End of Empires - N3S III

LOOK DOWN Foo

Are you ready? I am.



It is said that the world is scarcely large enough to satisfy one man, let alone mankind. And sometimes it is difficult to believe. The sky looks so vast, and the earth so broad. There are uncountable trees, the fields are fertile, and the seas have more fish than we could ever hope to eat. How could this planet be too small?

And yet, other times I dream. I see the world as a bird would see it, men as small as ants. The buildings skate across my vision, forests pass in seconds. Still, the world continues past the horizon. But my wings stretch, and I soar. Soon the men are invisible, and even the greatest cities become mere patches of dust on a blue and white world. The forests blur, the moon passes by me, swelling into a golden and silver orb with hints of crimson... and yet still I fly, higher and higher, the world becoming naught but a blue dot, all our struggles boiling down to a world that is almost all water, with a few creatures who cannot even survive on the majority of its surface claiming dominion over all of it...



A great captain must conduct his wars as the great rivers conduct themselves. Though the spectacle of the cataracts may impress the most, it is the steady currents that will carve canyons and fill oceans. ~ Cairl I, First of the Dulama Emperors

What are the Gods but the servants of man? ~ Duke Tiarjia of Liang

It is easy to give up hope. We live in a world where the three legged dog is the fattest, where men feed the one-winged pigeon, where the beggar remains on the street for years without dying or changing.

What can we do, then? We Satar?

Eat the dog. Roast the pigeon. Kill the man. ~ Petraxes the Wind Lord and his Son


When last we looked at this world, a great storm had just passed. Hundreds of thousands had fought and died for control of the heart of the cradle of civilization, and just as many for its peripheries.

The north witnessed the triumph of the Evyni over their great rivals, the Ming, and that empire now looked poised to straddle the northern latitudes and found a dynasty that would rival or perhaps even surpass those of the fabled south. The Sirans had suddenly burst forth from nonentities to major players on the world stage, while the Seshweay, the protagonists of a long, long epic, finally faltered and fell. The Satar had reestablished their empire and founded another one in a new mountain home to the west, while the Trilui had remade their empire and were looking to expand once again. The Uggor had seen defeat and near-ruin, but still managed to defeat so many foes.

And dozens of other nations around the periphery started along their journeys – some surely to greatness, and some to ruin, though which ones are which not even I can say.

So, like a forest that has just witnessed a wildfire of incomparable fury and beauty, the cradle was set to bloom once more, with just a little time. Two hundred years; three lifetimes. A blink of an eye in the passionless gaze of history.

Much has changed.


Compared to previous eras, this time can be considered one of stability – and perhaps even prosperity. For, while it ended in death and terror, with the world spiraling down into what promised to be a new and awful age, for these short two centuries, peace was the general rule. Populations rose, the governments found themselves commissioning great works to display their preeminence, and few nations fell wholesale.

But of course there were exceptions, and so we begin with one.


The east has always been stereotyped as a collection of petty trading states, too cowardly to try and conquer one another, too obsessed with wealth to create culture, too busy meditating to try and influence the events of the wider world.

Of course, even before now, the idea was falling apart. The Opulensi, supposedly content to trade with any and everyone, had just swept aside several of their more established western foes and creating an entirely new paradigm of naval warfare, and a new fleet that surpassed any that the world had seen before.. In the hands of the new regime, Indagahor seemed more like a warrior cult than a religion of removed enlightenment-seeking mystics, while the politics of the region grew increasingly strained as it became clear – at least to the rulers – that the trade routes were not infinite, and at some point it must become a zero-sum game.

But there were other changes afoot as well. King Duras of Leun crowned himself again, calling his land an empire. Not content with this, he made his crowning the start of a new calendar system, ensuring that it would live on in history. At least, history books written by Leunan scholars while the calendar were in use. Yet these were not entirely happy times, for Leun still held a monopoly over trade to the east, and actively forced the other merchant states to remain on the other side of the straits. Their declaration of empire-dom, of course, only infuriated the established powers even more.

Thus, already by the year 290, the Nahari Empire attempted to break this monopoly in a quick naval expedition into the Leunan Sea. The preparations for the fleet were carried out with the utmost of secrecy, attempting to catch the Leunans by surprise, and thus force the straits before the other nation was even aware that they were being threatened.

Of course, things did not go to plan, as they have a habit of doing. Fleets were still surprisingly lethargic, beaching every night to avoid being shredded by bad weather in the darkness. Such habits meant the Leunans detected the approach of the Nahari fleet from some distance, and were able to muster up a defense at the straits themselves. Even though the waterway was obviously broad enough for the Nahari to attempt to find a way around, the Leunans managed to intercept them, and in a furious series of naval skirmishes lasting several days and nights, finally drove them back.

The general conflict that this precipitated did not end so easily, of course. Leun calculated that a strike against the Nahari would teach them and hopefully the rest of the westerners a lesson, while the Nahari felt that they still had a chance at beating the eastern empire if they played their hand right.

Naturally, neither side really managed to enforce their will, and what resulted were sixteen years of stalemate. When the two sides finally signed a peace, neither one could claim any kind of victory at all: not even a city had changed hands, unless you counted a sack or three. Nor did the war really enforce any kind of status quo – its true effect was to weaken both powers for the challenges that were about to come.

The first such challenge was a newcomer to the East – the Savirai.

Originally nomads from the desert heartlands north of the eastern states, they had established a small civilized nation around a freshwater lake deep in the desert, adopting agriculture and building several heavily fortified outposts to secure themselves from raids by their not-so-fortunate neighbors. Thriving on cross-desert trade between the south, the west, and unknown northern tribespeoples, they became quite wealthy, and gradually subjugated their neighbors. Having pacified the center of the desert, they burst forth onto the periphery of the known world.

They first encountered Nahari merchants, who were astonished to find these strange camel warriors near their northern ports of call. Such an arrival bizarrely paralleled an obscure prophecy which had outlined the events that would herald the coming of the gods incarnate. It was an ancient myth, whose religion had died centuries ago, but the folk-tale was still told throughout the empire: men who rode strange horses would ride out of the northern desert, bearing word of a new god.

Now, some scholars call this apocryphal, saying the tale was invented later to explain the sudden impotence of Nahari arms. Whatever had actually been foretold, the Savira found it all too easy to overrun the northern borders of this empire, and within mere months were already at the gates of Nahar itself. Exhausted by the Leunan war and hampered by poor communication and coordination, the empire’s attempts to rally their troops for a counterattack fell stymied. Within two weeks of the siege’s beginning, an assault brought the old city to its knees, and the core of the Nahari Empire had fallen.

The rest of the war was simply a mop-up operation; it lasted only a year longer, as most of the major strongholds on the mainland fell within months. The rest of the empire was inaccessible to the warriors – at first – and so it fell to other powers. Cheidia, never happy about its conquest, even after almost a century, declared independence. New Kalos managed to seize a significant tract of land, while the Opulensi were able to take several major islands. Eventually, the Nahari navy revived under Savirai command, and they were able to take back the city of Baharr, at the very least.

Other powers were unsure how to react to the situation at first, but soon found that their new Savirai neighbors were relatively disinterested in fighting the eastern trade wars. Nahari merchants would continue to ply their wares, but they would do so largely on the terms of the Opulensi and the Eastern League, or those of Leun. The realization that the kingdoms of the east were so precarious as to fall to the first petty desert pastoralists to wander their way was not a pleasant one. Even so, it was their foe who had fallen, not them.

To secure their new power base and the hearts of their people, the Savirai led a minor expedition against the Sirans, but this only led to on-and-off raiding and campaigns; most of the time they only got along slightly less well than had the Nahari and the Sirans. In the end, they settled for what was essentially the old Nahari Empire, plus their old dominion in the north.

So the situation in the east continued largely as it had previously, with the Nahari simply replaced by a Savirai dynasty, and displaying a sudden prowess for mounted warfare. Admittedly, their ruling dynasty had converted to Maninism, which made them a little alien to the native Indagahor faith which flourished in the south of their new empire, but the struggle of the faiths had always been less significant in the far east compared to the cradle.

Indeed, the political sphere only really began to change around 330... but that is a tale we have yet to come to.

With such relative peace, it was an era of great prosperity for the eastern cradle. Indagahor, in particular, had begun to really flourish, despite the intrusion of Maninists from the north. The Opulensi held a great council in the holy city of Halq, which helped to codify and reconcile competing interpretations of the ancient religion, and soon after the Empire began to build a great series of monasteries through the island chain.

The monastic tradition of Indagahor was an old one, long keeping the traditions on Spitos. But, perhaps surprisingly, it really first took off in the west, where the newly converted Zyeshu had become fond of the idea. Their style of monastery – open to and interacting with the world freely, providing shelter for innocents and wisdom for kings – proved quite popular, and was indeed exported back into the Opulensi heartland of the faith.

The building spree was a chance for Opulensi craftsmen to express themselves, and they did not disappoint. It proved to be a revolution in the artwork of the people, complementing their old habits of ornament with new structural and even organizational ideas. The new buildings were still impressively decorated, of course, but now added triumphant domes and column works to their repertoire. Figurines and jewelry were still popular with the people, but they became more impressive for their intricacy and less so for the fact that they were made of gold.

This new style was rapidly exported throughout the eastern islands, catching on in Leun (which had officially converted to Indagahor without much fuss) and the Eastern League with rapidity, and converting the greater part of the Fareans as well.

Also around this time, the Opulensi established a new civil service to better govern the empire, trained in a series of academies based in Epichirisi.

Other famous cultural oddities came to pass around this time as well. Most notably, the bizarre tradition of bullfighting came to the surface in Leun. The new matadors impressed many, even if only because of their foolhardy audacity. As for the Opulensi, several martial arts owed their foundation to the Daharai tradition, though they did not stay confined to the monasteries or the military academies for very long.

Leun, for its part, launched a number of expeditions under the great explorer Kreutas, who charted much of the Acayan coast, and that of the island of Auona to the south as well. They also began to spread the word of Indagahor into the Acayan states to their north, but this was a gradual process. Nor was it a one way enterprise, for soon they would find Acayan ideas and traditions spreading into their own empire.


Exhausted by warfare, the cradle slowly started to recover during this period, and the new empires worked to consolidate their new found positions of power.

The Ardavai Exatai found itself in possession of most of the old Exatai, but with legitimate rule having only recently been restored, there was still much work to be done. Indeed, they still fought with the Oscadians in the north, a troublesome people that the Ardavai resolved to destroy, once and for all, even while war still simmered with their Uggor neighbors to the south. The latter was put on hold for the moment, and two major campaigns first retook most of the lost land in the north, then marched into the heart of the mountains and utterly laid waste to their old foes. The remnants of the Oscadian nation fled northwards, never to trouble the Ardavai again, or so it was hoped.

In the south, they prepared to take on the Moti once again, but soon found themselves in a bit of a quandary. New raiders from the steppe, calling themselves the Vithai, poured out of the west and into the already somewhat troubled frontiers of the empire. The mobile and savage people were hard to pin down, let alone defeat, and the Ardavai launched several major expeditions to attempt to pacify the borderland – naturally even the successes were only temporary.

After a time, the Satar decided the only way to protect their newly sedentary culture was to fortify its approaches, and they constructed a great citadel to ward the gap between the Kothai and the lesser, northern mountains. Surrounded by thick walls that were virtually unassailable by the steppe nomads, and flanked by smaller fortresses that secured the rest of the valley, Arastephaion (named after the old Redeemer) became a focal point for interaction with the west – both the frequent wars and the on and off trade.

In the meantime, the Uggor had quite a different experience. After his retreat from Magha, Fourth-Gaci decided that his reverse against the Accans could only be offset by finally winning his war in the south. Leaving numerous garrisons behind to defend against Satar incursions, he took the majority of his field army into Krato and reached a new arrangement with the most powerful Kratoan clan – the Eso Soggo. By the terms of this, he would become suzerain of all Kratoan lands and Chief of Chiefs of all the Uggor, while the Eso Soggo would have ultimate power in Krato itself, as well as other privileges to make them the second most powerful family in the new Empire.

Gaci made his way south, camping outside of the city of Krato proper before linking with the Eso Soggo armies. The combined Uggor forces trekked eastwards through the savannahs of the old Duroc territories, securing Asandar with relative ease, and striking against the much-diminished Buci Soggo clan that still clung onto power south of the city. It was surprisingly difficult, with numerous fortified strongholds proving effective at resisting the invaders, but in time numbers prevailed.

After this conquest, Gaci stopped again in Asandar, now awaiting the Uggor families and the Grandpatriarch of all Iralliam.

The Grandpatriarch arrived in full regalia as befit his station, with a train of trusted followers and all the subordinate Patriarchs. Asandar had begun to slowly recover under the Moti rule, but it was still quite dilapidated from war and the endless turmoil that the region had undergone. The arrival of the chiefs, however, did much to populate and enliven the city, and it was with much celebration and feasting that the Grand Council of all Uggor Chiefs crowned Fourth-Gaci Ayasi – Emperor of all these lands. (301)

With the blessing of the holy church, Gaci struck west with a newly emboldened host to subdue the remaining Uggor lands, but in the midst of fighting against the Swenit Jiressa, he took ill and passed.

No matter. His son Third-Frei had been waiting in the wings for quite some time, and carried on the war as before, with periodic trips back northward to ensure the security of the rest of his empire. The Accans, newly rechristened the Ardavai Exatai, seemed more intent on restructuring their own empire rather than challenging his. Frei was thus at liberty to reform his empire as he saw fit. He expanded the imperial bureaucracy, warded off challenges to his authority by the ever-present Horse Family, and all in all successfully crafted a new, Holy Moti Empire, all while fighting a brutal war of attrition in the south.

Subduing the last two great clans proved to be an immense pain, and it was only in 330 that the last independent Uggor castle, some distance to the southwest of Goso, finally lowered its banners and swore allegiance to the monarchy.

And yet even this peace was not to last more than a decade.

The Dulama, who had been busily campaigning on their southern frontiers and sorting out the matter of succession, now finally turned their attention back to the east. Krato had sworn allegiance to them some time before, and though they had never bothered to really enforce this or even collect benefits from it, they started to become rather annoyed at the Mot infringing upon what they regarded as their own rights.

Thus, the western empire finally went to war against the eastern, and it seemed like a titanic clash was bound to commence.

It began rather as everyone expected. The Dulama armies marshaled in their highlands, and took the eastern road down into the Yensai valley. It was a somewhat difficult march, the army suffering losses due to disease, but ultimately they reached the borders of Moti with their army intact. The Moti preferred not to give battle, instead harassing their opponents in a long series of skirmishes, and letting them wear themselves out against the many fortresses of their Kratoan vassals.

Perhaps this wasn't a particularly interesting strategy. But it proved effective; the Dulama were unable to really solidify their hold on any part of the eastern region, nor could they defeat Moti in battle. Their supply lines were somewhat difficult, and the countryside was quite hostile. After several years of fighting, they quietly withdrew and made peace with the Empire.

While all this was happening in the west, the east of the cradle seemed relatively quiet.

At first.

The newly united Helsian Empire found itself somewhat constricted by the nations around it. The Opulensi would of course respond negatively to attempts to reassert themselves over the sea, while, on the landward side, attacking the Ardavai seemed like it would be out of the question, and the Hu'ut had very little interest in joining the Empire.

No matter. The Helsians simply attacked the Hu'ut with their reformed armies; the latter nation, still attempting to get back off the ground, fell to pieces. The invaders took some time to subdue the various cities of the Had valley, but the ultimate outcome was never in doubt.

Now the premier power of the eastern cradle again, the Helsians looked to conquer more of their neighbors, but soon found their attention drawn to internal matters. The power of the Juluii family was somewhat restricted by the rise of the professional military, leading to a major reform of the political system: the Emperor raised two other noblemen to rule alongside him: from another Trilui and a single Faron family. The imbalance was not lost on the Faron, who were somewhat annoyed by the arrangement, but it survived for a while.

But survivable or not, the arrangement meant there were quite a few frictions in the internal affairs of the Empire, and during one of the more intense crises, they soon faced a new enemy.

The Kothari Exatai had largely been minding its own business aside from launching the occasional raid into the Had Valley, or taxing merchants who came over the Kothai. But they saw the chaos in Helsia as an opportunity that could not be missed: they immediately marched northwards. In a brutal, lightning campaign, they defeated a Helsian army, and managed to take several Hu'ut cities without too much trouble before they finally stalled in the face of increasing opposition.

But the Helsian triumvirate was falling to pieces, while the Kothari were united and getting only stronger. The Exatai gobbled up city after city, while strife engulfed Helsia's center. Even as the Dulama invaded the Moti, the triumvirate collapsed and the Empire came under the rule of a series of tyrants, whose excesses led to the more peripheral towns and cities to break free from the central authority.

All in all, the Helsian Empire had lasted barely a century from its founding to its breakup, even if a rump state still claimed the name in southern Helsia.

Through the period, the relative calm of the western cradle gave birth to the beginning of a cultural and artistic renaissance of sorts.

The Ardavai Exatai's restructuring of the Sesh valley led to the first peaceful times in ages. New building aimed to repair the damages of the nearly constant warfare of the previous few centuries. Thus, Satar architecture began to flourish, with their stylishly square columns, and domed roofs in imitation of the sky above appearing on every building that could afford it. Noblemen maintained airy gardens and open courtyards, building vast estates in the countryside. New temples to Taleldil rose in every city, many in imitation of the grand one Atraxes had raised in Magha.

Persecution of the creative Aitahist minority did tend to put a slight damper on artistic development, admittedly, for they were the traditional educated class. But in the cities they could usually escape detection, while the “Satar” started to assimilate into the urban populace themselves. Higher culture began to flourish as it never had before, with the epic ballad (borrowing many of its forms from the Faron) coming to prominence around this time.

The Uggor did not fail to match these achievements, as the Ayasi sponsored numerous temples of Iralliam throughout the empire, including several in the holy city of Opios and the only slightly less holy city of Gaci. Noble citadels throughout the Kratoan countryside continued to be erected even after the end of the civil war, and the building style began to spread to the estates of the godlikes in Moti proper as well. Sculpture remained the preferred medium of artists in this era, though at this time the art of glass-blowing started to grow in and around the city of Gaci.

With more and more administrative problems cropping up, the Holy Moti Empire's bureaucracy only grew, and the urban centers of the empire became ever more cosmopolitan and impressive. Persecution of the Oneist heresy continued in Kratoan lands, and by the end of the period it was already practically gone.

The east, by contrast, had very little peace to develop. The Faerouhaiaouans were secure in their mountain strongholds, naturally, and continued to develop their dramatic and literary forms still more, but even they felt the crunch of the times when food supplies became somewhat unreliable. Mathematics reached something of a peak now, with some foolish philosophers claiming that all the proofs that could ever be made had already been created.

To the south, the Zyeshu and Hanakahi continued to stay out of regional squabbles. The Zyeshu expanded westward and started to fracture along regional lines, while their commercial enterprises exploded in the temporary absence of competition. Castles here, more garden than holdfast, sprouted through the country, and indeed their style began to influence that of the Kratoan fortresses to the west. Simultaneously, the lords of the various Zyeshu cities began to step up their patronage of artists, and musicians in particular found it to be a haven for their artform.


Compared to other regions, little happened in the north for quite a long period.

That is not to say that there were not problems. Though the Evyni ruled over a vast swathe of the north, seemingly unstoppable, their threats were growing more diverse. Even as they consolidated their grip on the recently conquered Ming states, the Sarrukh started to raid the north of the Empire. With little naval presence to speak of, the Evyni could not respond with any effectiveness, and so relied on fortifying the coastline, or utterly wiping out any Sarrukh enclaves they found ashore.

Such problems became further complicated by the intrusion of a new threat in the west as well – steppe warriors who called themselves the Xieni, who seemed to have very little to do besides intrude on the property of those neighboring them. But though both groups of raiders were troublesome, neither could really impact the workings of the Empire, which continued along much as they had.

Gallat carried out numerous campaigns against the Stettin tribes to their east, but after a certain point these stopped bearing fruit, as the lines of supply and communication became increasingly stretched the further they went.

As for the Sarrukh states, they underwent a period of centralization and solidification of the rulers' power. In Luskan, it had taken many decades, and went surprisingly smoothly. Things were rather different in Voninheim...

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...


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.


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).


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.

Despite the fall of the Helsian Empire, confusion did not reign in the cradle of civilization. Certainly, Helsia itself was something of a mess, with multiple factions scheming to regain power over the whole (though, ultimately, it was to remain divided). But the rest of the cradle was quite happy to maintain the current state of affairs.

The relative peace and security of the large states – though it occasionally lapsed, especially in the nearly continuous raids exchanged by the Satar and the Moti – allowed them to focus on internal affairs.

The Holy Moti Empire, for its part, grew irritated at the continuing propensity for the godlikes to assert their own power at the expense of the Emperor's. Finally, the Ayasi First-Sirti decided that enough was enough, and he moved to curb their growth. Initially this came in quite subtle forms – the allocation of resources, the collection of taxes, the surveying of property – all under the guise of adjusting to the changing circumstances of governing the Empire. But soon, it became obvious, as he blocked several moves by the godlikes to seize the assets of lesser families, or to make power plays at court. The Ayasi directly granted new freedoms to cities that grew in the very lands of the godlikes themselves – as though they were in Bisria, rather than Uggor lands!

Finally he launched a full-fledged assault on his family's ancient foes, the Horse Family, using levies from Bisria and Krato especially, shredding their rather less well trained forces and reducing their castle after a lengthy siege. Though the move seemed risky at the time, it was surely a wise one: by immediately going for the throat, he had shown the lesser families that he was not one to be trifled with, and, given the Horse Family's general intransigence, he had immediately reduced the number of headaches the king would have to deal with at any one time.

At nearly the same time, the Kothari Exatai made good use of its new resources to launch an attack on the increasingly comatose Palmyrian state. Having little respect for the ancient kingdom, the similarly ancient redeemer Metrax decided that its time had finally come. He led a mighty invasion force across the kingdom's borders, and with the aid of his famous general Avax, he came to the walls of Ioppson and stormed them before the Palmyrians could muster a response.

Intelligently, the Palmyrians refused to confront the enemy with superior numbers. However, ultimately, a less mobile and outnumbered force will have difficulty dictating the course of a war; Avax's cavalry were able to pin them in time for Metrax to arrive with the force of the army and crush the Palmyrians – though not as decisively as he would have liked.

With the war already all but decided, it was essentially a matter of mopping up, but it was complicated by the death of Metrax midway through the war. The Kothari settled the succession, but not before the more remote pieces of old Palmyra had fallen to other powers or “requested protection” from them, most obviously the Opulensi in Beran.

While the Kothari were occupied, the Hno un Hno of Krato pushed for his overlord, the Ayasi, to launch an assault on the preoccupied Kratoans. Sirti was not particularly enthused with the idea; he viewed it as a somewhat wasteful diversion of resources.

But the Kratoan chief, of the Eso Soggo line, harbored a deep loathing of the Satar, and launched raids of his own, capturing Triad with relatively little difficulty at first. This prompted a furious diplomatic tirade: the Kothari incensed at the Moti for letting their out of control vassal take such a vital Satar possession, and demanding it back. The Ayasi grew furious with both his wayward vassal and his insolent neighbors, but he managed to settle the crisis without precipitating a costly war at such an unstable time: he would retain Triad, but acknowledged the new Redeemer, Tavha, as an Ayasi himself.

Moreover, he would reign in the Kratoan Hno.

Demanding the Hno disband his army, he marched south with one of his own, armed to the teeth and rather outnumbering the Eso Soggo one. This show of intimidation payed off, and many of the lesser Hnos fled the gathering of Kratoan families. His support dwindling, the humbled Eso Soggo Hno made a public show of submission to the Ayasi.

The scene is well known now – the Hno un Hnos bowing before his liege and begging forgiveness for his transgressions. With the Grandpatriarch looking on, the Ayasi nodded and declared that he would be lenient – the Kratoan could remain a chief, and retain his life.

But the submission was not really enough for Sirti. He declared that the Hno un Hnos had violated his trust, and thus would be stripped of this highest title; he would simply be the Swenit Hno now – for those unversed in the Uggor language, he was no longer “Chief of Chiefs,” but rather merely, “First Chief.” the Eso Soggo would thus retain a role as enforcer among the Kratoan families, and even a lot of the administrative works, but Sirti delegated a lot of their privileges to other families and the cities.

But even as Moti battered errant vassals into submission, the Kothari enacted far more sweeping changes.

Ever since the Pyre of the Six, when the Satar Princes immolated themselves after their crushing defeat by the Uggor, there have been two Satar lines. The Accan, or Ardavai, or simply the Northern Dynasty was founded after the death of six of the great princes of the Exatai, by the Accan Censoratta Macrinus. The more powerful of the two, it had already secured its place as one of the great empires in the region.

Contrast this to the Kothari. The Southern line fared quite differently. Hashaskor, cut off from his fellow Princes, never burned on the Pyre. His line, descended directly from the Silver Prince Atraxes, greatest of the Redeemers, continued on in a mountain holdfast, far from the civilized world. Athas was a cold, foreboding place, set high in the crook of two hills, with dark, nigh impregnable walls against a backdrop of majesty – the Kothai. Against the Ardavai Exatai, theirs was by far the more desperate struggle – scheming, rather than inheriting.

Simply put, they had to be pragmatic.

Despite all that, they considered themselves by far the purer of the two Satar lines. The Ardavai had corrupted themselves, they had moved into the Seshweay and Bahran cities. They let themselves become civilized. Their Redeemers were not even Satar, not truly. The Kothari raided, striking out from their citadel. Even when they conquered the Had, and Palmyra, they preferred to muster their armies in the foothills rather than the valleys, or at least the “Satar” portions of it. They were the embodiment of Exatas – might makes right, and a man's destiny is his own.

So it had been.

But all was not well in this Exatai, as lucky as it had been – lucky with the incompetence of its rivals, lucky with its fortuitous position and timing. Though the Exatai was strong, and the Satar blood ran true among its elites, it built its little empire on the backs of many conquered peoples. The Satar culture and faith did not take root here as easily as it had in the North, and while some sort of hybrid between the invaders and invaded was taking shape, especially in the mountains, sacrifices had to be made.

And thus it was in 428 by the Seshweay Calendar that the Sixth Redeemer, Tavha the White, was anointed and blessed by the Patriarch of Hiuttu, accepting in all things the words and creeds of Iralliam. One by one, many of the nobles of his court followed suit – though, then again, there were many that would cling onto Ardavai. The Redeemer allowed them to, for the Kothari had long since learned tolerance, but he would now sponsor a different faith. New religious iconography was placed in the cities, and serene chapels were built, the one in Athas itself proving to be one of the most austerely beautiful in all the lands that adhered to Iralliam.

With the conversion of the Redeemer, the Exatai had finally won, if not affection, then contentment from its populace. Continuing links between itself and its neighbors were forged, and the urban centers, especially those in the lower Had Valley, became quite cosmopolitan and cultured. The government expanded to deal with the newfound income and the difficult job of ruling its territories, and Jahip (or Jatha, as the Satar were to name it) became the administrative capital. The Redeemer continued to spend about half the year in Athas, especially the summers, but even so, he had to make some concessions to the rule of the realm.

The Redeemers, meanwhile, would become accustomed to some degree of comfort. True, they did not fall into debauchery, and they still sneered at their Ardavai cousins for mingling with the “common folk”. But they became less proud horselords and more proper rulers, surviving by cunning and skill in this difficult world still, but treating more and more with their neighbors on an equal footing. They sponsored architects, court musicians, and constructed monasteries and churches alike.

And so the steppe was tamed.

In the Ardavai Exatai, of course, the steppe was already long dead. The establishment of the citadel at Arastephaion had been the symbolic break from the steppe, and since then, the Redeemers had long since come from the line of Macrinus, ruling in more traditional ways than the Satar had. The idea of the ritual duel for succession to the throne had long since been abandoned, and the cavalry forces were raised by the nobility rather than by tribes.

They contented themselves with a long, low-key struggle against the Moti, raiding on occasion and actually intruding into the enemy's heartland extremely only rarely, and focused far more on holding the frontiers of their new, vast realm, surrounded as it was by potential enemies on all sides.

That is, aside from one curious incident in the middle of this time.

The death of Tarelilus the Young left the throne of Redeemer open once again, and his son Veranian invited the other Princes to Magha, to the royal arena, to “duel” for the throne. This was now a ritual of submission, where each would acknowledge the Prince as their lord, and acclaim him the greatest warrior in the land. A bloodless, simple ritual, an echo of earlier times.

Petraxes, Prince of the Wind, did not view it as such. He came with the other princes, dressed in finery, but under his robes was steel, and he had sharpened his sword for hours the night before. In the arena, he slaughtered the other princes, declared himself the greatest warrior of the Satar and thus the new Redeemer, and dared any to defy him.

Chaos ensued. His audacity shocked many in the hierarchy, and though he was quick to bring an army to bear on his opponents, they were just as quick to raise one to oppose him. Civil war resulted for a short period, and even when Petraxes had subdued his opponents, his reign continued in a somewhat unstable and brutal fashion. He led expeditions against the Vithai, but almost as many were directed against his own nobles.

But all it was all just a memory of an earlier time. Petraxes' little experiment died with him, and the Ardavai reverted to the rather more sensible means of choosing successors.

With such relative quiet in the cradle, rulers continued finding new uses for time and money – though of course they still liked to launch the occasional invasion.

Court culture in the Ardavai Exatai grew ever more lavish, with a notable exception during the reign of Petraxes. The palace complex in Magha was not enough; the Redeemers continued to build larger ones both inside and outside the cities, in various parts of the realm, sinking more into their construction than ever before. Ballads branched out from their traditional Hamakuan and Faron forms, and the Satar epic tradition grew ever more distinctive and complicated, with allusions to Taleldil, Arastephas, Atraxes, and Xetares abounding.

Perhaps the most impressive Satar achievement was that of Tarelilus, who in the later years of his reign built a monumental Ardavan temple in Seis itself, towering over the still-majority Aitahist city. Raised on a great stone platform over the city, its construction was of alternating red and white stone, and he topped it with a magnificent golden dome. Originally, this had been intended to surpass that of Atraxes in size and splendor, but his engineers quickly deemed it infeasible.

The Kothari, meanwhile, took a somewhat different path. After their conversion to Iralliam, they raised great new churches. The white chapel in Aphas has already been noted, but a whole set were built in Jatha, Hiuttu, and the Palmyrian cities, growing more elaborate in the lowlands. At the same time, influences from the Faron and other Helsians encouraged the Kothari, Tavha especially, to sponsor philosophers and theater. Initially, of course, they imitated, but they could also draw on the works of the old Kothari philosopher Talan the Elder, and the old, somewhat mystical traditions of the native Hu'ut.

While not busy playing cat-and-mouse with his nobles, First-Sirti was keen on establishing his place in the Moti lineage. Under his patronage, the fledgling glass industry around Gaci started to export its productions all through the Holy Empire; beautiful glass figurines started to appear in the churches of this time.

He also granted a significant sum of money to the Grandpatriarch to build a new, soaring basilica in Opios. No expense was spared: the walls themselves rose a hundred feet into the air, while the vaulted roof seemed to the people of the time to nearly disappear into the sky. A glittering mosaic was laid out on the main floor, lit by sunbeams that peered in through the few windows; otherwise the building was lit by torch and candle. Its two spires, carved with imagery of the Ancestors and the struggles of supernaturals, rose two hundred feet into the air, and indeed some worried that Opporia might view this as a challenge... though after no divine lightning appeared, these thoughts dissipated.

Helsia, of course, had rather more important things to worry about than the pursuit of the arts. Despite this, Parafosoa and his students made significant inquiries into the production of music at this time, and if nothing else the world was richer for it.

Around the same time, Iralliam, having already caught on in the Exatai to the south, started to really gain momentum in southern Helsia, with most of the families converting. Yet, at the same time, Aitahism became appealing to not only the far north, but also the Faerouhaiaouans and in Subal (indeed, with the suppression of Aitahism in other areas, this became one of its strongholds), driving yet another wedge between the various factions.

The Zyeshu saw the rise of Zeray, a new, powerful state in the far west of their dominions – it was arranged more along the lines of the northern, imperial powers – and though many mourned the seeming loss of the traditional norms of Zyeshu political life, it undeniably had the resources to continue to erect new buildings in the old styles. Mercenaries participated in the northern and especially the eastern wars, though not always with much valor – “If the Zyesh soldier could swing a sword as hard as he laughs, send as many arrows as he does boasts and charge towards the enemy with the same vigor he reserves for leaving the field, he would be invincible,” noted one Palmyrian general – and piracy became quite an art on the southern coasts. With the ever present emphasis on travel being essential for a learned man, pilgrimage to Halq started to become quite the ritual, and it was not unknown for a Zyeshu lord or two to travel through the east and even the troubled north.

Though relatively torpid for one reason or another, Sira's emperors did build a great library at Reppaba, aimed at collecting the knowledge of the world in one place. Of course, what it really accomplished was simply to make the Sirans a little less of a backwater, but small steps were always appreciated. At the same time, something of a religious revival in the Peko Valley started to take hold, demanding more austere worship and a return to the old principles of the religion.


By 401 SR, the problems in Gallat had been over for a decade or so, but Halan's regime hadn't yet really secured its position. Ambitious generals and foolish cities still dreamed of separation or even of toppling the regime, and though Halan destroyed them every time they came up, it wore at his patience and more importantly, at his manpower.

No doubt after pondering his options for some time, he decided to launch a major eastward campaign. The Gallatene efforts to civilize the Stettin tribes had dominated much of their foreign policy before the fall of the High Ward, but ever since had been overshadowed by other concerns. But a holy war would no doubt fire up the fanatical among his nation, cement him as the legitimate authority to replace the High Ward, and generally focus Gallatene energies somewhere other than at each others' throats.

Halan spent quite a lot of time organizing the logistics of the expedition before actually launching it, and this payed off handsomely. Arriving at the city of Gast, which had long been the easternmost outpost of the frontier, he marched northward with his fleet supporting and resupplying him. After less than a month, they arrived at the Stettin cities of Ban and Essel, killing the local chiefs after they refused to convert to the Faith.

Leaving reasonable garrisons behind, he struck out east, further than any Gallatene adventurer had wandered before.

By now the army marched through completely unfamiliar terrain. The golden sun of their hilly homeland was but a distant memory; the valley they now entered was one of tall pines and cold. Fog came and went at dawn and dusk – at night rain, snow, or worst, sleet fell seemingly endlessly, and by day, though the sun shone, it didn't seem to bring any warmth. The mapmakers termed it the “Valley of the Long White Cloud.”

The numerous warriors here seemed to rather object to the new visitors, and the Gallatenes dealt with a nearly constant stream of raids and ambushes. But their discipline and Halan's steady generalship paid off, and they were never really lost in purpose. Marching to the shores of the lake, they built an encampment that would later become the center of a carefully planned, heavily fortified city that would act as the new eastern frontier of their nation. The barbarians were steadily either subdued and converted, or expelled beyond the borders of the new province.

In time, Gallatene missionaries converted the neighboring tribes to Maninism, and diplomatic relations were established with all the former chiefs. Recognized and occasionally propped up by the Gallatenes, a series of new kingdoms started to rise through the valley, borrowing much from their ancestors the Goth't, but also absorbing cultural affectations from their quite impressive new Gallatene neighbors.

Around the same time, Luskan renewed their efforts to destroy their rebranded foes, the Cyve. Ultimately, however, these efforts made little headway. An early invasion managed to sack the capital of Lmeghu, but failed to make any lasting gains, as the concerted efforts of Cyvian arms drove them back to their ships. In reprisal, several Cyvian generals led raids against the easternmost outposts of the Luskan, but these, too, failed to make any changes on the political map.

The two sides eventually concluded peace, and through the rest of the period essentially eyed each other warily. Later on, trade started up again, and the ferocious raiding people and savage northmen alike accepted their new role as cogs in the mercantile network.

Of course, the Luskan weren't content to simply trade; they merely directed their efforts elsewhere.

First, they discovered the Chapru, a tiny fishing culture in the far northwest, who seemed like easy prey. This didn't turn out quite as they expected – the smaller nation was quite fierce in defending its independence, and managed to hold off Luskan annexation. Of course, this might have been a better arrangement overall – Luskan was able to get plenty of valuables in the raids, and took many Chapru as slaves to sell in southern markets.

They also sailed around the island of Ederrot and raiding the nascent Frelesti people, who similarly had little means to defend themselves. The struggle that resulted took its place as one of the formative myths of the Frelesti people – the struggle to expel the ferocious westerners and reclaim their cities for their own, while it netted the Luskan still more loot.

Wanting little to do with their neighbors, the Evyni mostly focused on internal development. Though Luskan raids still aggravated relations, they were only really a minor annoyance. Far more serious was a large-scale Xieni raid down the River Weinan, which ended with the sack of Naiji. A series of Evyni reprisals secured the region against further intrusion, however, and the sleepy period continued as it had before.

At the same time, Evyni expeditions to the northwest conquered a considerable chunk of land as a buffer against potential incursions from that direction, too. In reality, it was largely a conquest of vanity, to make the Evyni look still more impressive to neighbors; the land was empty of settlements and its settlement led to few returns.

Also around this time, the refugees from the former kingdom of Oscadia coalesced into a state at the southern tip of the Weinan, hoping only to be ignored by their neighbors as they made a new life.

The sack of Lmeghu proved a blessing in disguise for the Cyve. The capital had long been a confused morass of streets, jumbled, with little to no internal logic for how they were laid out. With the core of the city burned to the ground and the outlying areas only slightly less devastated, the kings built a lovely new centrally planned core, in a regimented grid pattern. New high walls were erected, as was an impressive royal palace, and it started to take on the shape of a legitimate capital city.

Gallat's new expansionist phase opened a vast new area to settlement, and religious fanatics took the opportunity to create a series of idyllic communes through the west, based, as they claimed, on the “core principles of the Faith”. The considerably more hardline eastern region would prove a potent force in religious politics, while the newly ennobled supported the Governor in all things – they would be a major asset in years to come...


After a period of relative chaos, the eastern nations settled into a peaceful cycle of trade and prosperity that was hard to break.

Certainly, there were still reasons to fight. The Leunans couldn't be entirely happy with how the situation in the far east had turned out, and they blamed the Opulensi for that. But they knew they didn't have the strength to challenge the Opulensi on their own, and it would be hard to assemble a coalition in the first place, let alone direct it in a unified manner against the larger Empire. Likewise, the Eastern League and the Savirai would have much to gain from the fall of the Opulensi – but no way to effect that fall. And the Opulensi, of course, felt quite satisfied with how things had turned out – gradual expansion wouldn't be sneered at, but there was no reason for them to actively go to war.

And everyone seemed to recognize this state of affairs, and had little reason to change it.

Everyone, that is, except the Savirai.

Yes, indeed, the desert dwellers once again took it upon themselves to try and bring down the massive seafaring empire, and the results were predictable. The Opulensi saw little reason to go on the offensive, and were able to hold all of their existing territory against enemy assaults; the Savirai couldn't break through at all, certainly not on the naval front.

That didn't stop them from trying, though. For an almost absurd time of thirty four years, the nation continually tried to bring down the Opulensi in a series of attacks through various stratagems, occasionally convincing one or another nation to join them in their schemes. Ultimately, it only exhausted their nation further, leaving it prey to continuing religious instability. By the end of the period, then, the Savirai were having enough trouble keeping their own nation together to contemplate attacking anyone else.

The Leunan succession struggles that had plagued them before now seemed largely forgotten. In reality, though, the tension between northern and southern lines remained, masked by the successful intermarriage. They still were not terribly fond of the Gadians, and some diplomatic maneuvering had won them allies in the other Acayan states, but they didn't feel confident enough to start another war – not yet, anyway.

Probably the most interesting character of this era, then, is not the silly generals or kings, but one Arasos in the Opulensi.

A monk by trade, as a young man, he had made his first pilgrimage to Halq, and believed, then, at the tender age of eighteen, to have seen true enlightenment on the golden-red shores of that island. He returned eagerly to the monastery in Epichirisi, eager to explain his revelation to his fellow pupils, but it took him only a few years to grow disillusioned with the ideas he had found there. Enlightenment, he wrote around then, is a slippery thing. One may believe that he has found one essential truth or another, but in reality be grasping at the air, unaware that his own spiritual awakening was a false one, and that he will discover this in short order.

He then went on to question how one could even hold any faith in the idea of enlightenment at all – presumably one would have just as much confidence in a false enlightenment as one would in the truth. His ideas intrigued and outraged the otherwise stoic monastic community, and he quickly became one of the most prominent members of the Opulensi Empire.

In the search for truth, he wrote, there is neither freedom from suffering nor enlightenment. Truth can lead us to pain, and it needn't eliminate ignorance; indeed it can live alongside ignorance. And yet the truth is a necessary precursor for enlightenment in most philosophies...

He grappled with all of these questions, and with the age old questions that the Indagahor monks had already puzzled over for the previous few centuries. He spoke frequently in both the monastery and the university, drawing crowds in either place, but also wandered the streets of Epichirisi in plain clothing to engage merchants and artisans – not merely to try and make them rethink their own lives, but also to learn from them, saying that there is no man who is not wise in his own way.

He dined with Opulensi Emperor Crannaior-Karash often, who once asked him why a supposed ascetic would eat so much – Arasos replied that he was not one to let food go to waste, and that the Emperor's gut had clearly already seen enough.

It is a measure of his aura that the otherwise ferociously temperamental Crannaior-Karash merely chuckled at this.

Indeed, he was so well loved by the Emperor that he devoted a considerable portion of a few years' revenue – in the middle of (an admittedly inconsequential) war with the Savirai to build a new monastery and university side by side on the outskirts of the capital for the monk's use.

Arasos taught a number of students in his time, and in his later years began to study the arts and sciences as well as the mysteries of the universe – with him, Indagahor monasteries slowly started to turn to more practical explorations than they had in the past. It would be too much to assert that he was the only contributing factor to the rising importance of eastern explorations at this time, but he certainly did mark the new era quite conveniently.

Around this time, the voyages of the various eastern states uncovered two other nations on the edge of civilization.

The Baribai lie on the southern extreme of human knowledge, deep in the great expanse of the Nakalani, on a series of islands so far removed from the mainland so as to seem like another world. Settled in a time remembered only by the myths of their people, the islands had developed in isolation from the rest of the world, with a menagerie of chiefs and kings fighting for control of tiny realms, until finally united by the Baribai a mere century before contact.

They struck out to explore in all directions, conquering what islands they could find, but they finally found in Ichan and Erlias enemies with some staying power. The Baribai now contemplate their options, though there is some urgency in the situation – disease has begun to spread to the islanders.

(cont.)

On the other side of the world, at the very edge of the far east explorations of the Leunans and Opulensi, they found a trading post established by a people who call themselves the “Kitaluyans,” or something like that. Seemingly a completely different people from the Acayans they had already encountered, the Kitaluyans or Kitaluki had much in the way of exotic goods to offer their new visitors – strange incenses, including one apparently inhaled directly by a man from a burning brand, fowl and beasts never seen before by the sailors, and sweet-smelling sandalwood.

Their ships and demeanor puzzled the Leunans and Opulensi alike – the vessels seemed to be built with more than one hull alongside itself, which seemed bizarrely inefficient to the more traditional shipbuilders, and the men offered little respect to either each other or the men of rank among the Easterners. Nor did they explain where they had arrived from – possibly across the ocean, but surely that was them pulling the cradle's collective leg?



Abral-Ha was an unusual Redeemer in a number of ways. His predecessor, Tavha the White, had managed to survive late into his eighties before finally passing away – he had managed to outlive his son, letting the succession pass his son Abral-Ha, who was a mere sixteen years of age at the time. But unusual path to the throne or no, his reign was by far the more unusual one.

An intelligent lad, he had been much taken by the ideas of Ardavan at a young age, and he much preferred them to what he viewed as an alien creed – Iralliam. This was not a particularly unusual thing for a Kothari noble of the time – roughly half of the nobility followed the old faith. Yet he followed directly in the wake of Tavha the White, the great proselytizer, the one who brought the new faith; thus the nation would pass immediately back into the hands of the Ardavan.

Given the weaker Kothari religious tradition, it didn't seem to be too much of a problem at the time. It became something more of a problem when he had the Patriarch of Hiuttu beheaded.

Abral-Ha committed the nation back to the ideals of Ardavan, seemingly untroubled by the religious violence that this immediately provoked, relatively unworried by the fact that the nation was coming apart at the seams. Instead, he was quite convinced he would be able to suppress any rebellions that occurred as they came, and he proceeded to do so. It was a violent time, certainly, but made stranger by the fact that he was also a lover of the arts and sciences – he constructed the Red Observatory in Aphas in the fifth year of his reign.

Eventually, of course, the strain was too much, and nobles – Satar nobles, no less – raised the standard of rebellion in the eastern provinces, marching against the Redeemer in anger.

The conflict proved to be a destructive one. Either side had plenty of resources at its disposal: Abral-Ha as the legitimate ruler of the country, the rebels as the supporters of the religious rights of the majority of the people. Each launched a number of assaults from their respective power-bases in west and east, and the middle of the country changed hands several time. Once again, the Had endured a period of brutal warfare, with seemingly little point and no end in sight.

All this only finally changed with the death of Abral-Ha (some say by poison), and the accession of his son, Ephaion who converted to Iralliam the moment his father had breathed no more (some legends say somewhat before, and that they argued over the father's sickbed). He quieted the more sincere of the rebels with an edict of tolerance, and shattered those who were merely trying to take advantage of the Exatai's troubles in battle.

Uniting the country once again thus, he directed his considerable energies towards expanding it even further.

In particular, he was interested in Helsia.

Ephaion launched his invasion even as the blood from the civil wars still dried on the ground. He took an army to the city of Subal first, which put up a considerable fight, not wanting to be conquered again by Satar barbarians. Eventually, however, it inevitably succumbed to the great host that surrounded the city, as several relief armies were beaten away by Ephaion's cavalry.

However, further attempts to attack northwards were futile. The mountains seemed practically impregnable, at least to an army that had to contend with other foes at the same time, but even the plain of southern Helsia was well fortified by the decades of war that had preceded this particular army – indeed, even some fortifications which had originally been built by the Helsian Empire to fend off Satar invasion remained here.

In the end, he contented himself with Subal and a great deal of plunder; it seemed that, for now, the Kothari Exatai had reached its limit – though, admittedly, they had already been exhausted by their previous civil wars.

Aside from fending off this invasion, the divided parts of Helsia continued to squabble amongst themselves, each determined that neither of the others would gain the upper hand in any struggle. For a long period, it had seemed as though even the exhausting and nearly continuous struggle could not deplete the region of its philosophers and scientists, but finally its output in these fields began to decline in this era, being overshadowed by those in the East and, increasingly, in Moti and the Ardavai Exatai.

The last flare in this decline was the playwright Taeraena, who was quite possibly the greatest since Salei, who penned a number of works set in these times of troubles, historical retellings, and a few fantastic settings as well, before finally dying in the Satar invasion.

At the same time, the Siran Empire, which had for so long seemed relatively inactive, merely opportunistically gaining from the incompetence of other peoples, finally imploded. Strains between the rising fundamentalist movement in the Peko Valley and the more lax, poorer regions in the west finally drew them into open warfare, with the fairly rich Gallatene cities in the north a third faction.

Initially it manifested itself simply as a rebellion of the northwesterners, who crowned a new Rosh, Airan, and objected to the increasing hardline stance that the central authorities were taking on certain religious matters. The remoteness of their desert strongholds and the superb mobility of their forces meant that, despite being relatively few, the war drew out for far longer than the central authority might have wished it to – the northern, Gallatene cities started to rebel as well.

After that, the problems multiplied. Far off Mahid and Hanno rebelled, their Aitahist sympathies prompting a final separation from the Empire, while warlords in the northeast took advantage of the situation to break away from central authority.

Meanwhile, the Empire's heartland grew increasingly restless as the Emperor was seen to be increasingly out of touch with the fundamentalist movement. After numerous appeals for change were ignored, they, too, took matters into their own hands, and rebelled, crowning the Ward Khiva as their Rosh.

Caught in between its own center of power rebelling and five other rebellions on the periphery, the last leader of the Siran Dynasty was caught in a siege outside of Manas by the Airani forces, captured, and executed.

None of the competing factions had the power to restore control over the whole, however, and they began to act less as separate units of the whole trying to reclaim dominion over all, and more as wholly different states. The Khivani Roshate in the Peko had inherited, paradoxically, the most developed position despite its intolerant and fundamentalist world-view, while the somewhat more liberal Airani forces were only on the periphery, saved from takeover by their remoteness. The other parts of Sira were more or less not worth the effort of anyone else to conquer, and despite flares of violence through the rest of the period, they maintained their independence.

In the south of the cradle, the Zyeshu people continued to expand westward. The new state of Kilar was founded around now. Something of a hybrid between these migrants and the more native Uggor cultures, they adhered to the faith of Iralliam but kept many of the affects of a typical Zyeshu state – heavy patronage of the arts, the gardens, artistically designed castles, and feasts. On the other hand, they were practical when they needed to be, defeating the Jiphans and the Zerayans in battle, though both of the other states survived.

All this time, the west of the cradle, too, saw changes.


Here in the high mountains of the Kothai, the monasteries rose. Many were fortresses first, built to defend in the countless wars against the Uggor; their old white walls echo those of a city the Satar had once, long ago, burned. Here, the calls of an eagle slap off the grey rock walls of the mountainsides, mingle with the sound of a small cascade of water down the mountain, fall into lonely human ears. Here, beside the gnarly old trees, whose branches are flagged so they all point in one direction – away from hundreds of years of fierce winds – here sits a blue-stone chapel. It is nestled here in this peaceful valley. It has known blood.

And so close, so close it is difficult to believe that we would cross the most disputed border in the world, lies the lands of the Moti.

The moon rose swift between two mountains. Its face was smoothly marbled, familiar features obscured now by a sweeping fog or cloud bank, spreading across the surface, turning it a creamy reddish-gold. And yet the clouds merely made it all the brighter. Light lanced down from the orb, shredding the wisps of cloud that curled over the valley, moonbeams like spears.

Here lay Gaci, heart of an empire. Narrow alleys tumbled down the mountainsides, threaded with mist like a quilt of vapor. House on house on house piled alongside the roads, conglomerates of man, buildings stacked down into the valley, their windows dark and arched doorways cool with the witching hour's breath. Deeper in the valley they merged seamlessly into the shops of artisans, into open air markets, the organs of an empire. But all were silent, of course. No one was awake at this time of night.

Almost no one, at any rate.

Over the mountains flew horse and rider, galloping in the sort of mad dash that only a man could inspire. Six steeds already had this one exhausted, one by one, one his route southwards, bearing a scroll that was at this point almost superfluous. He only really needed to deliver the word, that one word.

At the final ridge, he paused, his horse thoroughly lathered, looking down upon Gaci, that city named for the long-dead king. It had been growing ever since its foundation, and now it was one of the mightiest cities in the world, perhaps in all of history. And yet he could not help but imagine it burning, the fires spreading from house to house, the dry mountain air blowing columns of smoke over the Kotthorns... no matter. He shook the image off and spurred his horse onward, to descend down the valley.

He rode through the city gates to the palace with a fair amount of hesitancy now, for he did not relish the prospect of giving this news to the Aya'se. The first view of the palace, its arched entrance hall cutting a black specter against the bright sky, simply made him more apprehensive.

It took them less than five minutes to wake the Emperor – Second-Sirti was not entirely lucid when he stumbled out into the entrance hall, his royal regalia hastily donned for this all-important message, but his eyes burned with great intensity as the messenger introduced himself. Yes, yes, he was from the north, so much had he surmised. What word did he bring from the border?

Just one word. Just one.

Satar.

The Emperor was not asleep now. But then, neither was he afraid. Two centuries ago, any monarch would have trembled at that name, but was he not of the line of Gaci, Chief-of-Chiefs, who had shattered the Satar and driven them to depression and suicide? This was the Holy Moti Empire, which from its high seat on Gaci had fought the Satar for centuries and kept them at bay.

So let Regalius Tephas send his army. For Satar was not, as it had once been, an empire-ending word. No. Moti was.


The Eighth Redeemer of the Ardavai Exatai, Regalius Tephas, had launched an invasion of the Holy Moti Empire.

It surprised no one, of course, for the on-and-off war between the two Empires had lasted through most of two centuries, ever since the Satar invaded the Uggor in the first place, even through several changes of dynasty and name on either side. But this certainly was the largest invasion of either side by the other, the only concerted effort to change the established order of things, the only attack which aimed to actually destroy the hated foe.

Starting on the northern borders of the Moti, Regalius aimed a sweeping attack at the cities of Bisria, believing them to be the heart of the power of the Ayasi himself. Second-Sirti, of course, had many other lands to draw resources from, and Bisria was no longer the sole commercial center of the empire, but he had no desire to see these cities fall into the enemies hands.

Thus the Moti marched to meet the Satar in battle, and they did – several times in fact, none of them decisively. The Satar were occasionally forced to withdraw a little bit, but always they were in the lands of the Moti, and at one point they controlled Kirost and even Bisria before being forced out by Sirti's armies.

Later on, the Redeemer attempted a different tactic, invading the Moti through the gap in the Kothai, at Lotumbo, and here he managed to break free, marching down the Yensai River and exacting quite a bit of depredations on the locals before withdrawing, but this attack, too, failed to make any gains. In the end, he made peace with Sirti, showing that without mitigating factors, or perhaps without stronger wills to risk everything, or without some sort of imbalance of generalship, neither side could truly overcome the other.

This point was only underlined twenty years later, when, despite a Seshweay rebellion distracting the Satar in the north, the Moti, too, could not overcome their rivals. The old invasion routes proved desperately difficult to take, owing to the fortress-monasteries that had been constructed in the years of conflict, while the walls of the great cities, this time, mostly stood firm.

After the wars, both sides were forced to focus more on other problems – namely the Vithai.

The steppe peoples had become more and more of a nuisance in recent years, and the Ardavai launched a punitive raid against them to end the attacks on Arastephaion and the borderlands – this expedition reached Asihkar, though with little intention of holding the remote city. This served to delay the next raid, though, true to form, after a few years they did restart in a much reduced manner.

Moti, by contrast, had to deal with a fully fledged invasion down the River Yensai, beating them back only with considerable loss of life and treasure, and prompting a reorganization of the Hnos on the borderlands to better deal with the threat of continuing steppe invaders. After this, they prepared to launch a series of counterattacks, though these ultimately met with failure for one particular reason...


Compared to the nations of the east, perhaps, not quite as much happened to the Dulama.

But to leave it at that would be to overlook the serious challenges that the Empire faced during this time. First, the Empire had to contend with the Vithai, as, indeed, all the westernmost civilized powers did. The Vithai poured over their northern frontiers, shattering the border fortresses and taking the Toasha Desert with startlingly little resistance. The Dulama seemed to be in dire straits, losing most of the buffer for their capital territories, but they were able to erect a series of walls in the gap between the Dula highlands and the mountains that effectively kept the invaders out of the heartland – for now.

At the same time, though, they seemed to be losing their grip on the rest of the empire. The Yensai was entirely lost, both to the Vithai raids and to a breakaway state established in the heart of the jungle, the Laitra Empire. Several expeditions were launched to reclaim this territory, but none of them succeeded.

Angered by their failures in the north and east, the Dulama Emperors turned instead to the west, marching against the rump state of their age old foe, the Tollanaugh Empire. Crushing them in a series of pitched battles, they reduced their cities one by one and absorbed the new territory into the Empire. Thus, even as it lost much land in the east, for the first time it reached the shores of the western ocean.

Contact with the eastern states had not really lasted all that long, but their influence was, in some ways, still profound.

Even though invasion and decline had seemingly cut off the Empire from these other lands, merchants still traveled the roads in between, and in fact communication only got better as local rulers paved wide roads through the rainforests, and regular embassies and caravans traveled back and forth between Dula and Gaci and Magha. At the same time, Iralliam started to gain a small but significant following in the easternmost parts of the empire, converts that were essentially tolerated as harmless.

The sacrificial state cult seemed on the decline from several fronts, in fact, as the new faith of Machaianism started to take root in the southwestern corners of the Empire, while the state itself didn't seem particularly keen on supporting the faith with the copious quantities of gold it was accustomed to when there were barbarians at the gates.

Through the period, states had started to form to the southwest, and trading with these nations took off as the Dulama were really their only connection to the wider world.

The city of Dula proper started to decline in this period. Though it obviously remained the capital of the great empire and thus retained much of its significance, a few famines and diseases set it back considerably, and recovery was not only slow – in some cases it did not happen at all, as other cities in the empire took on more administrative duties and became still more important economically.


They say the plague came from the east. No one knows precisely from where – every nation blames it on the next one; the Dulama on the Moti, the Moti on the Opulensi, and so on down the chain all the way to the lands of the Acaya, where they say it was brought by the Kitaluyans, from across the endless eastern ocean.

It probably matters little in the end.

The Eastern Plague spread like wildfire through the civilizations of the world as early as 471 SR, tearing through a nation more fiercely than any army. Its successes were greater than that of any general, and nation after nation toppled under the cold, emotionless assault of trillions of tiny bacteria, gnawing away at the foundations of mankind.

Whole cities were emptied by its advance, the dead piled high on street corners, and mass graves becoming not insults but simple necessity. Trade began to halt as nations frantically tried to stymie its advance in some way or another, but inevitably it found its way around the surest of civilization's safeguards. Nor did it depart as swiftly as it came: repeated outbreaks followed the initial one, killing what amounted to perhaps a third of the known world's population, all in all.

Soothsayers declared it the end of days, of course, but they were simply overly optimistic. The death and destruction continued. Nowhere was safe; men sought protection in the houses of the gods, in the houses of the healing, in the forests and the mountains, but everywhere it spread.

Arasos died by its hand. The Moti counterattack against the Vithai hordes fizzled as its large army died without blows, while the steppe tribe itself refused to sally forth out of its land in a desperate effort to let the plague die out before they ventured into civilization again (it did not work). A whole generation of youth were wiped out, heralding a sudden sparsity in Faron drama and art. The children of the last king of a dynasty in Leun died, leaving the nation heirless in the final bitter strike of the plague in that country, and, alas, reigniting the succession conflicts that had wracked it so long before.

Westward, westward, ever westward. It scythed through nations, and while none yet have fallen from its depredations, it seems like it might only be a matter of time. The Gallatene Governate can barely keep the peace, with the cities in the west rebelling under draconian quarantine measures, famine, and general misrule. A dozen other nations seem listless, and any number of kings have died.

So we come to the present era. Even as the plague dies out in the east, its effects are prominent everywhere. The shadow of death hangs over us all.

How shall we begin again?


285: Leunan Empire declared by King Duras. Start of the Leunan Calendar.
290-306: Leunan-Nahari War.
296: Vithai raids commence against the Ardavai Exatai.
307: The Savirai invade and conquer the Nahari Empire.
310: Leun officially converts to Indagahor. No one is surprised.
313: Helsian Empire overruns Hu'ut.
315: Tenets of Indagahor penned in Halq.
318-322: Leun's Admiral Kreutas launches a series of exploratory expeditions.
321: Civil Academy of Epichirisi founded.
322: Massacre of Voninheim.
324: Helsian Hu'ut is conquered by the Kothari Exatai.
329: Xieni raids against Evyni commence.
330: Opulensi fleets force their way through to the far East; a brief war ends with Leun's concession.
333: End of the Kratoan Civil War or Moti southern campaign.
334: Palmyra launches a widespread series of reforms.
335: The tottering Triumvirate in Helsia falls apart; a single Emperor takes power.
340-348: Dulama-Moti War.
345: The united Empire of Helsia breaks into pieces.
348: Vithai invasion of the Dulama Empire begins.
circa 350: Rise of the Kingdom of Zeray.
352: War of Ischyan Succession, Leun versus Gadia. Gadia wins with Opulensi support.
354-388: Widespread turmoil in Gallat. Theocracy falls; south fractures; military takes over.
358: Investigation of the production of music in Faerouhaiaou by Couranoen Parafosoa.
359: Moti suppresses certain privileges of the godlikes.
362: Kothari forces conquer Palmyra.
366: New Treha founded.
368: Kothari convert to Iralliam.
371: Luskan converts to Maninism.
374-398: Savirai-Opulensi Wars
377: Petraxes the Wind Lord succeeds to the throne in the Ardavai Exatai.
378: Library of Reppaba founded.
382-389: Luskan invades Ederrot.
387: Cyve unites the Ederru and drives back Luskan.
399: Kothari Redeemer Abral-ha converts back to the Ardavan religion.
401: Gallat begins western crusade.
403: Northern rebellions in Savirai.
406: Leun undergoes a succession crisis.
407: War between Opulensi and the Eastern League ends with the conquest of Leheb.
409: Civil war begins in Sira between two royal lines.
411: Ardavai Exatai invades Moti. War ends inconclusively.
416-435: Body of work of the Faerouhaiaou playwright, Taeraena.
417: Kothari Exatai explodes into a religious war.
434: Kothari invade Helsia; Subal falls.
436: Seshweay rebellion; Moti-Ardavai war.
438: Turmoil in Sira. Breakup of the Roshate.
440-474: Second series of Opulensi-Savirai Wars.
452: Punitive Satar expedition against the Vithai.
455: Southern nations contact the Baribai.
457-476: Monastery of Arasos.
464: Vithai invade Moti.
471: The Eastern Plague arrives in Leun.
472: ...And then in the Savirai and Opulensi Empires.
475: Arrives in the main cradle.
480: And in the north.
486: Into the Dulama Empire.


OOC:

Ultimately, this update was drier than a board left out to... dry. I blame my long update drought and the problem of trying to write over a span of centuries. The End of Empires experience will hopefully end up in a better place over the course of the next couple updates.

I can also promise that the next update will not be this long. This one was an absolute monster.

Anyone who wants to create a new culture, pay attention! There's a considerable amount of open space that's ripe for new civilizations – we got jungle, we got temperate climates, and we got desert. PM me if you're interested. Or post, really, either way.

You can play the Dulama Empire if you apply in a super-secret way that will only be revealed by PM. I might also redo their section of the update tomorrow when I'm less in a hurry to get things down.

Special thanks to Luckymoose for volunteering to help me with some upload problems.



Error: Zirais is very much Opulensi; my maps were uploaded before that change. It'll be fixed soon!

Deadline for claiming new nations is the weekend. Deadline for orders, Friday after that.

The world....it is not what it once was.

NK...this is beyond worth the wait.

Update!


Ah, destroyed again . Oh well, since my nation has been wiped out for a third time, may I claim Savirai, or was someone playing them beyond the black before this update?

Savirai.

Now there's a problem. The Savirai are largely Nahari in culture, but politically descended from the dynasty that Kraz claimed a while ago. I don't honestly know how to resolve this at this point, I might take applications? I might flip a coin? What seems fairest to you two?

Claiming my baby Cyve.

Hanakahi please..

North King said:

Now there's a problem. The Savirai are largely Nahari in culture, but politically descended from the dynasty that Kraz claimed a while ago. I don't honestly know how to resolve this at this point, I might take applications? I might flip a coin? What seems fairest to you two?

Click to expand...

Kraz can have them. A gesture against our recent little spat.

Would be nice if the Nahari culture was mentioned somewhere in their stats tho?

I'll look into some of the baby nations on the outskirts of civilization.

Abaddon said:

Would be nice if the Nahari culture was mentioned somewhere in their stats tho?

I'll look into some of the baby nations on the outskirts of civilization.

Click to expand...

Sorry about that. Product of not really proofreading the stats.

Let me know what you might want to take!


EDIT: As multiple people have noted, some things in the rules have changed. New rules will be posted sometime in the next two days (I do have midterms).

Looking Good.

Very Good.

DOUBLE EDIT

I have yet to decide what I want to be :/

Mossaran Rosh is the heir of Khivan, the student of Harran! He is the Marshall of the Hosts, the High Ward of the Faithful! He is Protector and Guardian of Virtue, the Dispenser of Wisdom and Law, Patron of Scholars and Artists! May he rule with truth and justice.

Kneel! Kneel! Kneel!

What an exceptional update. [After all the exceptional maps you made, I hate to say it but...we really need a climate map.]

Does the man become the mask, or the mask the man...

Hmm, it seems that I've got a few choices here. I'll talk to you about it soon NK!

Fantastic update!

Good thing I decided to check on the forum today. Great update, NK.