, the southern bureaucracys inefficiencies and corruption continued to grow and bother the public. When the Last Dual King died in 2559 BCE, he left a gigantic kingdom to the helm of his very competent son. Very competent wasnt enough, and along with the king, the energy of Aramya vanished into the heavens. Literally. While the plutocrats began a rampage of personally seizing the guilds as their own property, the remainder of the royalty in Aramya abdicated and escaped far to the north, into the newly settled, politically stable mountains, where the godly pantheon resided. They had ascended.
The Maelstrom
The king and royal family left in 2558 BCE, only three seasons after the new king came to power. The next four seasons would be the most dense amount of tumult the region had ever witnessed. Less than a week after the kings departure, the southern priest (who although officially subordinate to the king still managed the southern bureaucracy thoroughly) was assassinated in public by an angry mob of plutocrats. That has been the official story for many millennia, however new evidence from modern excavations are indicating the assassins were the highest Viziers of the Kitabalist clergy.
Regardless of the culprit, the southern and northern regions of the Exaltation were governor-less and ran purely on the structure of the bureaucracy. The north saw five uncontrolled revolts of Hyak-Aramyan farmers. The south saw economic chaos. The people needed work, and the elites welcomed the people into personal armies. These well organized, high morale battle groups seized pinnacle locations all across Southern Levea. The Danaen wealth magnets seized Danae, Eira, Pire, Anshan and made a bid for Kitalo. The Council of Viziers declared Kitalo the holy place of Kitabalism in Levea, and negotiated the regions towns and cities join them in a league against the uprising Danaens and Ortundians. Kitalo, Sarte, Awai, Bablae and Irud joined their holy league, after a period of Bablaen and Irudite non-cooperation.
The city of Ortun, one of the most prosperous in Aramya, also declared independence the next year, taking control of the tired military stationed there. The bureaucratic structure of the Hyak territories and the city of Ortun remained the same, and they were able to concentrate their forces on the Hyak-Aramyan revolts threatening flipping to Forman control.
The revolutions and usurping was not simply accepted, and widespread resistance existed all over Aramya. Some areas particularly organized for their own defence: the cities of Bablae, Irud, Anshan, and all of Parusha, kept in alliance in the name of Aramya. Their cause was misguided, because there were no heirs to maintain the government, and slowly the allies of the Parushan headed alliance fell to other revolutions, until Parusha proper was all that remained. The alliance held out until 2550 BCE, when they became the Exaltation of Parusha, instead of the Aramyan alliance.
A strange imbalance shadowed all of Levea, with the new Exaltations of Danae, Parusha, Ortundia and Viria. The successor states of Aramya each had a new identity, but that identity was the direct product of the ancient, centralized, bureaucratic government of Aramya.
The Exalted Danaens were lead by wealthy land barons and guild masters, and their king was the patriarch of the wealthiest family of all. Their patron deity became the Morae, to encourage commerce and industry. They were the middle man between trade with the Hormunian people and the rest of Aramya, but they lacked the naval power needed to dominate the region. Their military was also composed of untrained citizen brigades, which often wielded spears for fighting. With the size of the territory they commanded, gaining any footing over Parusha was hard, and their navy simply couldnt overcome the rivers to make action against the Virians.
The Viziers Exaltation, or Viria, was the confederation of central Aramyan cities, which mostly united for their own defence and protection. Trade was free, and only the cities themselves were managed directly by government officials. Legislation was relaxed. The Council of Viziers held great influence over the other states in Aramya, partially because they were a conduit between the ocean and upper Levea, but greatly because of their political ties to the priests across Aramya. Each town had its own patron deity, Sarte had the truth goddess Ius, Awai preferred Thice, but Kitalo, the capital, was home of Kitab.
Parusha was perhaps the most delicate a state, their borders were wide, demanding a swift chariot strike force, but their government, backed by the god of strength Resurus, was decisive and authoritarian, like many Aramyan kings of the past. Parusha was often able to secure itself by being the primary supplier of copper and tin, forcing other states to avoid conflict with the power.
The Exaltation of Ortundia was a combination of ancient Ortundian practices, Aramyan administration, and Hyak culture. The nation was ruled by the wealthy military commanders that had seized the military and declared Ortun their capital. The Hyak people for a long time had their culture suppressed, but the new military king, to appeal to the people, made Hyaks honorary Leveans, and began a long process of integrating them with the Aramyans in the region. They were the next country in the line of nations that slowed trade between the east and west, and theirs was the only country next to a none Aramyan people. Ortun received support from other nations, often because of the negotiation of the Viziers to assist in the pushing of Forman initiatives. They had two patron gods, Tarias of the wildreness, and Sune of wisdom.
These new Exaltations continued the long traditions of Aramyan bureaucratic institutions, authoritarian economic control, and innovative military tactics. They disrupted trade for a period, and the economy of the region was never as robust as before now that traders were taxed at least three times before going beyond Levea. This mess of distrust, competition and diplomacy, is the Aramyan maelstrom.
OOC: Preferential map, I look to Terrance to confirm or edit it.
The Ascent
While Aramya boiled and brewed a new, contorted, face, the royalty travelled by ox chariot to the far northern colony in the mountains. The king had taken a convoy of gold, copper, weapons, tools, and technologies. He brought the most loyal charioteers, spearmen and archers of his armed forces, and a small army of administrators, artisans and faithful followers. He was followed by devout Aramyans, whom had sold everything to join the king in a new life.
This group took many years to integrate themselves into the far north town of Etass, on the lake Etass. Upon the kings arrival he saw the vast lake, with two rivers that flowed into it. The first words he was recorded to have said at his arrival were little Aramya, as he gestured to the symbolic, miniature version of his home kingdom.
The locals were given gifts, and the local governor was made second in command to the king. The process of integrating the region and developing it to a point of proper government took 8 years, during the time Aramya was imploding.
The town was isolated, and because trade and communication no longer existed between the settlement and Aramya, its use as a military facility against the Formans ceased. The king and his compatriots were safe. The king had several children, and he encouraged intermarriage to foster relations with the natives and prevent racial conflicts. He was a mediator, a wise man that people asked questions of life to. His wisdom was recorded and a small library became one off the pillars of the towns social life. It was an outdoor library, with covered areas for the tablets. Supplies of the sort the king was accustomed to were not available, and his initiatives to build a fine city-state were slow. The local language was discouraged and education for the natives was attempted to spread at least some hybrid of Old Kitabic and the local speech. Kitabalist gods were also a place where there was no compromise; these mountains were where the gods resided, that was the law of religion.
By the year 2550 BCE, his first son was prepared to lead a new state, and already the king trained his boy by taking him to the places he worked. He discussed with the workers, with the administrators, with the traders and the writers and the farmers. The king wanted to bring everyone together and create a harmony that he never saw in Aramya. The king died peacefully of old age in his bed, and his son took the town of this new state, with a future unknown.
OOC: @Lord_Iggy, I want to see how your secret identity will deal with all this.