North King
blech
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Spoiler The World :
End of Empires - Update Twenty-nine
Age of Prophets; Age of Truths
Two Hundred and Seventy-Three Years
637 - 910 SR by the Seshweay Calendar
526 - 799 RM by the Satar Calendar
1461 - 1734 AR by the Amure Reckoning
519 - 792 CA by the Charitan Assumption
Age of Prophets; Age of Truths
Two Hundred and Seventy-Three Years
637 - 910 SR by the Seshweay Calendar
526 - 799 RM by the Satar Calendar
1461 - 1734 AR by the Amure Reckoning
519 - 792 CA by the Charitan Assumption
Spoiler The World As it Stood, 637 SR :
Physical
Cities
Economic
Religious
Political
"Did not the gods (for, as we have proven and will prove, the world was made by no single god) create the world in their image? Therefore, we can only assume that the world beyond is identical to the world before us. The heavens are at war." ~ Carnax-ta-Atracta
“God grows in gardens and on graves.” ~ Zyeshu children's rhyme
* * * * * * * * *
Spoiler table of contents :
Table of Contents:
First Moves
After the War
The War of the Abrea
The War of Tin Tan Tar
The Western War
Decay and Rebirth
Elephant Graveyard
The Exatai Fractures
Cyve, Freed
The Meeting of the Ships
The Steppe War
The Decline of Naran
On the Merits of Secession
The Wards' Reach
The Middle Centuries
The Long Peace
Campaigns of Conversion
Empire Sacrificed
The Lions of Noaunnaha
Southern Wars
Of Monks and Merchants
The Exatai's Apex
The Sea of Sunrise
The Vedai Satar
Closing Developments
War of the Second Feast
Third War of Prophecy
The New Steppe
The Sunset Empires
The Three Norths
The Western Cradle
The Broken Earth
The World at a Glance
Addenda
Maps
OOC
* * * * * * * * *
The place had the dead smell of old books. Savaen had always hated libraries: libraries made him think of the elderly, elderly made him think of being old, and being old made him think of being dead. He'd tried to make this excursion as short as possible, but even with the grease of gold, he'd been waiting in the antechamber for well over an hour. He breathed impatiently, tapping his leg underneath the desk (he'd never been able to get over the habit of tapping his fingers, but he'd learned to hide it). It was not uncomfortable, but he was starting to grow hungry.
The room was lavish, handsomely furnished with exotic woods from the Kitaluk lands that he had no name for. Dark red and brown, with gold leaf inlays – it was enough, for a moment, to make him forget that the Parthecans were robbing him blind.
A long while later still, the doors opened with a puff of dust. An old man emerged, and his voice was rickety as he asked, “Master Sav-van?”
Savaen nodded.
“Come with me.” Savaen pushed his chair back and followed, the doors sighing shut behind him. Row upon row upon row of tomes rose to each side like towers, guarding some unknown secrets. They turned, then turned again, and Savaen soon was completely lost; he wondered idly how the building he'd entered could hold so many hallways – perhaps it was larger on the inside than it looked, or he had somehow ended up underground.
They came to a stop before a pair of thick oak doors. The bookshelves extended in either direction, and a single bench sat between them. The old man stopped.
“This is the hall of maps.”
Without any further explanation, he turned to walk away. Savaen ignored the slight and turned to open the doors. They didn't move.
“It's locked,” he said.
The old man neither halted nor replied, and was already out of sight, his footsteps muffled by the bound leather. Savaen stood dumbly. He looked left, looked right. Nothing. No one. He waited for a minute, maybe more, and finally, after tapping his hand against his leg for a bit, he lifted it and knocked.
Instantly, a slotted window appeared in the door, and another old face looked through. The Parthecan smiled at him. “How can I help you?”
“They told me this is the Hall of Maps.”
“It is.” The old man continued smiling – neither impatient nor expectant. It was undreadable.
“And... might I enter?”
“Oh! Oh no. No, no – the Hall if for the Parthecans only. Very secret, this place – very important secrets here. Not for outsiders.” The man reached up, making to close the slot, and Savaen almost stuck his fingers in the way to stop him.
“Wait!” The man paused. “I am an old friend of the Kingdom. I have made thousands of... contributions to its endeavors, and... will again.” It wasn't the smoothest of bribery attempts, but the prospect of the map flashed in his mind again and again. Tentatively, he slid two weighty gold coins through the slot.
A long pause.
“Ah yes, Master Savvan. How could I have forgotten such a stalwart ally of my kingdom?” The bolt clacked, and the door swung open, revealing a long, high hallway. A series of windows on the right side let a little bit of light in, but they were only slanted sunbeams; they barely diffused to the far side of the room, where the maps lay.
“I am not offended.” The man closed the door behind him, and sat behind a desk, apparently ignoring Savaen.
“Er... would you be willing to help me a little more?”
The Parthecan looked up. “Yes?”
“I am looking for a very specific map.”
“Oh! And which would that be?”
“It is said that in the Archives you have a certain... chart... gifted to you very long ago by a Kitaluk navigator who married into your people.”
“We do. Turn left at the end of the hallway. There is a room on the right.”
Savaen thanked him and went the way indicated. This passage was even darker than the Hall of Maps had been to begin with. True to the man's word, after a while, he found a door on the right. With a somewhat foolish hope, Savaen tried it. It was, of course, locked.
He knocked. This time, there was no response.
He looked back down the hallway, but there didn't appear to be anyone in sight. Should he go back to the man at the front of the Hall?
After a moment, the decision was made for him. A third old Parthecan wandered by, and stopped when he saw Savaen. “Hello.”
“Are you one of the caretakers of this Archive?”
“I am.”
Savaen tried to come up with something intelligent-sounding, but the pang in his stomach was really starting to bother him, and what came out of his mouth was terser than he'd intended. “They told me I'd have access to the Hall of Maps, but this door seems to be locked. Could you possibly help?”
The Parthecan bobbled his head. “Such a thing is far above my position, sir. I would be risking much, were I to do so without going through the proper channels.”
This time, Savaen did not dither. He pushed a fistful of coins into the man's palm. It was likely more gold than he'd seen in his life. The Parthecan bobbled again, and dug in his pockets for the key to the chamber. With a click, the door opened.
“Please,” the old man said, holding the door open for him. The smell of must assaulted his nostrils.
Savaen slipped into the room and looked around. Here there were no shelves, just a table, dimly lit by a rim of windows about the top of the chamber. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust, and he approached the table cautiously.
A howl of fury.
The 'map' was nothing more than a network of tied sticks and stones.
* * * * * * * * *
After the War
Caroha, the Empire, and the Exatai (637 - 651 SR)
Caroha, the Empire, and the Exatai (637 - 651 SR)
The war was over, and Caroha stood unbroken.
It was the greatest city in the world, and the architect of its would-be destruction had been forced to withdraw to the north like an outrushing tide. The largest army ever assembled had been aimed at it, but the combined forces of the south had turned the Satar horde of the Karapeshai Exatai at the last moment. It had been the last in a series of many alliances of the Farubaida and the Moti; the Satar had come south time and again to try and bring ruin to the cradle of civilization, but once more, it hadn't worked.
Civilization was safe.
Thus it seemed. Then again, the victory hadn't been completed quite yet – the great city of Mahid lay in the hands of the Exatai's allies, the Airani. All agreed that this was a most egregious affront, and the Carohans quickly assembled an expedition to drive back the invaders before word came from the northeast – a peace had been signed by the Rosh, and the borders would return to precisely where they were before the war. It was a great relief for the Farubaida, who had grown tired of the constant fighting already, and a bitter disappointment for the Airani, who had hoped to secure the city as a major trading port of their own.
But it transpired that the peace hadn't completely settled things. The Accans of the Karapeshai Exatai, who had begun the war in the first place, had no intention of letting the Carohans retake Mahid. The city, one of the four key ports of the Farubaida on the Kern Sea, would assuredly prove a vital asset to the Satar if they could keep it – an easy way to keep the Carohans from returning to business as usual in the great sea. The Accans doubled down, leaving a large garrison in the city, and maintaining their fleet of nearly three hundred ships there to defend it.
But, as things had a habit of doing, it all fell apart too quickly.
The Accan fleet was really four fleets coupled together, and their Cyvekt allies' commander, one Lord Lukas, hearing of the Satar defeat in the south, decided that enough was enough. The Exatai was clearly about to be plunged into chaos, and he had little intention of being a pawn in the Accan game that was being played here. He left in the night, and the Accan fleet suddenly found itself facing a fleet almost double its size.
A battle had already been fought in the Mahid harbor at the beginning of the war, and the hulks of the ruined ships were still visibly strewn about the harbor. Noting their diminished numbers, and the apparent determination of the Farubaidans, the Accans decided to throw themselves into combat, but only to buy enough time for the garrison to evacuate. There would be little sense in fighting an obvious losing battle.
In the end, the Carohans retook the city with little bloodshed, but discovered unpleasantly that the city had been sacked by the Airani on their way out – just before the peace treaty had been signed. The riches of the city had been carried back to dress their own capital at Almadi – but technically there was very little that the Carohans could do about it. They somewhat bitterly named the incident the Rape of Mahid, and it would sour relations between the two countries for the decades to come, but ultimately the city would rebound quickly enough.
The Carohans went on to demand a recanting of the accusations the Satar had leveled at them at the start of the war – that they had been involved in the murder of the the great Satar Redeemer Talephas, or that they had instigated the war at all. The Satar, who as we shall see were pressed on their other flank, reluctantly agreed, and a grudging apology was delivered.
As quickly as that, the Farubaida was back at peace.
For the Karapeshai, things went rather differently. Arteras, Prince of the Scroll, had launched the war to establish a maritime empire spanning the Kern Sea, but his defeat had stripped him of respect in the eyes of the other Princes of the Exatai. Immediately after his defeat, they had begun to filter back to their homelands, gearing up for a civil war to claim the golden mask of the Redeemer, and practically nothing would be able to halt the ruin of the Exatai. Arteras immediately pledged support to Elikas, Prince of the Shield, who was immediately opposed by the Prince of the Wind, Ien.
Despite what seemed like overwhelming numbers on his side, Elikas could secure his victory neither quickly nor easily. The lesser princes flitted back and forth from one side to the other depending on who had the upper hand, and the Wind Princedom, being both vast and startlingly empty, was impossible to conquer conventionally. Dozens of Wind-affiliated cities had to be subjugated one by one, and the army of Ien managed to elude Elikas' much larger field army, instead inflicting defeats on his many subordinates. It was only after seven years that the new Redeemer could truly claim to rule from one end of the Exatai to the other, and even then, rebellious sentiments simmered.
Far away, to the south, the other great ally in the war, the Holy Moti Empire, stumbled out of the war barely intact. The Emprie had been on its last legs for decades now, and even though the alliance had pushed back the blow that might have toppled it, things still looked bleak.
In particular, the failure of Arteras to capture Caroha didn't change the fact that the Upper Sesh remained occupied by a large force of Satar under the command of Erphelion, styled the Prince-Chief of Magha. Not only was the region an immense and fertile land that in normal times might have paid a third of the Empire's taxes, it sat barely on the other side of a mountain pass from the heartland of the Moti Empire. The Satar presence there was deemed unacceptable.
No one had more interest in keeping the status quo intact than the Kothari Exatai, who had benefited for centuries from the long peace ushered in by the dominion of the Moti's Ayasi over the south. Annoyed at the rise of the Prince-Chief, they continued their march into the Upper Sesh, taking forty thousand of their best troops with the stated intention of returning the land to the Moti. It was a tremendous army, and it easily outclassed anything the local Satar could put in the field, but much like their kin to the north, Erphelion's men had no intention of staying put.
Leading their enemies on a merry chase through the whole of Satara, they were not even deterred when the Kothari set up siege around the city of Magha and reduced it over the course of a bloody year. The resistance continued well past this, a huge drain on the resources of the easterners, but still the Kothari persisted – the old world was too important to give up on so easily.
By 651 SR, the Satara army had been bruised and battered, and it seemed like the Kothari finally had them cornered – with the promise of ending the war in reach. But things changed in an instant once again...
* * * * * * * * *
The War for the Abrea
The Trahana, Dulama, Naran, and Noaunnaha (635 - 655 SR)
The Trahana, Dulama, Naran, and Noaunnaha (635 - 655 SR)
It was already evident that the Trahana invasion of the Vithanama had failed. Much treasure and manpower had been sunk into the war, and things seemed rather indecisive on the battlefield, to be sure, but Satores' return to the west and his successful defense of Tiagho meant the key to the Trahana strategy had unreeled. With little inclination to continue the war on either side, the peace was signed without too much fanfare, as the Vithanama worked to repair the damage and the Trahana turned their attentions elsewhere.
In this case, elsewhere meant Naran.
Angered by what they viewed as a backstabbing, the Trahana left some soldiers to defend against possible Vithanama reprisals, and then took a huge field army to cast the Narannue out of the north. Against the full fury of their southern neighbors, Naran found it difficult to defend. Aeda fell without much of a struggle, and soon they were cast entirely out of the Abrea valley, only holding the fortresses in the northern foothills of the Kossai – and the Thuaitl valley.
With the Trahana seemed determined to exact thorough revenge on Naran, the security of the whole northern kingdom was at stake. The Onnaran finally managed to secure a deal with the Nevathi khagan, hiring a number of his men as mercenaries, and marching them south in full force to repel what they regarded as the greatest threat they'd ever faced.
The fighting that followed would be confusing, at best. The introduction of Nevathi mercenaries equalized the combatants, more or less, and the Trahana were fighting at the very end of their capabilities – supplies had to be brought in from hundreds of miles away, and with the Grand Canal in shambles, this made fighting in the Thuaitl valley no mean feat. They would be supplemented by supplies brought in from Noaunnahanue smugglers, who had a great deal of interest in seeing their old enemies falter. But even as the Trahana made gains on this front, they had trouble with Nevathi raiders in the north, who quickly came to threaten Aeda again.
The turning point came when a new general entered the scene – one Salassai, who had previously met with some success against the Vithanama – who took the army at Hachtli and conducted a whirlwind campaign that tossed the Narannue out of the Thuaitl valley entirely. Leaving some garrisons here, he turned about and managed to inflict a surprising defeat against the Nevathi, catching them off-guard in the west bank of Luchas and setting their camp afire.
Salassai advanced further – to the very frontiers of the old Dulama Empire, but he had neither the inclination nor the wherewithal to continue into the heartland of Naran.
But the damage had been done. Reeling from the loss, and his prestige having lost quite a lot of its luster, the reigning Onnaran, Aérean Ón Nuín, faced rebellion in his own ranks – all of which was rather exacerbated when he was in fact killed by a rogue element of the Nevathi mercenaries. His son Rógan Dea immediately rose to the throne, but his situation was perilous indeed. Many had hoped that the Nevathi, having won riches both from the fighting, from their pay, and then by turning on their masters, would simply return home.
But a large part of their number looked at the turmoil that wracked the Khaganate across the mountains, and decided it wasn't worth the effort – they simply took up residence around Dael.
What became known as the Gurgheli Chiefdoms after their most prominent leader proved to be one of the biggest mistakes the Narannue had made in hundreds of years. Raiding all of their neighbors more or less equally, they were subject to a number of campaigns to push them out of the hills, without much success. Luchas (whom the Trahana had given leave to govern the northern Thala valley), soon lost control of the gold mines that made the area valuable in the first place; the Thuaitl cities declined, and the Grand Canal finally fell into irreparable ruin. In Ther, though the loyalist faction had finally won the civil war, the Gurgheli brought continued carnage, and many fled the peninsula to resettle in Femiran or Noaunnaha.
And, of course, the Narannue lost Dael, though they managed to defend Limach against nomadic incursions, and shut out a few bands who tried to take the pass to join their increasingly prosperous southern brothers. It was meager consolation, but it was something.
* * * * * * * * *
The War of Tin Tan Tar
The Northwest (639 - 684 SR)
The Northwest (639 - 684 SR)
The coast leaned into the wind, and the sky swept a thick fog over rock and redwood. A gentle mist enveloped the harbor, and a boat entering it could be forgiven for being disappointed. This was Tin Tan Tar, the city of man's desire. And nothing of it could be seen.
But then, as the ship drew closer, the spires appeared from the fog like leviathans surfacing from the clouds. And in the cascade of morning sunlight, the colored cloth banners that stretched across the streets of the city turned the mist to a dozen different hues – red and blue, gold and green, until one was so enthralled by the whole display that they forgot they were in a city at all, but rather some variegated heaven, foreign to all comers. For this was Tin Tan Tar, the object of man's desire.
As the clouds cleared and the cityscape rolled back, one could see the undulated heights behind it – first the Seamount, overlooking everything, then behind it, the hills rising again and again, topped by a citadel, then a fortress, then watchtowers on into the distance as the river curled about the southern forest until you got to the farmland far inland, just before the long and level rise to the steppe.
Far away, a thousand miles or maybe more, a man titled khagan or quem had been bowed low. His people, the Sharhi, had traveled many paths to avoid the ravages of the growing Satar Exatai, and he had finally led them to safety in the depths of the northern woods. And when they rode into the sunset, they found the Tacha, the first great river they had seen since the Einan, and the first place to bear great towns since the Exatai they fled from. Here were cities ripe for plunder – or, if they were cleverer, cities willing to pay tribute to avoid a sack.
They were cleverer. The arrangement continued so long that men eventually forgot its origins – almost – and the cities became a part of the Sharhi Empire, growing ever further and faster, until the lines of communication were taut as a bowstring, fully drawn.
The lines snapped. A man named Etain gathered with a half dozen of his peers, and decided they were better off being their own people. They elected him their khagan, and he led them in battle to crush the Sharhi who tried to bring them back into the fold, burning Eirat to the ground and leaving them broken. It had been a quick victory, and decisive, but he would spend dozens of years simply consolidating his power; it was no easy task to build an empire.
And now they stood on the edge of a continent, and they had washed their boots in the Sunset Ocean, but still they were not content. A name still rang clear in the air – Tin Tan Tar, the city of man's desire – and the steppe host prepared to march.
Far away again, a different host gathered under a different banner. This was Merat, the trading-post-turned-city-turned-capital of the Khatri, and the Vashalai had called his vassals to his side. Why, no one quite knew. It had been years since Batu Khartal had been acclaimed, and his taking of the mask had been followed by years of peace and prosperity. The Chamshi lingered on the frontier, to be sure, but everyone knew they had to worry about their own southern border – the Reokhar could easily dispatch them with a concerted campaign.
On the other side, there was nothing. The Khatri stood almost alone at the edge of the world. Everyone knew that their dominion ended at the Sunset, and that all that lay beyond the horizon's edge was an endless sea, full of strange beasts and incredible storms. Surely nothing could come from that direction, either.
But a rumor fluttered beneath the mystery. They had assembled for a single purpose, it said – Tin Tan Tar.
The city that lay between was not ignorant of their neighbors' intentions. Tin Tan Tar had many informants, and they had built a new set of fortifications for just this purpose. Indeed, an army had been dispatched to the southern riverland, where they could set up a series of frontier fortresses, ready to stymie the advance of the Kyumai before they even got to the city. Messengers had reached out to the Khatri, with the intention of signing an alliance, turning one steppe power against another. Redwoods fell by the dozen, and new ships were assembled in the Sunset Ocean. They made sail for Houbai, the far northern town, and secured it without too much trouble, quickly turning it into a base to infiltrate behind the Kyumai lines.
But such subtlety was not limited to the city itself. The Kyumai sent messengers to the Khatri as well, requesting they join in the war against the city-state, noting that they could share the undoubtedly rich spoils of war. It wouldn't be until the decisive moment of the conflict that they would find out which side Batu intended to support.
Between the Kyumai and the city stood a line of fortresses in the far south of the river valley, and it was here that the city-dwellers intended to hold the Kyumai to a stalemate before their allies could arrive, and bleed them dry. Of course, Etain knew quite well that subduing the fortresses in the wooded and broken hills would be a brutal slog – his soldiers had little experience with siegecraft, and their inaccessibility would make assault all but impossible. Instead, a small detachment raided the lands around the fortresses, while the greater part of his army wheeled about them to strike directly at the city itself.
Another detachment broke off to harry the Tin Tan Tar forces that might come back to their capital's aid, and utterly decimated their attempt to break through in the Battle of the Cut Flowers, while the larger part of the host bore down on the city and settled in for the siege. No one was really sure how to proceed from here, but the army dug a line of earthworks around the city itself, and hired Nevathi engineers prepared engines of war to hurl stones above the walls and into the streets themselves.
But this was all they could do without significantly more preparations – the siege towers would slowly be raised, but without the tools and only relying on the expertise of a few men, the campaign would have to stall here. Meanwhile, the city's ships darted from the harbor and continually set fire to the encampments in the black of the night, frustrating Etain immensely.
At long last, the khagan decided to take action, and raised a tower on the edge of the harbor itself of stone. Filling it with great catapults, his men bore down on the city ships that dared to come near, and sank several with the sheer weight of the rocks they threw. With the raids now directing their fury against the stone tower, his siege engines could continue their construction unobstructed. Their work had added urgency as they moved forward – the Khatri soldiers that approached had questionable loyalties, and certainly they could not rely on starving the city out; such was its naval might.
But everything came down to who the Khatri soldiers would join, and how quickly they could join the fight. Both sides eyed their advance warily, and consequently neither really wanted to oppose them – for fear of provoking them – or aid them in crossing the river.
Eventually, a fleet of Tin Tan Tar ships sailed up the river and met with Batu. After a long meeting with the Vashalai, the commander evidently decided that he could trust him (what exactly had been said would never be revealed), and the Tin Tan Tar worked feverishly to lash a bridge of tree trunks crossed with planks. Crossing immediately, the Khatri arrived directly in the rear of the siege lines.
The Battle of Tin Tan Tar decided the war almost instantly. Though the Kyumai outnumbered their foes individually, the unexpected alliance of Khatri with the city meant they were caught between hammer and anvil. Etain abandoned the siege immediately, and tried his best to withdraw the entire force to the east, but had a great deal of difficulty extracting himself. In the end, he barely escaped with his life, and a much diminished army – thousands had died, or even deserted to their erstwhile foes.
Tin Tan Tar had been saved, but it was unclear how much independence it would retain. One steppe army had been traded for another, and the Khatri now sat outside their walls.
Fortunately, Batu seemed bizarrely unconcerned with expanding his own empire into the city. Instead, he simply declared that his army would protect the region going forward, and he politely hinted that a gift in return might be nice – something Tin Tan Tar was only too happy to provide.
Within a couple of years, the city became much like any other city, providing a reasonable but still substantial sum to the Eshai. At the same time, Tin Tan Tar could exert a much greater force over its neighbors than any of the rest of the Khatri cities, and it launched military campaigns independent of the Vashalai, attempting to secure the Tacha, and hoping to defeat the khagan of the Kyumai entirely. Neither side could really gain the upper hand, and it wasn't until Batu himself joined the war that they decisively captured the valley.