North King
blech
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End of Empires - Update Fourteen
Nightmare
Ten Years
500-510 SR by the Seshweay Calendar
389-399 RM by the Satar Calendar
215-225 IL by the Leunan Calendar
Nightmare
Ten Years
500-510 SR by the Seshweay Calendar
389-399 RM by the Satar Calendar
215-225 IL by the Leunan Calendar
If you seek Exatai, the Silver Path is yours. Justice, compassion, tolerance, tempered strength. If you seek apocalypse, the Gold Path is yours. Arrogance, righteous anger, unbridled aggression. You shall destroy everything and build nothing. Talan the Elder
Faeiao brought his army to us
With countless bloody spears
They burned and plundered for a year
Until we turned to fight. from Of the Fall of Faeiao of Salei
Still and warm, night lies silent over the city. Behind the walls and around them, men already settle into the mind-numbing, incredibly boring deadliness of a siege. Always it goes like this: the eagerness of the first march, the heat of battle, but inevitably the slow, slow siege afterward.
War reduced to a facsimile of daily life. No battles here, just chores. Cook food. Seal up breaches in the walls. Observe the other side, boredly. Occasionally take an arrow in the gut and die in agony. Daily life.
The night is insidious, almost a blanket. Campfires burn, little flickering candles in the darkness. The city is utterly, completely quiet.
The besiegers, too, are quiet tonight. Word had it that Kargan was already on its last legs, its garrison simply too large to feed, as the noose of blockade tightened around the city. No sense throwing soldiers against the immense walls or harbor defenses when it was more likely to simply fall on its own, given but a little more time.
It is the perfect night.
Their teeth almost chattering with hunger, a few Satar soldiers move through the streets of the old city with grim purpose. The night is thick; like a cloak drawn fast around them.
They burst into a slave quarters, where the people within stand to attention quickly. It is not smart to annoy your superiors, not now, not when their tempers are so short. And so when the guards chain them together, only a few protest, only a few struggle. The vast majority are compliant. Children are taken from their parents, and when they protest, their mothers shush their cries, and tell them to be brave, to go with the men. For surely it is their only choice.
The soldiers leave one of their own to guard the prisoners in this block; he stands, sweating volumes. Men and women stare at him hollowly; he pointedly ignores them, remains aloof, but he will not tolerate the sound of anyone talking. His compatriots move to the next block, to do the same. And again and again.
The operation passes as quickly and smoothly as one might expect. There is too little resistance to note, and even if the actions seem bizarre, no one questions the Satar now.
It is a warm night.
Hours later, every slave in the city is chained in some fashion, and guarded. The children are taken to another quarter, locked away safely, far away from the night. And so it begins.
The soldiers return to their first blockhouses, and they take the group of chained slaves to another, clean room. There, their throats are cut as simultaneously as can be managed. There are not enough soldiers to make this quite work, of course, and the bubbling screams prompt some of the others to struggle madly against their bonds, kicking, biting, clawing, scratching at the soldiers, but it is of little consequence.
On and on they continue. There are many Aitahists, and there are so few hands. Heavy work. Throats to cut, blood to wash off the hands. Even with the doctrines of their commanders ringing in their ears, a few of the young soldiers are horrified by what they are expected to do. But after a hundred throats, what is one more?
They move to the next house, and repeat the whole process. Once or twice the slaves will already have stirred, hearing the cries from the next street over, and a few of the garrison are killed by an overwhelming crush of poorly chained slaves, but for the most part the restraints do their work well, and the entire Aitahist population of the city is coldly exterminated.
But this is only a prelude, for the butchers' work is only begun.
Calmly, they proceed to every body, drain the blood as best they can they are inexperienced, of course, and are a little less than skilled. Messy even when careful. Some of the blood ends up in barrels, to be stored for later uses. Much more ends up in the floor, or on the clothing of the soldiers, or in their hair. Then begins the process of preparing the meat. The organs are removed, a quick slice through the belly and then some cleaning work in the abdomen taking care of much of the intestines; the lungs must be prised from behind the surprisingly difficult to penetrate ribcages. The skin is removed. Meat is cut away from the legs, the arms, the breast, the buttocks few places are spared. The muscles and fat are taken to a central building in the city, where, even as more and more bodies are brought in, the meat is carefully salted and stored for curing.
Bizarre logistical problems crop up such as what to do with the remnants of the organs and heads: ultimately the garrison decides there is a little they can do beyond dump them in the sea beside the city, or beyond the walls. But beyond this, there are few hijinks in the operation.
The non-Satar in the city and there are many cannot help but hear the screams, and see the carts pass by their windows. But it is confusing most of what they see is covered by cloth, or by the darkness. No one quite knows what is going on. Thus, they are silent.
Even the next day, with the iron taste of blood heavy on the air, few know exactly what has happened. But the links between garrison and city are many. Men question why they do not see the Aitahist slaves in the streets anymore or why soldiers, in addition to being covered in grime, now have a congealed crimson in their hair. And of course, some of the soldiers will talk.
But no one questions the meat. Food is food, doubly so in a siege.
And the rumors secret themselves between the lines of battle. Blockades, even in a siege, are never absolute. And word spreads.
* * * * * * * * *
It must be said that the Satar are not averse to showmanship; Nephrax-ta-Delphis ordered one of his catapults to launch a barrel of salted meat at the opponents' battle lines. It broke on impact, scattering only a little meat over the lines of circumvallation, but the message was sent quite clearly.
The commander of the besiegers, Folunlui Aramsayafa, absorbed the news stoically. To many others, it might seem that he was fighting monsters out of a children's tale, rather than men, but he knew better than to let that affect his decisions. The Satar clearly wanted to goad him into attacking their city, to break against their walls, despite their clear advantages, in the hopes of stopping further massacres, but his faculties remained intact. The preparations for such an assault would have to be very careful indeed.
And so the allied army began to dig trenches of approach, preparing sapping equipment, building battering rams, new traction trebuchets, and on and on the list went. The general went from group to group, talking to each in their native language, assuring them that justice would be served one way or another before the end.
As preparations continued by either side at the siege of Kargan, the focus of the War of the Three Gods (as it had come to be known) shifted southward. The Moti field armies maneuvered carefully around in the Upper Sesh, while Satar militarization reached a fever pitch. The acting Redeemer, Satores, ordered a levy of the entire able-bodied populace of the Satar, from all walks of life. The densely populated Sesh more than sufficed, and all in all he raised an army of almost absurd size around a quarter of a million soldiers.
Of course, such a massive host was not without immense difficulties, and even with the Satar doctrines of racial superiority, they recognized the need to train the new soldiers before throwing them into the meat-grinder.
But just as obviously, the Moti were not content to simply let them train this new host in peace. They began to raid the countryside in earnest helped along by a mysterious decline in the number of Satar cavalry. Fifth-Gaci was somewhat worried by this last development, but who was he to look a gift-elephant in the trunk? The more exposed estates of the Satar nobility burned by the torches of thousands of Moti cavalry, while the field army threatened multiple Satar cities.
For their part, the Satar garrisons had grown so large as to become logistical nightmares, requiring food supplies that simply weren't growing anymore. The Satar population had for the most part never been directly responsible for agricultural activities, but it certainly had been crucial to the maintenance of the slave system which had produced most of their crops. Slave rebellions, fed by rumors of Satar brutality elsewhere, started to flare up throughout the remaining land. On top of all this, the Upper Sesh certainly wasn't the more valuable part of the river valley.
But their commanders, surprisingly, seemed unworried by the problems they were facing. The Moti were not allowed a free hand by any means, and the steady erosion of the Satar lines of defenses was fought at every step, but few aggressive actions were taken. It seemed bizarrely out of character for the Satar.
And though the Moti quickly recognized this was a major warning sign, it didn't really matter either way, because they were not the first target of the Satar.
Instead, the greater part of the Satar cavalry force marched north.
* * * * * * * * *
A wedding in peninsular customs is no small affair, especially a royal wedding between the two premier powers in the region. Thus, it was with great fanfare and pomp that the Haina princess made her slow way through the Trahana country: first, through the great trading hub of Bashima, where they feasted for three nights on the finest fare from the whole Airendhe, then, in a grand procession, by massive pleasure barge through Lake Maregai, stopping by island monasteries and fishing villages nestled in secret marshlands, before finally coming to Mara, where they prepared for the ascent up to Traha proper.
The Enadanbar and the princess rode at the fore of a long, long tail of retainers and friends, and by the time that the colorful menagerie ambled through the gates of Traha proper, the populace cheered them both in great roaring crowds. The monsoons were due soon, and the dry air of the mountain capital seemed positively charged with energy.
Only then did the celebrations proper begin. A normal Trahana wedding spans two days; this one spilled over onto four, as it opened and closed with dazzling festivals. The spires of the Machaiambarai were hung with great lengths of colorful cloths, and drink and food flowed freely through the streets. On the second day, the bride was presented to the Danbar, who accepted her with grace and charm, and led her into her new home, while the groom stood outside and waited overnight to meet his beloved. On the third day, at the rising sun, she emerged from the palace and took his hand, leading him within, and the crowd roared its delight.
All seemed well in the country from then forward. The campaign against the northern tribes was ended or perhaps simply paused on a resoundingly positive note, with the frontier secured and its lands annexed. New temples were raised in the capital, larger than ever before. Put simply, peace and prosperity reigned supreme.
Yet by the end of the decade, there were hints that this was merely an illusion. News from the north told of the campaigns of the rising empire of Dehr, which even now was on campaign against the city states that lay between their aggressors and the Trahana. Many worried that Dehr would not stop before the whole peninsula fell under their hegemony, in an empire that matched the legendary tales of old. At the same time, however, diplomatic overtures from the Danbar seemed to meet with cordiality and friendship among the northerners.
Meanwhile, the Haina, now unworried by their friendly western neighbors, continued the colonial and exploratory enterprises with renewed vigor, sailing far to the southeast. The currents here were quite unfriendly despite their best efforts, and they were unable to make much headway, but a colony was established in a sheltered bay, and at the very least the return voyage to their homeland was extraordinarily smooth.
In the north, Dulama fears of collapse and ruin proved unfounded, for now at least. The Plague seemed to have largely run its course in fairly short order, and the Emperor was quite hale and hearty when he welcomed the great lords of the empire to Mora. The great central palace was quite an imposing site, with high vaulted ceilings and sunken amphitheaters, with glass from the east, masonry from the south, and gem-studded statuary from the rest of the country.
The new capital complex was perhaps only matched in grand imperial enterprises by the great canal from the River Thala to the city of Hachtli. Finally completed near the middle of the decade, the much improved communication to the western provinces and the ocean there meant the Empire's hold on its disparate parts was more secure than ever before. With the Hai Vithana preoccupied, and every other power relatively nonthreatening, the Empire had few worries, beyond the occasional recurrence of plague.
The Emperor thus began to preoccupy himself with a fight against corruption in the nobility, improving the records and bureaucracy of the various sub-imperial administrations, and establishing a new office of Imperial Auditor to ensure the proper destination for would-be wayward funds.
Simultaneously, however, some minor difficulties arose in the western provinces around Dula. While religious toleration and relative harmony was the norm for the land, many viewed the overzealous Iralliam preachers with suspicion and dislike, and the Iralliam preachers likewise found this new land to be a somewhat unwelcoming one at times. While these tensions were hardly life-threatening, they were certainly annoying for the majority of the citizens in the former capital.
The kingdom of Naran, legend had it, was as old as the pass which it guarded; it had lived through countless regional upheavals, outlasting the Amure and the Tollanaugh Empires, and through much of the life of the Dulama. Few even blinked when a new Ónnaran was crowned; though this lord might have grand ideas, it was likely that life for the prosperous little trading nation would continue as it always had.
The Ónnaran, however, had somewhat different ideas. He immediately led a campaign to secure new land for settlement, and extended his control further than any of his line had before. Though perhaps a minor development on the world scale, the people of the pass seemed poised to expand well into the coast land of the west, and maybe further, into lands unknown.
* * * * * * * * *
What words can you offer a dying cause? The ships gathered in the harbor of Cheidia, preparing for one last battle against the Empire, but all the inspiring rhetoric of a thousand orators would not have disabused them of the odds against them. There was always a chance that they could somehow manage to triumph, but things looked very bleak indeed for the Eastern League. No help was forthcoming, not from the Savirai nor from Leun, nor indeed anyone else.
They decided to give battle near the city of New Kalos, where the waters were narrower and would possibly give them a chance to even the footing against the superior numbers of Opulensi. And in truth, the battle was not as one-sided as it might have later appeared, and the Opulensi suffered many losses, nearly a third of their fleet. But even so, the day's verdict was never really in doubt.
The Eastern League, however, could not really match the Opulensi in a straight up fight, and their fleet scattered and dispersed before the enemy. After that, the campaign was fairly simple. The Eastern League had only ever really been a danger for its fleet; once that had been defeated, their land forces really could not make much of a contest of things. New Kalos surrendered rather than subject itself to a long, pointless, and devastating siege. Cheidia followed suit afterward. The colony at Paulinth was taken by a quick expedition, and without fanfare, the war was over and the Opulensi reigned supreme. For now, of course.
With their hold over the eastern trading routes seemingly secure, the Opulensi looked forward to a presumed boom in shipping, unbothered by tariffs and piracy. Alas, this was not to be, for even as the newly-freed Opulensi fleet swung into action against the already present pirate forces in the far east, the ships of the former Eastern League scattered to the winds, and many turned to piracy to remain in business. Thus, especially in the Nakalani off of Naelsia and in the Leunan Sea, trade became more dangerous than ever before.
Meanwhile, however, the western part of the empire thrived. Opulensi developments in ranged weaponry led to a new class of ballistae that helped somewhat against the pirate threat, while farmers inland in Spitos thrived on the sudden peace they had found. A new class of religious figures known as Iehorai were soon found preaching through the Empire, and the impetus of government pressure led to a new, unifying canon for Indagahor. On the other hand, lack of sponsorship meant the faith was still somewhat vulnerable to the evangelism of the nearby Aitahists, which did in fact win a few converts in the Empire's heartland, though hardly enough to really concern anyone but the most pious.
As most of the world convulsed with ongoing, vicious wars the Opulensi, the cradle of civilization, the south, the north, and the middle as well the far east had seemed comparatively serene. And indeed, peace continued through these years. But it was a strained sort of peace, with rivalries growing more intense by the year, and indeed threatening to boil over soon and bring war to this still-untroubled region.
Convinced of the value of Auona both as a strategic linchpin and as a piece of the heartland of their empire, Leun did not take kindly to renewed expansion of the Farean state. Though the newcomers were still far off from the borders of Leun proper, the rate at which their northern colonies grew astounded the oligarchs, who ordered a major southward effort to meet it somewhere in the middle.
Initially only copying Farean methods wholesale, the Leunans first offered gifts, then trade and alliances to the numerous natives on the island, the northerners followed this up by establishing strings of outposts in disputed land between the various small tribes. This did not particularly endear them to anyone, but it did ensure their power could be projected deep inland an alliance with the great Leun soon became a valuable commodity indeed among the free islanders. This only increased in value when the remaining hostile tribes were conquered and their lands appropriated by Leunan allies.
Of course, Leun did not simply leave their allies be after this: they instead began to introduce settlers into the most tamed regions by which point the outnumbered natives could only watch mutely as their lands were appropriated. Despite... well, probably because of its cynicism, this strategy effectively countered the Farean advance northward, which had stalled in any case. However, as either side entered new and unknown territories, frictions and disputes popped up in multiple places. Farean-aligned tribes on more than one occasion clashed with those backed by Leun. While the two militaries themselves hadn't came to blows not directly, at any rate they inched closer and closer to exactly that situation with every passing year.
The Leunan forces, quite incidentally, stumbled across a lost and previously unknown city deep in the center of Auona, on the shore of one of the smaller lakes there. The natives who live there in the present day seem to have little idea of the ruins' origin, and claim the original builders died some time ago; the Leunan explorers immediately dubbed it Evetias, after a legendary lost city in their own mythology.
Simultaneously, Leun aggressively pursued the cash crops of their smaller neighbors in Parthe, trying to corner at least a small piece of the growing trade. As it happened, the indigo did do well in the wetter parts of their country, and they joined Parthe as one of the leading producers of the dye.
This is not to say that they had an easy time of it. With piracy on the rise in the Leunan Sea and the Nakalani, they had difficulty exporting their new indigo crop to the west, which at any rate concerned itself more with its ongoing war than with new luxuries out of the east. New developments somewhat mitigated the former problem: the Leunan oligarchs had launched a series of expeditions to the northwest, which met with simultaneous southwestern expeditions by the Savirai. Though the Leunans worried that the desert empire would attack them, such anxieties proved unfounded the Savirai were more interested in opening up an overland trade route to parallel the maritime one.
Leun, as one probably already imagined, echoed the sentiment.
However, for an already paranoid regime, the distractions kept piling on.
Reacting to an overstretched and aggressive Tazari chiefdom, the Acayan state of Iolha led a grand campaign against their northern marches, soundly defeating the barbarians and further cementing themselves as the premier power of the far northeast. At the same time, the Tazari launched an ill-considered series of raids against the Savirai, which some feared could bring the western empire into the east in full force.
Parthe, for its part, continued along in splendid prosperity. Settlers erected new plantations all along the northern frontier, while trade continued to boom. Extensive experimentation by the king with ships from Leun and the Kitaluk proved somewhat inconclusive. The Kitaluk ships proved quite superior in handling on the open ocean, but the Leunan vessels were certainly easier to construct, and easier to scale up in order to hold large cargoes. Ultimately it seems most prudent to use one or the other when the situation merits it.
* * * * * * * * *
The Evyni Empire had been able to take control of the Accan periphery of the Exatai with almost shocking ease, a combination of surprise, overstretch, and slave rebellions toppling the garrisons there. In almost a single stroke, they had eliminated the entire powerbase for the Princes of the Sun the ruling dynasty of the Exatai and moreover bowled over a whole Satar army on their way.
Determined to reclaim the northland and reduce the war to a single front, the Satar joined with their new Vithana allies into a single host, and in a ceremony full of elaborate ritual, made the Vithana Redeemer Jahan a Satar lord. He was proclaimed Prince of the Moon; in turn, he swore that he would defeat the various challengers to the Exatai, restore the justice of Exatas to its distant northern marches, and finally reclaim the south.
The Evyni had not been idle, either, and had quickly regrouped their armies after their initial victories for another series of campaigns. Advancing southwards from the Rhon, they took Elova with fairly little difficulty, the Vithana forces only offering token resistance, and plunged through the former land of Elets.
From here on, however, they started to run into problems. The steppe was nowhere near as easy a campaign ground as might be imagined; the sheer logistics of keeping an army fully supplied in such barren lands were difficult enough; meanwhile the Vithana harried them at every turn. The steppe cavalry continually drew them deeper into their own territory, only to melt away whenever the Evyni chanced to catch them in battle. The Evyni commanders were almost unbelievably patient, but they lacked an ultimate objective the Vithana army couldn't be pinned down.
At the same time, the Redeemer's armies delivered a stunning counterattack through the southern Rhoms into the Evyni-held Oscadian lands. The Evyni garrison there was considerable, but it was largely composed of immobile infantry forces. Consequently, as soon as the initial defenses were passed, there was little to stop the Ardavai and Vithana forces from rampaging around the region, wrecking havoc and generally raising an Accan rebellion against their new overlords. The Evyni forces held together despite all this, their legendary discipline proving vital.
The Empire desperately reshuffled its armies including those on campaign against the Vithana across the Rhoms and reinforced their garrison in Acca. Initially, Jahan's forces attempted to continue their raiding and harrying strategy, isolating Evyni detachments and cutting their supplies, but this proved impossible in the face of numerous newly-constructed Evyni fortification and cohesion, not to mention the fact that they were entering into increasingly built up terrain that resembled their steppe home less and less. Frustrated and perhaps a little overconfident because of their initial successes, they engaged the Evyni directly with mixed success.
In the end, the Ardavai forces reached Acca proper and managed to take the city through treachery, but they had already shot their bolt. Jahan was immediately pressured by the Ardavai nobility to reconquer the Sesh Valley, which most of the Ardavai elite considered far more important than Acca (seen as a largely superfluous frontier province by those whose lands lay on the Sesh). Leaving Accan levies as garrisons and reinforcing them with some of his best cavalry, he marched for the south.
The Evyni lay bruised and battered from the Exatais' assault. Though they faced fewer foes now, their armies had lost tens of thousands of soldiers, and they needed time to regroup in their own lands before a new campaign could be launched.
In the west, the Xieni took advantage of the weakness of the Evyni to launch a renewed campaign against them, driving back the skeletal forces that had been left to stop them, and putting the old city of Naiji under siege. Many in the Empire feared that the primarily Ming population could become a fifth column and effectively give the city to the steppe invaders, but such worries proved unfounded. As Xieni forces had been stopped at the Einan's third and fourth fork, the most important parts of the Empire remained safe from their depredations... for now.
For their part, the Vischa had come out of the campaign quite well practically no losses, plenty of plunder, and even a gift from the Moti which they did not even need to do anything for. Naturally they had annoyed many among the Vithana and the Xieni leadership who had received little to no help from their eastern cousins but had watched them take a share of the loot anyway.
Thus, the northern war ground to a screeching halt. But the situation would radically change with the news out of the south.
* * * * * * * * *