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A small boy runs along the shoreline, his feet lightly hopping from rock to sharp rock without a scratch. He ducks underneath the beams of an old, wrecked wooden ship, curling up from the rocks like a hand trying to claw its way free from the grave. Its fingers are covered in mosses and lichens, which the boy has, at other times, tried to eat (to his displeasure). Far off, a drumbeat bellows over the waves, seeming to shake the spray of the whitecaps, let alone the great wooden hall from which it issues the boy can only look, transfixed, at the spectacle which now begins.
The chiefs of Voninheim gather.
Most of them are from the old island, assembled here on the north shore of their homeland. Some have come further from the southern lands. Their ancestors settled there, when, after decades of raids, they found these shores so pleasant that they would rather live there than merely steal from them. They are all of them fierce and brave warriors to a fault, implacable and irascible. And they are a nuisance.
The northern islands are not what they once were. Long ago, these men raided freely. The kingdoms of Luskan and Voninheim were merely names, minor chiefs bound together by the stronger ones into haphazard unions. But all that was changing. Luskan had begun it, codifying their old system of gods into an organized religion, hoping to stop the tide of southern faiths that threatened to overwhelm them. As chiefs submitted, the church wielded more and more influence, and so did the king who directed it all. Luskan had become a kingdom in more than name: it became a united realm for all Sarrukh.
And in so doing, Luskan had greatly threatened Voninheim. Already, a quarter century before, the two nations had gone to war. It was luck and sheer grit that had let Voninheim escape total vassalization under their northern neighbors, fighting off their assaults with typical Sarrukh fury.
But the king knew that such an attack would undoubtedly come again, and with the increasing power of the north, Voninheim would not be able to fend them off. So he had invited his followers to this feast, to celebrate and to... discuss what could be done.
The boy stares, almost uncomprehendingly. The king shouts something he cannot hear what and his followers boom with laughter. He tries to come closer to the hall, but he still cannot quite make out what the king says, even though even from here he can sense there is an uncomfortable stillness settling over the chiefs gathered in the hall.
Then the king shouts again, and this time he can make out the end of it. for I do not deem you my friends anymore. You are traitors, each and every one of you. Yes. And you shall die A TRAITOR'S DEATH!
Then a whole host of armed men burst into the hall, swinging their greataxes without any quarter given. The chiefs have swords, but they are the ceremonial weapons, and their armor has been mostly eschewed in favor of expensive luxuries at this gathering of the importants. They are cut down, and the blood and screams fly across the waves, without echo. Crimson trickles down the sides of the island, falling steadily into the ocean.
And the boy runs. Oh yes, he runs. He is frightened, and well he should be.
For he lives in a kingdom now...
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As time went on, the Sarrukh states found the influence of the outside world impossible to hold back. Converting to Maninism, Luskan used the justification of spreading the faith to attempt to subjugate much of the rest of the north. Despite the dramatic gestures by the new-crowned King of Voninheim, he was ultimately unable to hold back the tide of the more powerful nation, which conquered his and united the Sarrukh for the first time in memory.
With the combined power of these nations, the King launched an invasion of Ederrot, which managed to plow over a considerable part of the island before stalling due to lack of manpower and the overstretching of the little empire.
At this point, however, Ederru began to fight back. The island state had fractured under the strain of invasions from west and east, with numerous smaller states and chiefdoms competing for power over its lands. This continued for quite a while, until the Cyve, a particular dynasty in the east of the island, rose from an intermarriage of Stettin, northern highland tribesmen, and Ederru; the hybrid kingdom managed to gain the upper hand in the chaotic struggle, unite the island, and struck back against the Ederru, driving them nearly off the island, but for a few isolated fortresses in the far west.
But by far the greatest upheaval in the north at this early juncture took place in Gallat.
A long period of stability following the fall of Ferman, and including the annexation of Tarasat, finally came to a close when tensions between the religious leadership of the country and the military reached a breaking point. The latter had been steadily growing in power as new lands were added in the east, and a series of ineffectual High Wards opened the door for a civil war.
The next thirty years were a disastrous time for Gallat. Initially it seemed like the war might be won by the military, who consolidated their hold on more or less the entire eastern half of the country and overthrew the leadership of Hasia in mere days. But their offensive stalled on the road to Gallasa as they ran into a series of ancient, reoccupied fortifications. With the extra time, the religious authority was able to raise extra support from the southern cities, and engaged the Easterners in a series of fierce battles.
The High Ward's soldiers proved ineffectual at regaining any of the land they had lost, however, and for a short period it looked as though Gallat might split neatly in two.
But even this simplistic division broke down in very short order. Famine and betrayal sapped the morale and strength of either side. Several generals attempted to take their own armies with them and carve out new kingdoms in the center of Hilberia. Various cities began to assert their independence from the High Ward, the most prominent among them being Sirasona, which managed to maintain it past the troubled times. The rest either fell into the hands of greedy generals, or were captured by Siran armies who took advantage of the times to restore the peace.
Finally one general, Halan, managed to gain the upper hand in the midst of the warlordism, defeating his immediate rivals, marching to Gallasa, and capturing the city. He executed the High Ward and placed his nephew on the throne, but claimed most of the effective powers for the new Military governorship which was to rule Gallat from then on. Some grumbled at this behavior, but liked the renewed times of peace enough to overlook it.
Simultaneously, the Evyni used the distraction of their great rival to cement their position in the north, conquering Seadol and securing the peninsula against outsiders.
It is also around this time that we have evidence for the beginnings of the Frelesti people, who seem to have adopted a sedentary existence quite early on. Despite the relative overcrowding of this corner of the world, these people stubbornly maintained independence, their strongholds key to resisting attacks.
War and constant strife left little room for cultural development in the northwest.
The High Wards' failure in battle led to a decline in their influence over Gallat and indeed all the Maninst regions, especially after a new puppet was installed on the throne. The religious hierarchy, never particularly well defined in the first place, shattered. The High Ward maintained nominal authority over the whole of the religion, but in reality the separate Wards of each individual temple, with no intermediate authority daring to take control, felt relatively little pressure against subscribing to whatever theological trends they liked best.
Surprisingly, perhaps, this didn't actually hurt the prospects of the Faith. Maninism had always been somewhat fuzzy at the boundaries, with syncretic cults and interpretations flourishing in each new region. The High Ward had rarely forced any issues, and without his guidance, more or less every flock continued to hold true to the basic tenets of the Faith.
Mercantile activity in the Kern Sea declined with the turmoil in Gallat. The independent city of Sirasona picked up much of the slack, but some also ended up under the control various Seshweay and Opulensi traders, ranging further and further north with each passing year. Gallat reformed its civil administration, focusing more on the provinces than the urban core, and agriculture and industry picked up.
The Evyni, by contrast, had one of their most peaceful eras since founding the empire. The war against Seadol had been relatively minor, an easy victory. New temples and academies were built in the dozens, and civic buildings were raised in the centers of all the Ming cities, jump-starting their redevelopment after the long war. Native Evyni artistry reached new heights now, with sculpture and music finally coming to the fore.
In the furthest reaches of the world, the long-united Goth't started to fracture under the pressure of their own success. Under little pressure from the outside world, they broke into numerous smaller proto-states.
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4. The East, 330-410
The status quo in the east came to an abrupt end in 330. The Opulensi, intrigued by the fabled riches of the far east, launched an expedition along the northern shore of the Nakalani that ended with them arriving in the ports of the Acayans, establishing trade, and making the first diplomatic contacts. Naturally this movement infuriated the Leunan Empire, which had been trying to keep this valuable monopoly to themselves, but the smaller empire never felt particularly keen to initiate hostilities.
But of course, the tensions were there nonetheless. They finally came to a head over a series of incidents where Opulensi vessels, trying to explore this new eastern route, attempted to sail through the straits, and the Leunans in turn forced them to turn around; these were matched by an incident in which an Opulensi trading vessel was refused safe harbor during one of the great typhoons.
Finally, the Opulensi declared war, and it went much as one might have expected. The battles were quite one-sided, unsurprising due to the imbalance in armament and numbers: first the straits were forced, then a series of Leunan fleets were destroyed. After only about a year and a half, a fleet and army began to menace the city Leun itself, prompting a quick peace in which Leun opened the straits without any further protest.
Fortunately for the Leunans, their long monopoly meant they were already firmly established in the Acayan cities. The Opulensi competition drove down prices to some extent, of course, but ultimately the competition was not terribly unhealthy, and indeed more business than ever came to the ports of Leun proper. The Acayans, for their part, welcomed the new burst of trading activity, and though they could never equal the naval prowess of their southwestern neighbors, they started to act as something of a trading conduit between east and west themselves.
The real crisis came rather later, and from an unexpected source.
Long before, the Leunans had married one of their princesses into one of the noble families of the Acayan principality of Ischya. This had seemed like a simple move at the time; it would strengthen ties between the two countries, lay the groundwork for an alliance, and eventually possibly let the Empire expand a little if things went extremely well. The last of these hopes had mostly died after the intrusion of the Opulensi upset their hegemony, but there was little to suggest that things would go seriously wrong.
There were warning signs, of course, but they were ignored.
Slowly had the Ischyan families devolved into power-plays and intrigues, but the pace was accelerated with an influx of weaponry and dealings from the Opulensi. Strife among the great families in Ischya turned violent, with supporters of one side or the other clashing in the streets, and blood drenching the monuments of the republican capital. Some of the families realized that the ties to Leun could be used to both sides' advantage, and invited the Leunans to intervene, take the city under protection, and restore order. Naturally, the Leunans were only too happy to oblige.
Yet there are two sides to every war, and the other side here refused to let their opponents dictate the course of the war themselves. They requested assistance from their fellow Acayan city of Gadia, noting that the Leunans were attempting to exert their influence over Acayan states, and hinting that more would soon come if nothing was done. The Gadians, too, liked the idea well enough, knowing that with sufficient force they could likely take the city.
Not waiting for the intervention, both of the Ischyan factions mustered their forces and gave battle on the streets of the city itself. City fighting being what it is, the battle proved bloody, merciless, and quite destructive. It is said that either side visited unimaginable cruelties upon their prisoners if we are to quite believe the sources, multiple towers of skulls were erected, and half a generation of children went through the rest of their lives without a leg or a hand (they were allowed to choose). As luck would have it, the Leunan-aligned forces took the city after half a month of this brutality, expelling their opponents into the countryside and waiting for reinforcements from the Empire to launch a further assault.
The Leunan fleet arrived much sooner than any Gadian forces (whose overland route was much the more difficult), and, joining with their new allies, launched multiple forays into the hinterlands of the nation, hoping to secure the state before having to deal with new enemies. But the Ischyan resistance was difficult to overcome, helped in no small amount by the willingness of Opulensi merchants to sell weapons to whoever asked and even more so by their willingness to sail into rebel ports of call over Leunan-held harbors.
At long last, the Gadian army arrived on Ischyan soil. Inexperienced though they were, the Acayan soldiers made good account of themselves in a protracted series of battles against the Leunans, managing a series of maneuvers that forced the Leunans into indefensible positions along the River Badyahar, and eventually to withdraw into the city proper, which they put under siege. Admittedly, it was ineffectual for quite a long time, because of the Leunan fleet's ability to resupply, but conditions were less than ideal for Leun.
The war continued along like this for an annoying length of time stalemate and the occasional raid, before it was ended, as was becoming typical for Leun's wars, with the enemy threatening the capital city proper and forcing a peace on the indefensible city.
Gadia was able to use their newfound leverage to annex the city of Ischya proper, and pursued friendlier relations with the Opulensi to counter the threat of other Acayans coalescing against them. They only had moderate success in this venture, keeping friendly relations with the large Empire, but being unable to secure much more than that and the vague suggestion that help might come in the event of conflict with Leun.
Leun, for its part, had been thrashed in one war and embarrassed in another. After a few years, the new king Saras I decided that this was a ridiculous situation for even such a young empire as Leun. As might be expected, he overhauled the Leunan army, creating a new and reformed officer corps patterned after the Daharai in the Opulensi state, and hired foreign experts to train a new, elite corps of cavalry to gain mobility on the battlefield.
On top of that, he began a new campaign of building in the city of Leun proper, starting with the meager fortifications. Beyond the new set of double walls (designed by Seshweay engineers), his men dug three new water reservoirs, built a series of armories, granaries, and an arsenal that acted as resupply point, shipyard, and defense for the harbor from seaward attacks.
Neither the Opulensi nor the Gadians were keen to test the Leunan defenses now; indeed, the Opulensi made some minor concessions to Leun in the years that followed. While these were clearly designed to be diplomatic gestures with little impact on, say, the trade situation between the two nations, they served their purpose well. The countries got along, for a while at least.
With an even less stressful time in the East, patronage of the arts and philosophers flourished. Trade boomed, the Acayan cities being integrated fully into the trade network of the wider world. All seemed well, and for two decades, perhaps, that was true.
However, eventually the Opulensi turned their attention northward, to the Savirai. Though the desert people had been fairly passive in the years since their initial invasion, it was believed that they were preparing for a new assault on the Empire, perhaps to seize their holdings on the mainland.
Striking preemptively, the Opulensi caught the Savirai by surprise. Zirais fell without too much of a struggle, Aran burned, and Tesach nearly followed in their wake before the empire was able to respond. They struck back at Zirais first and foremost, but the Opulensi bloodily repulsed each of their assaults there. The Savirai had already proven themselves doughty fighters, but reducing a city which was resupplied without too much trouble by their foe's superior navy was a rather different matter.
Desperate to strike back, they collected a great number of slaves, stripped what little remained of their forests, and built a new galley fleet to bring the fight to the sea. It was an ill-conceived plan, really, even with Nahari naval expertise behind them, their galleys were shattered at the Battle of Sama, the remnants fleeing in terror. Owing little to their Savirai masters, they dispersed and turned to piracy, while the desert army was left with even fewer possibilities. They arranged a ragtag fleet to carry them across to Baharr, and broke the siege of Tesach without too much trouble, but Zirais remained out of reach.
But the Opulensi, too, couldn't continue their earlier successes. The Savirai were simply too elusive to pin down, and attempts to attack the major cities failed in the face of numerous relief armies.
Finally the two sides negotiated a peace treaty, but it didn't last long. Fighting continued in an on-and-off fashion for decades following the initial conflict. Eventually the Savirai collapsed under the strain of fighting and gave up on retaking Zirais; more importantly a rebellion in the northern provinces started to flare up, Maninist tribes itching under the rule of the Indagahor ruling dynasty.
Around the same time, the first Leunan dynasty petered out the king died without an heir, and after a nephew had the indecency to follow suit, two junior branches of the royal family claimed the throne. Either side commanded a fair chunk of the Leunan army and navy. The southern branch had by far the better position, taking Leun proper before the northerners could react, but their opponents quickly secured much of the surrounding lands, and their siege made the trading hub more liability than asset.
As it turned out, the two sides simply didn't resolve their differences militarily instead, after years of low-level, they agreed to a marriage between the factions. The precarious compromise threatened to break down more than once over the next century, ultimately only being solved in eighty years time.
While all this happened, though, the Opulensi scored a massive success. The other major powers distracted in one way or another, they chipped away at the alliance between the states in the Eastern League, distracting some of the less faithful with aid and other such benefits which amounted to little more than bribes. Then, after enough discord had been sown, they moved against Leheb.
New Kalos still firmly supported their allies, as did Tars and Cynta, but the combined forces barely held the Opulensi at bay at all. The land war was almost given up before it started, the League relying on trickery to keep their navy alive through the conflict at all, and resupply their cities at crucial junctures.
The Opulensi put Leheb proper under siege immediately, and the city seemed ready to fall mere months into the siege. New Kalos, though...
New Kalos is situated in the middle of a great, narrow, rocky peninsula, clustered around a deep harbor that cuts in from the nearby bay. The walls run along high ridges, the hills short but quite steep, while the harbor is protected by multiple watchtowers to ensure the safety of the fleet hurrying in and out of the harbor. The Opulensi had a difficult enough time securing the land around the city, which teemed with hostile locals in a hundred secret holes, let alone the city itself.
Tars and Cynta launched ferocious if short-lived raids on the nearer Opulensi coast, distracting them from the greater war effort, and it seemed as though things might improbably swing the other way.
Ultimately, however, sheer weight of numbers was hard to overcome. Leheb fell after three years of continuous siege, and the Opulensi prepared more expeditions with the intent of subduing the other members of the alliance.
But the fall of Leheb had woken the other alliance members up to the imminent danger they were in. After some persuading, they, too, joined in the war, and the Opulensi, sensing there was little to be gained by the continuation of the war, agreed to a peace. After all, by any measure, it had still been a resounding success for their forces.
Despite the importance the wars seemed to hold for the monarchs of the time, the people themselves were largely unaffected by the conflicts, few and far between as they were. They celebrated their increasing wealth with increasingly elaborate festivals, while the kings, too, reveled in the new found revenues.
Opulensi monarchs continued to sponsor the construction of still more monasteries, larger and more sophisticated than anywhere else, and this occupied much of their attention to architecture. But also prominent was one of the more bizarre-sounding plans by a kingdom in memory: moving a city wholesale.
Though long a thorn in the Empire's side, post-conquest Treha had quickly become one of its key cities. The harbor was absolutely superb, providing an excellent intermediate point for merchants who wished to pass from the heartland to the wild vastness of the Kern and Yadyevu Seas, and also staging grounds for any westward military expeditions. The Emperor, naturally, was far more concerned with the former than the latter.
So he gave the order for the city of Treha to be moved not physically, of course, but for the people to rebuild their houses, harbor, and trade infrastructure on a slightly less impressive site some leagues away from their old homes. The former city became a massive naval base for the Opulensi, fortified beyond all belief, and sure to serve as a linchpin in any future western wars. The new city was thoroughly planned out beforehand by the civil academy in Epichirisi, based on a radial set of concentric rings around a central cluster of buildings guild hall, monastery, and governor's house a combination which might seem strange anywhere else.
The Leunans, too, embarked on a number of construction projects (when they were less engaged with destroying themselves or their neighbors). Most notably, one of the more loopy sovereigns in the line fell in love with the growing sport of bullfighting; he erected an arena in Leun of surpassing loveliness, designed by Seshweay engineers and seating nearly 20,000 spectators. The issue of whether such a significant portion of the city's population would turn out for the games was never quite discussed.
Scholars of Indagahor made many great strides in this period, proposing new solutions to the age old questions of the religion reconciling, for example, the conflict between the apparent uselessness of a life post-enlightenment with the sinfulness of suicide, and the seeming contradiction of great wealth with a faith that did not hold possessions to be ultimately all that valuable. A lengthy debate on the essential nature of the universe (essentially, whether it was good or evil or whether we could even ascribe those qualities to it) appeared in the monasteries of the time, though neither side emerged triumphant.
The Savirai ruling dynasty endured a number of conflicts through this whole time as their leadership, wholly converted to Indagahor (particularly the more militant branch of the Daharai) struggled to control the growing Maninist elements in the north. Ultimately, as we have seen, this led to rebellion, but a comparatively minor one. Instead of resolving anything, the rebellion ultimately led to two factions competing for influence at the court.
However, it did at least lead to a nice collection of competing religious buildings in Hrn (their adopted capital).
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5. The Cradle, 345-399
I saw the master, sitting cross-legged in the courtyard. For a short moment, I entertained the fancy that he might be one of the Eastern mystics, the holy men, in search of enlightenment. But, of course, he was not.
I spoke to Couranoen Parafosoa, and he greeted me warmly as he would his own son. Tell me, he said, Tell me what I have been pondering.
Was it a trick of some kind? I do not know.
He smiled, and fingered the strings of the instrument in his lap.
Is it music?
The most ancient, the greatest of arts. Before man learned to speak, he learned to sing, imitating the birds in their green sanctuaries. He heard their beauty, and he said, would that I could possess but a single part out of a hundred of that beauty. And so he sang. But not all men are singers, and so they learned to build instruments. I did not understand why he had been thinking of this, and so I remained silent.
But how did they build an instrument? We learn to cry or yelp as children at our mother's breast. To sing, we must merely hold a constant pitch (though that indeed seems difficult for some). But what is an instrument? It is something... different.
Look at the tools we use. A knife is but a metal tooth. A sword is but a larger knife. An ax is a claw; a spade, a hand. Clothing is a hide above our own. Shelter is but a cave beyond the mountain. But where do you find a flute, outside of a man's hand? A lute? A horn? A drum, perhaps, can be found elsewhere, though its construction is much different than the trees of those most ancient of days. But instruments... Instruments are our one true invention.
I see. And as Maraisa said, Art is what differentiates us from beasts. Music is the most purely human art, and thus the most human thing of all.
Indeed. But for something so wonderful, do you know how we make it?
We strum a string, we blow the flute. The sound of our breath or of the instrument is... altered.
Hmm.
But... can we hope to explain its beauty? Is this a mystery with an answer?
Indeed it is. Observe, young one. He plucked a string. I listened carefully, and heard a tone. Do you see what produces the tone?
The string rattles, and it must shake the air even as a child shakes a rattle.
Good! Quite good. But that is not music, that is a tone.
He played a song, which I attended, and then I said, The many tones harmonize, and they work together to please a man's ear. Is this what you mean?
How do they work together?
I do not know.
And that is what I have been contemplating. Observe. He plucked a string, and the tone sang sweetly. Then he pressed his finger against the string, and plucked it again. When we press our fingers into the midpoint of the string, the pitch is now an octave higher. So, a string half as long as another is the octave. This is the basis of all music, for we hear all octaves as one and the same note.
But observe further. When we divide the string differently, we have different intervals. When I press the string so that one side is half again the length of the other... he strummed the strings, a fifth sounds, and our ears are pleased. When we divide it by three against four, a fourth is produced, and our ears are pleased, even though it is a different color. So it continues: four against five brings simple concordance, five against six, complex concordance.
Do you see?
I... do not think I do.
The beauty of music lies in that it is the purest expression of the universe. For the numbers we use here are akin to those with which we have investigated the universe: the beautiful turns become the beautiful song. And so it becomes clear we live in a world united by logic, and beauty.
And I understood.
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