North King
blech
- Joined
- Jan 2, 2004
- Messages
- 18,165
This is fairly soon, fyi.
End of Empires - N3S III
- Thread starter North King
- Start date
This is fairly soon, fyi.
Lord of Elves
Suede-Denim Secret Police
- Joined
- Oct 31, 2009
- Messages
- 6,976
My ability to send in orders of any quality is limited at this point. If at all possible, I can have orders in by tomorrow afternoon. If such an extension isn't tenable, I'll see what I can do.
Terrance888
Discord Reigns
I add my voice to this request. Tomorrow being Sunday.
conehead234
Braves on the Warpath
i WILL SEND SOONISH
North King
blech
- Joined
- Jan 2, 2004
- Messages
- 18,165
I am still accepting with prejudice, but I'd suggest late people send sooner rather than [even] later.
alex994
Hail Divine Emperor!
OOC: Sorry, my internet was down. I just sent in orders 
Thlayli
Le Pétit Prince
It's mostly my fault that the culture of Acca has been so neglected. Hopefully this will begin to fix that; this can also form the basis of what will be the Accan article on the wiki.
A Brief Reintroduction to Acca
To foreigners commonly used to monocultural nations, the lasting Accani-Satar union might seem strange, even contrived. How an equestrian semi-nomadic entity of steppe and desert and a sedentary civilization of coast-dwelling traders could come to the 'great entwining' mentioned so often by later historians is easily incomprehensible to those not intimately familiar with the two races, especially since the Satar possessed an almost untarnished record of devastating and enslaving settled, urbanized peoples such as the Accani. Indeed, to the Exatai of the Satar, the Accani were low hanging fruit.
But the Accani are an opportunistic and pragmatic people, and the Accanon (singular, “The Acca”
was a state well prepared to adapt itself to changing times.
The reasons for this pragmatism were self-evident. The last independent scion of the ancient Lutto culture, Accani history was one of watching their cousins steadily encroached upon, defeated, and eventually annexed by the 'barbarians' of the Prokym. The Autocritiate’s centralized conciliar government (with the elected king for life, the Autocracces, advised by a league of powerful hereditary nobles responsible for maintaining order and collecting taxes, the Censoratta) was built in direct response to the failures of the Lutto republics.
The Accani themselves maintained neutrality with the Prokym and even expanded south, but they were always painfully aware of their more powerful northern neighbors. However, as long as the interminable wars between the Unionists of Seshweay and the great admirals of the Triluin Empire continued, the Autocritiate of Acca needed only fear northern invasion, a threat for which they were well prepared.
With the catastrophic sack of Seis under Arastephas, that changed. Now the Accani had to face an ancient enemy to their north, and a newer, more fearsome threat to their south. Before the coming of the Satar, cultic gods of the Lutto were invented, mutated, and thrown aside as the political winds demanded. As a result, when the political winds demanded the Accani change to survive yet again, they did so, famously sending an emissary to Magha offering to pay tribute and convert to Ardavan. The conversion itself was child's play; Talledi (to use the god's Lutto name) simply expropriated the numerous mythical characteristics that had once belonged to Satoccos and other Lutto god-heroes.
The Exatai was taken entirely off guard, but Second Redeemer Atraxes, known for his good discretion, accepted. It was a natural alliance in ways more than ideological. Both states had slave-based economies; the Satar had a penchant for acquiring slaves, and the Accani had the resources and trade ties to sell them. Accani merchants acquired an almost exclusive monopoly on trade with the Exatai, and made a heady profit in shipping the Exatai's more lucrative goods (like gemstones and horses) abroad. In return, Satar Princes acquired credit and liquidity from their successful conquests and landholdings.
The position of Autocracces dwindled to that of a ceremonial figurehead after the death of Atraxes’ contemporary Govados, in large part due to the actions of the Censoratta. After the treaty with Atraxes, Censoratta were the ones most aggressively pushing the adoption of Ardavan, and the Satar mask-culture, using Satar ties as a means of making Accanon their personal fiefdom. The Censoratta began to style themselves as ‘Princes of the Accan Tribe’ in diplomacy with their Satar neighbors, and used Satar acknowledgment of their authority as leverage to weaken and ultimately eliminate the institution of the Autocracces by the end of Atraxes’ reign.
Contrary to the opinion of many misinformed historians, there was a lasting Accan-Satar partnership for generations before the campaigns of Macrinus, which brought about political union.
As for the history of Macrinus, that needs no telling.
This abbreviated history, however, tells us little of the aesthetics and nature of the Accan culture.
But it is not impossible to learn.
The Nuccia of Acca
To an outside observer, Accani cities like Acca, Alma, and Onessa are fairly unimpressive. They are well defended, with the angular towers and crenellated double blockhouses favored by their southern neighbors. But the houses themselves are fairly blank, uniform stucco walls and ceramic roof tiles, with small black doors presented to the world. Public squares have slightly more ornamentation, with statues of Talledi and the occasional Lutto mythic hero, or more commonly Macrinus, Regalius Tephas, and other long-dead Princes of the Sun. But especially compared to the vistas and architecture of ancient Satar cities like Magha or Xephaias, the Accan cities are unimpressive.
Or rather, we must clarify again, unimpressive to an outsider.
This reveals, despite the many similarities, one of the key differences between Accani and Satar. Where the Satar revel, even in their architecture, in the public expression of power and might, the Accani stress critical emphasis on the private and secret nature of power. To quote Govados, the last successful Autocracces of Acca, “Deception is power.”
We can begin to unravel this deception by looking at the street plan of the Karapeshai-era Accani city. One will always find a twisting, beguiling maze of streets and alleyways. This is designed to confuse any interloper, be it a foreign invader or, more likely, a rival family from another part of the city. Accani clans have been known to alter the street plans at will, and accurate maps were more closely guarded than gold. Without a local Accani guide, it would be notoriously easy to become hopelessly lost in the maze, and then subsequently to lose one’s possessions or even one’s life.
Besides the complex shifting web of narrow streets, the Accani city is divided by many interior walls; using them as a defense in a siege takes a secondary role to keeping rivals out of the part of town controlled by one’s family. The Lutto are a notoriously clannish culture, with generational rivalries spilling blood across centuries. The competition to achieve a level of power sufficient to become a Censoratton is intense, especially since the Censoriate is hereditary: In order for any new family to succeed to the mask, all the Censoratta’s heirs must die. This sponsored a culture of assassination, and in turn a culture of paranoia. So, the most powerful families simply walled off the sections of the city under their control, and tightly guarded the gates. This would not deter a skilled assassin, but it certainly limited public bloodletting. (Not to mention, the truly dedicated will find a dozen secret entrances away from the gates.)
If one is lucky enough to get out of the ‘neutral’ or ‘public’ parts of the city into one of the private quarters, something reasonably impossible without a personal invitation, everything changes. In the public city, the Accans wear their masks, and wear somber clothes of grey and brown. In the private quarters, they go unmasked among their friends and family, and wear bright linens of remarkable hues, colored by imported Opulensi dyes.
Within the heart of every private quarter is a nuccion. To call it a garden would not do justice to the nuccia; they are eloquently sculpted paradises of private serenity. The Accans revel in their public secrecy and privacy, making the nuccia, their one place of complete emotional liberation, their greatest treasures. Were a family to have its nuccion burned in a clan war, it would be considered both a mortal wound and a cause for an eternal vendetta, more so than killing a newborn babe.
In a traditional Accan city, neighborhood, family, and friendship are all closely intertwined. The upkeep of the nuccia, the locations of which are kept secret even within the private quarters, is everyone’s responsibility, and the wealth of the clan contributes to its enrichment. In the accounts which have managed to escape destruction, we hear of fountains ornamented with wrought-silver grape vines, filling tiled pools with cold and warm water for swimming, the tiles themselves forming a mosaic of Talledi’s battle with the sea spirit. They describe latticed garden paths smelling of citrus and xetai, the trees manipulated to form a maze of green tunnels, within which benches and kalis-boards carved from lapis lazuli and purple marble are arranged in secluded bowers. Others describe glass canals filled with exotic fish from the Nakalani. It is difficult, in many cases, to discern truth from wild speculation, as many accounts claim that the nuccia are filled with secret treasure, while others, almost certainly fabrications, tell lurid tales of orgies and human sacrifice.
Those nuccia that remain, if they remain, are nigh impossible to access. It remains difficult to ascertain if the nuccion is built with a certain pattern in mind, or if all nuccia are unique. Some historians have denied even their physical existence, claiming that the idea of the nuccion is simply a ‘mental garden’ of interior fulfillment. Curiously enough, there are some Accans that make this argument. The rest are silent on the topic.
Regardless, the nuccia show, more than any other cultural artifact, the nature of Accani culture: Their secrecy, their insularity, and their closely, cautiously guarded wealth, power, and beauty.
A Brief Reintroduction to Acca
To foreigners commonly used to monocultural nations, the lasting Accani-Satar union might seem strange, even contrived. How an equestrian semi-nomadic entity of steppe and desert and a sedentary civilization of coast-dwelling traders could come to the 'great entwining' mentioned so often by later historians is easily incomprehensible to those not intimately familiar with the two races, especially since the Satar possessed an almost untarnished record of devastating and enslaving settled, urbanized peoples such as the Accani. Indeed, to the Exatai of the Satar, the Accani were low hanging fruit.
But the Accani are an opportunistic and pragmatic people, and the Accanon (singular, “The Acca”
was a state well prepared to adapt itself to changing times.The reasons for this pragmatism were self-evident. The last independent scion of the ancient Lutto culture, Accani history was one of watching their cousins steadily encroached upon, defeated, and eventually annexed by the 'barbarians' of the Prokym. The Autocritiate’s centralized conciliar government (with the elected king for life, the Autocracces, advised by a league of powerful hereditary nobles responsible for maintaining order and collecting taxes, the Censoratta) was built in direct response to the failures of the Lutto republics.
The Accani themselves maintained neutrality with the Prokym and even expanded south, but they were always painfully aware of their more powerful northern neighbors. However, as long as the interminable wars between the Unionists of Seshweay and the great admirals of the Triluin Empire continued, the Autocritiate of Acca needed only fear northern invasion, a threat for which they were well prepared.
With the catastrophic sack of Seis under Arastephas, that changed. Now the Accani had to face an ancient enemy to their north, and a newer, more fearsome threat to their south. Before the coming of the Satar, cultic gods of the Lutto were invented, mutated, and thrown aside as the political winds demanded. As a result, when the political winds demanded the Accani change to survive yet again, they did so, famously sending an emissary to Magha offering to pay tribute and convert to Ardavan. The conversion itself was child's play; Talledi (to use the god's Lutto name) simply expropriated the numerous mythical characteristics that had once belonged to Satoccos and other Lutto god-heroes.
The Exatai was taken entirely off guard, but Second Redeemer Atraxes, known for his good discretion, accepted. It was a natural alliance in ways more than ideological. Both states had slave-based economies; the Satar had a penchant for acquiring slaves, and the Accani had the resources and trade ties to sell them. Accani merchants acquired an almost exclusive monopoly on trade with the Exatai, and made a heady profit in shipping the Exatai's more lucrative goods (like gemstones and horses) abroad. In return, Satar Princes acquired credit and liquidity from their successful conquests and landholdings.
The position of Autocracces dwindled to that of a ceremonial figurehead after the death of Atraxes’ contemporary Govados, in large part due to the actions of the Censoratta. After the treaty with Atraxes, Censoratta were the ones most aggressively pushing the adoption of Ardavan, and the Satar mask-culture, using Satar ties as a means of making Accanon their personal fiefdom. The Censoratta began to style themselves as ‘Princes of the Accan Tribe’ in diplomacy with their Satar neighbors, and used Satar acknowledgment of their authority as leverage to weaken and ultimately eliminate the institution of the Autocracces by the end of Atraxes’ reign.
Contrary to the opinion of many misinformed historians, there was a lasting Accan-Satar partnership for generations before the campaigns of Macrinus, which brought about political union.
As for the history of Macrinus, that needs no telling.
This abbreviated history, however, tells us little of the aesthetics and nature of the Accan culture.
But it is not impossible to learn.
The Nuccia of Acca
To an outside observer, Accani cities like Acca, Alma, and Onessa are fairly unimpressive. They are well defended, with the angular towers and crenellated double blockhouses favored by their southern neighbors. But the houses themselves are fairly blank, uniform stucco walls and ceramic roof tiles, with small black doors presented to the world. Public squares have slightly more ornamentation, with statues of Talledi and the occasional Lutto mythic hero, or more commonly Macrinus, Regalius Tephas, and other long-dead Princes of the Sun. But especially compared to the vistas and architecture of ancient Satar cities like Magha or Xephaias, the Accan cities are unimpressive.
Or rather, we must clarify again, unimpressive to an outsider.
This reveals, despite the many similarities, one of the key differences between Accani and Satar. Where the Satar revel, even in their architecture, in the public expression of power and might, the Accani stress critical emphasis on the private and secret nature of power. To quote Govados, the last successful Autocracces of Acca, “Deception is power.”
We can begin to unravel this deception by looking at the street plan of the Karapeshai-era Accani city. One will always find a twisting, beguiling maze of streets and alleyways. This is designed to confuse any interloper, be it a foreign invader or, more likely, a rival family from another part of the city. Accani clans have been known to alter the street plans at will, and accurate maps were more closely guarded than gold. Without a local Accani guide, it would be notoriously easy to become hopelessly lost in the maze, and then subsequently to lose one’s possessions or even one’s life.
Besides the complex shifting web of narrow streets, the Accani city is divided by many interior walls; using them as a defense in a siege takes a secondary role to keeping rivals out of the part of town controlled by one’s family. The Lutto are a notoriously clannish culture, with generational rivalries spilling blood across centuries. The competition to achieve a level of power sufficient to become a Censoratton is intense, especially since the Censoriate is hereditary: In order for any new family to succeed to the mask, all the Censoratta’s heirs must die. This sponsored a culture of assassination, and in turn a culture of paranoia. So, the most powerful families simply walled off the sections of the city under their control, and tightly guarded the gates. This would not deter a skilled assassin, but it certainly limited public bloodletting. (Not to mention, the truly dedicated will find a dozen secret entrances away from the gates.)
If one is lucky enough to get out of the ‘neutral’ or ‘public’ parts of the city into one of the private quarters, something reasonably impossible without a personal invitation, everything changes. In the public city, the Accans wear their masks, and wear somber clothes of grey and brown. In the private quarters, they go unmasked among their friends and family, and wear bright linens of remarkable hues, colored by imported Opulensi dyes.
Within the heart of every private quarter is a nuccion. To call it a garden would not do justice to the nuccia; they are eloquently sculpted paradises of private serenity. The Accans revel in their public secrecy and privacy, making the nuccia, their one place of complete emotional liberation, their greatest treasures. Were a family to have its nuccion burned in a clan war, it would be considered both a mortal wound and a cause for an eternal vendetta, more so than killing a newborn babe.
In a traditional Accan city, neighborhood, family, and friendship are all closely intertwined. The upkeep of the nuccia, the locations of which are kept secret even within the private quarters, is everyone’s responsibility, and the wealth of the clan contributes to its enrichment. In the accounts which have managed to escape destruction, we hear of fountains ornamented with wrought-silver grape vines, filling tiled pools with cold and warm water for swimming, the tiles themselves forming a mosaic of Talledi’s battle with the sea spirit. They describe latticed garden paths smelling of citrus and xetai, the trees manipulated to form a maze of green tunnels, within which benches and kalis-boards carved from lapis lazuli and purple marble are arranged in secluded bowers. Others describe glass canals filled with exotic fish from the Nakalani. It is difficult, in many cases, to discern truth from wild speculation, as many accounts claim that the nuccia are filled with secret treasure, while others, almost certainly fabrications, tell lurid tales of orgies and human sacrifice.
Those nuccia that remain, if they remain, are nigh impossible to access. It remains difficult to ascertain if the nuccion is built with a certain pattern in mind, or if all nuccia are unique. Some historians have denied even their physical existence, claiming that the idea of the nuccion is simply a ‘mental garden’ of interior fulfillment. Curiously enough, there are some Accans that make this argument. The rest are silent on the topic.
Regardless, the nuccia show, more than any other cultural artifact, the nature of Accani culture: Their secrecy, their insularity, and their closely, cautiously guarded wealth, power, and beauty.
Abaddon
Deity
Really not feeling this anymore, sorry. Consider myself "out".
Hailoaia
It was in the confluence many the tectonic shifts in culture that she was formed.
Farubaida, they called her.
Built in the bosom of a ruined city.
Caroha, they called her.
It was raised on the rising tide of the liberated, powered by the fury and grief of ancient allies, armed with a flaming blade of vengeance and inspired by a yearning for a golden age many centuries lost to the present.
Farubaida. It could be said that if Opporia was her father, Aitah was the mother, and Haiao presided between them all.
Still, this would not truly express the Furubaida o Caroha in its totality.
More than any other rival before her, she had been built upon a foundation of political ideology. A foundation of strength in unity, seeking to transcend the boundaries of states, empires and petty kingdoms.
Farubaida. Federation. A new beginning for an exhausted people, a beaming beacon of new hopes and dreams.
A grand dream drawn from uncertain times.
It was in the confluence many the tectonic shifts in culture that she was formed.
Farubaida, they called her.
Built in the bosom of a ruined city.
Caroha, they called her.
It was raised on the rising tide of the liberated, powered by the fury and grief of ancient allies, armed with a flaming blade of vengeance and inspired by a yearning for a golden age many centuries lost to the present.
Farubaida. It could be said that if Opporia was her father, Aitah was the mother, and Haiao presided between them all.
Still, this would not truly express the Furubaida o Caroha in its totality.
More than any other rival before her, she had been built upon a foundation of political ideology. A foundation of strength in unity, seeking to transcend the boundaries of states, empires and petty kingdoms.
Farubaida. Federation. A new beginning for an exhausted people, a beaming beacon of new hopes and dreams.
A grand dream drawn from uncertain times.
...when she was young, a man of Farou came to her Father's door, and said unto the Father, our Lord Aya'se: I have heard Haiao speak of thee and he calls you Lady and Mistress both? What am I to do, for I am much vexed? To which the Father replied: it is of my daughter that you speak, for she is our Lady and Mistress both. To this the man of Haiao knew not what to say, save this: take me to this lady and mistress both. To which Aya'se replied: she is asleep now in her crib but I shall let you sit by her side. Now the man of Haiao knew not what to think but he followed and this was how the Hundred began.
*
She is the light of the world: the sun turns his face upon the world for love of her: she is honoured in the flowering of trees. She is Aitah, she is the Lady, and she is Here. Furubaida o Caroha. Furubaida o Caroha. Furubaida o Caroha. She is three, she is thrice, all things in three!
*
She is the light of the world: the sun turns his face upon the world for love of her: she is honoured in the flowering of trees. She is Aitah, she is the Lady, and she is Here. Furubaida o Caroha. Furubaida o Caroha. Furubaida o Caroha. She is three, she is thrice, all things in three!
The Senate of the Third Union henceforth decrees that:
Signed in HER name in the five-hundred and tenth year of the Second Union.
So shall it be now and forever. Wa.
* * *
The Senate of the Third Union henceforth decrees that:
Signed in HER name in the five-hundred and twenty-fifth year of the Second Union.
So shall it be now and forever. Wa.
- Kargan shall henceforth be ruled as a condominium of the great peoples of Farou, Trilui and Seshweay.
- The Faerouhaiaou are henceforth under the protection of HER Third Union.
- HER Union shall take as constituent states Neruss and the Empire of Dremai.
- The Empire of Helsia are henceforth brothers and allies of the HER Third Union.
- The Third Union shall undertake with the blessing of HER to establish the Hundred so that HER light may be spread upon the world.
Signed in HER name in the five-hundred and tenth year of the Second Union.
So shall it be now and forever. Wa.
* * *
The Senate of the Third Union henceforth decrees that:
- A Federation shall be formed, the Federation of Kargan, the Constituent Members of which shall be:
- The Third Union, composed of HER Constituent States of Mahid, Hanno, Neruss and Seshweay, Dremai;
- Faerouhaiaou, as HER own state; and
- Helsia, as HER own state.
- That these states, shall, with the exception of Seshweay, Dremai and Helsia be granted one vote each, with the aforementioned granted two, in matters of Federation business, and that Faerouhaiaou in recognition of her service be given the role of Convenor of the Council.
- That the business of the council be fixed to matters of foreign policy, for which there shall be one, and matters affecting the Federation, and that all members are bound, henceforth, and in perpetuity, to defend the rights and dignity of all the other members.
Signed in HER name in the five-hundred and twenty-fifth year of the Second Union.
So shall it be now and forever. Wa.
Thlayli
Le Pétit Prince
I recommend Diadem Reforged, by the eminent Vol Jului, for advice on your imperial project. You can find it at your local library. Well, the ones we or you haven't burned. 
Thlayli
Le Pétit Prince
Government by Committee: This time, it works!
Thlayli
Le Pétit Prince
What a compelling argument for anarchy. 
