End of Empires - N3S III

I sent my orders like a boss. I have no regrets.

North King said:

9/21.

I moved my deadline back two weeks, and waited a week after that, for this. Wow. Well, tell you what, you have exactly twenty-four hours from the time of this post to get your orders in. If I don't get orders from more than one-half of my players, this NES will officially go on hiatus, indefinitely, until I feel like reviving it. One-half is a pretty low standard, yes, but whatever. If I do get over that 50% margin, I will start updating, and I will not accept any late orders, regardless of whether they are from Lesa or the Karapeshai.

That is all.

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I'm sorry NK. I suppose, that after last turn, when Matt's orders were egregiously late and he did great anyway, I was taken in by the idea that the deadlines in this NES don't really matter. It seems that you yourself endorsed the idea. A really crazy week for me has compounded issues.

Now that you've finally toughened up, I'll have my orders in today come hell or high water.

You are correct; I have been too nice. Given the results, that will be rectified in the future.

Thlayli said:

I'm sorry NK. I suppose, that after last turn, when Matt's orders were egregiously late and he did great anyway, I was taken in by the idea that the deadlines in this NES don't really matter. It seems that you yourself endorsed the idea. A really crazy week for me has compounded issues.

Now that you've finally toughened up, I'll have my orders in today come hell or high water.

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Rather, think of how well I might have done had my orders not been late!

I already proposed the less damaging -5% income as debt per day late idea for the future. A week late and you are 35% of your income in debt.

Terrance888 said:

I already proposed the less damaging -5% income as debt per day late idea for the future. A week late and you are 35% of your income in debt.

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That's dumb. OOC actions shouldn't automagically produce in-game debt without a compelling IC economic rationale. If you want to itemize it in an IC sense, make it indecisive leadership, organizational paralysis, loss of initiative, or other such terms.

That's the plan. I just need to be more stringent.

Speaking of which, 1 hour, 13 minutes.

Well, it would be waste caused by said things.

It's just that loss of initiative, indecisive leadership, and organisational paralysis still led to victories, eh Matt?

EDIT: This is just to say, I much prefer a concrete threatening stick than soft, fluffy, possibilities. Explain the stick with said possibilities.

North King said:

That's the plan. I just need to be more stringent.

Speaking of which, 1 hour, 13 minutes.

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The domestic section of my orders is done. I'm just settling the military side of it now, though thankfully Luckymoose has given me half of what I need.

I thought it was due 8 minutes ago. Ah well, any other details I put in are just embellishments, the core of everything I need is there.

Houa Pahouaia.

Oh, and the update is going forward, if it wasn't obvious. Barely over 50%, but it's okay. The plan is to have the update up in the next few days.

Hurrah!

All I ever wanted for Christmas, other than her.

The Red Goddess Part 2





No crown or scepter gave her power over death, and no holy symbol could reverse it for her. She was an empress, a princess, a goddess and a prophet, but she was weak. So very weak. Her only friend in this world perished in the night from an ailment of the heart. Or was it poison? She glanced about her dark chambers in fright. Only the cool spring breeze of the desert night made a sound as it brushed gently against the flowers of her personal garden. It was her world here, secluded and safe from them. Or it was. . .

Her fingers ran against her chilled flesh, beneath the fabrics of red silk she’d worn. Garments for a funeral, she thought. She peeled it from her shoulders and dropped the gown to the stone floor. She stood naked as she always did before she partook of the dark inspiration. She had not touched the Nightdraft in three years. . .

She walked to her little table. There upon it were papers stacked in an orderly manner. They were the collective works of her prophetic visions. She spent her time deciphering what the Nightdraft had shown her. Yet, she still did not believe in herself as others did. Those men that sought her end, they weren’t wrong so far as she could say. If she truly had the Light, if it truly was within her, she could not reach it through her doubt.

You are the Light, my love, her Khatai had told her.

But where was he now? Off at war, still, as ever. She saw him in her children. The black hair and brown flesh of theirs was of his nature. Her daughter wore her eyes, blue as the Tear, and held no fear of the night.

Perhaps she is the true Aitah?

She shook her head.

I am, she thought.

She clawed at her bare thighs and growled.

“I am,” she spoke aloud to no one. Her words bounced around like the laughter of those that despised her. She gritted her teeth.

A silver vessel held the inky fluid. It was freshly brewed, brought in by her servants at her own request. No one could tell her not to drink it. Thryar died. Khatai was away. Only she remained in that desert, alone. There was no candlelight to see by, but she did not need it. The moon was amplified by the desert sands and white stone floors. Why would she need light? What a foolish thing to think. She was the Light. She was older, wiser and more beautiful than ever. She would not be trifled with. She would not let the shadows of her sadness take hold of her heart.

She downed the entire contents of that silver vessel in one gulp. It held more of the inky substance than she’d normally have drank in a day, but why should she fear that? She was the Fourth Incarnation of Light. She was the Goddess Aitah in the flesh! It cooled her insides as it sluggishly travelled down her throat. It was bitter and heavy, thick and slimy.

She shivered as it entered her stomach. It cooled her entire body at once, flowing through her veins like a fever in reverse. Her breathing slowed. Her heart calmed. She could hear it beat ever slower. Her eyes grew heavy, accepting what was to come. She fell to her knees while a rush of warmth reverberated through her akin to the bliss of her lover’s touch.

She smiled for the first time that day.

“Show me,” she called to the darkness before her. “Show me what you will. Show me the Light. The Shadow. The Three-Headed Demon. I don’t care. Just take me from here, Spirit. Take me from here.”

Her vision began to tunnel. The numbing effect of the Nightdraft surrounded her like an ocean, cool and flowing. At last she fell prone against the smooth stone floor and cooed at the sensation. She closed her eyes to allow the Nightdraft to take hold and the Spirit to guide her to the truth beyond.

She feels the summer grasses on her bare body. Her golden hair lay around her like a flower in bloom. Her eyes opened to the warm light of the morning sun, pressing down on her in a loving embrace. She smiles.

“Get up,” said a woman’s voice.

Aelona looked to the sky, straining her eyes from the sun’s brightness to the east. Flakes like snow fell towards her. When they came closer, she saw that they were not snow, but ash. A shower of ash sprinkled these lands, she noticed in a fright. She recognized where she lay, propping herself upon her elbows in the lush grass. Tarena.

“I said, Stand,” said the woman again.

Aelona turned her head from the sun and fields. Behind her stood a woman in red, black hair the length of her body hanged gently from her head. Aelona went to stand, but stopped. The woman was her, she could see it now. The woman was her own reflection, only the hair. . . and eyes were different.

“Who are you?”

Her dark reflection smiled back at her. This woman had no weight, not even her feet left imprints in the soft grass beneath them. Aelona gulped.

“What do you find most important in life?” asked the blacked haired woman. “Is it who I am? Or, is it who you are? Now, stand.”

She did. But her eyes were busy taking in the sight. She’d never seen herself before outside of polished silver mirrors and reflections in water. It made her feel sick, deep inside.

“But. . . ” said Aelona.

“I look like you? Yes. Or, maybe, you look like me? We do not have the time to answer such philosophical conundrums. If we took the effort to answer that question whenever asked, we would be tremendously wasteful with our time, yes?”

Aelona nodded.

“Walk with me to the land that could have been, Aelona cuCyve.”

The dark reflection took steps, but left no markings in the grasses. She walked down the hill, but there was nothing that Aelona could see for miles around. Not even the fires that produced the ashfall could be seen. The dark reflection reached out her hand to Aelona.

“Come, take my hand and see.”

When Aelona’s hand touched hers the world blurred around them. In an instant they were somewhere else. They were in a field by the sea. A short mile away a pillar of smoke the size of a mountain range roared forth from what was once Pamala. All around them stood thousands of men, Cyvekt men, donned in armor and ready for war. Here they had made their war camp.

“What is this?” Aelona asked.

“What could have been,” said the woman in red.

The men that camped were not ready for war. They were celebrating. Aelona knew well the victors when she saw them. They drank and sang, fought and danced. This was not a landing party. This was the end.

Her reflection reached out to her once more, and, as before, the world blurred around her and they arrived somewhere new. Now they stood beside prisoners, chained to posts driven deep in the ground. Aelona walked to them. They were Savirai. And one in particular, bearded and broken, caught her eye. . .

Khatai.

She embraced him in a hug, falling to her knees in the mud and filth beneath him. She began to weep on his shoulder, but he did not stir.

“Khatai, my love, what have they done to you?” she cried. He did not speak. He did not acknowledge her presence. “Answer me, please, Khatai!”

“He cannot hear you, Aelona cuCyve. You are not corporeal here. You are only an observer. This is not your land. He is not your husband.”

Aelona inched away on her knees, sliding about in the cold mud.

“Do something,” she commanded.

“Nothing can be done.”

Aelona stood in anger, nearly falling on the slick ground in her hurry. She sped over to her dark haired counterpart, hand raised to strike. But she did not bring it down. She could not do it. All she could do was scream, and so she did, long and loud. None of the soldiers or prisoners reacted to her outburst. Only the dark reflection responded.

“Finished?” she asked.

“What is this?”

“I have said it twice. This is what could have been.”

“Could have been if what?”

Ha ha ha ha ha ha, came the laughter of the Spirit. It startled her as it boomed like thunder around her. She scanned the skies in fear, twirling in place in search of the Spirit that used to haunt her.

“Silence,” shouted the woman.

The laughter stopped. But Aelona lost her footing and fell on her rear. She eyed her dark counterpart in confusion. She received a smile in return.

The Cyvekt men had begun to gather around the prisoners now. Aelona remained seated in the mud. Her bare lower half had become covered from foot to waist in her foolishness. She felt stupid. She felt like a child. She held no power here.

The gallop of horses caught her ear. Four riders approached from the west, up the hills from the sea. They were, all of them, armored. Blood stains tainted the steel they wore. And upon their faces were masks denoting their ranks. At the lead a young man—younger than Khatai—wore the silver mask of a prince. Beside him, riding a white mount with hatred in its eyes, a slender figure wore the mask of bone beneath a steel helm. The other two riders wore red masks and must have been the tarkans to the princes. The horses stopped just shy of where the invisible Aelona sat. The Prince of Bone jumped from his horse with grace.

“Karal,” said a familiar voice behind the bone mask. “Your riders have pleased me.”

The Prince of Bone removed his mask and helm. . . but it was no he. It was her, Aelona, but not any version of her that she’d ever imagined. Her blonde hair was cut short like a man and spiked outwards at wild angles. Her face was splattered with blood, dried brown. She smiled wickedly as she walked towards the prisoners. Her armor did not slow her. She was a warrior through and through. She was Fulwarc’s heir.

“How is this possible?” Aelona asked her dark reflection.

“The Prince of Bone fell to Khatai defending the High Ward years ago. His son, Glynt, died a similar way in raids against the Tarenan king. There was no one left but you, Aelona cuCyve. You took the mask and proved your exatas.”

“And the son of Jahan?”

“A promised marriage between your grandfather and the Redeemer. Surely you remember?”

She watched the scene unfold, standing from the ground to get a better view of it all. Karal rode his mount with dignity and did not seem annoyed by his wife’s demasking.

“And you please me, Prince of Bone,” said Karal.

The Prince of Bone laughed. She stepped through the mud, steel-enforced boots sinking deep into the mush. She walked straight to the Emperor of the Dual Thrones. He did not look up at her.

“Behold your goddess, Emperor of Sand,” she mocked. “Bask in my glory.”

He did not acknowledge her. Aelona walked around to observe the conversation. It was a surreal experience for her. Two of her reflections were in walking distance of one another. The Prince of Bone growled at Khatai for his insolence. She turned, whistling to her tarkan.

“Spearsong, bring it to me,” she said.

The red masked man known as Artaxeras climbed down from his mount. He did not seem to be doing well. When he reached her, he handed the Prince of Bone a small leather bag. She untied the woven hemp string that held the bag closed.

“Your man lover put up a wonderful fight, I’ll give him that. But in the end, Emperor of Sand, he was as submissive to me as he must be in your bed.” She laughed. “He begged for mercy when I had his legs flayed, you know. He cried to his goddess. He cried to you.”

She looked in the bag, reaching her fingers in to stir at something unknown.

“What mercy did he give to my uncle? What mercy did you or your goddess give to my father or grandfather? What mercy did any of my men get when your forces were victorious? Heh. There is a fish in the Yadyevu. It has poison spines that keep a man awake and in agony through any torture. Do you want to know how long it took your man-whore to die? I had the flesh pulled from his legs while he was still alive. And while he begged for death. . .”

She poured the substance into her hands, a white powder as fine as sand. She took the powder and slowly dropped it upon Khatai’s forehead as he wept.

“I watched them grind his bones to meal.”

Aelona ran to Khatai, swatting away at the bone meal as it fell on his head. But she could not help him.

“I do not fear death,” said Khatai. “The Goddess is here with me. I feel her. She will take me away from you, Horse-lord. And you can return to your stables and spread your legs for every beast of the wild for your heathen faith.”

The Prince of Bone drew her short sword, a flash of steel in the morning sun. Aelona threw her body in front of Khatai, but she did not know what good it would do. When her reflection that could have been drove the blade forward, it stopped upon her chest, shattering into a million pieces. She could feel it.

She gasped.

Her dark chambers returned. The world that could have been was gone. Before her stood an unknown young man, his sword pressed into her naked sternum. Her back was held firm against the stone wall by his free hand.

“Thryar!” she screamed, instinctively.

“Thryar is dead. You are alone now, northern witch. At first I feared your foresight, but now I know you to be a failing prophet. You cannot see the future. You can’t even see the present. Is it any wonder that you led our people to ruin?”

She knew him to be a palace guard, but not by name. He was just another face among the hundreds she saw regularly. This angered her.

“How dare you walk where dreams are made,” she scolded him, even as a trickle of blood ran down her torso.

His sword hand wavered at her tone.

“You’re not the Goddess,” he said, assuredly.

“I will remember your face,” she said. She shook his arm from her shoulder and pressed her weight on the blade. “Every man, woman and child of your line will see no mercy in heaven for what you do.”

Rushing footsteps and the clang of steel on steel took her by surprise. Another guard she did not know confronted her would-be assassin.

“And you’ve fallen under her spell, Vesai?” said her attacker.

“You turn against the Empress,” said the newcomer. “Flee, if you can.”

The other gave no response in words but in action. He lunged back at her, aiming for the heart, but once more his blade was parried. In two quick movements the guard known as Vesai struck down the assassin. He never lost his calm. He did not look upon her nakedness.

“I apologize for intruding on your privacy, but we must leave, Empress. He is not alone.”

“Why is this happening? Do not shy your face from me. Tell me the truth.”

“I have sworn to not say until you are safely out of the palace.”

She stepped forward, remembering her dream. The worst thoughts came to mind. She grasped her saviors chin, forcing the young man to look her in the eyes.

“You would not lie to Me?”

“I cannot lie to you,” he said, shaking under her touch.

“I have seen what could have been, Savior. I am your shield, and you mine.”

No one commands the Redeemer.
He is only a piece on the board. He has been misused. – Glynt and Aelona cuCyve

Knowing was the curse of perfection. Knowing what would come for her people. – Aitahist tract

Help me to hold back the darkness.
Show me how to be the light. – the Maninist acolyte's prayer


“Please, sit down.” The man gestured to an empty couch across the table, then leaned back as Esca sat. “You wanted to talk to me,” the man said, twirling a thin chunk of sugar cane in his drink. “Why?”

“You know exactly how little we know, Hinya. And you know we need partners. Allies.”

The man smiled. Esca knew Hinya loved to feel important, and knew he couldn't lay the oil on too thickly. So he prepared his mental list of compliments, the speech he'd polished for nights, before the Kitaluk stopped him.

“I don't know why you think I can help.”

“Sorry?”

Hinya's smile had faded. “I'm barely a Kitaluk. I've lived on the other side of the sea for half my life now. I speak Parthecan to my wife, my children read your philosophers; my eldest daughter has turned to Aitahism. I built my fortune here, and I left my people. They probably love me no more than they love you – and possibly a great deal less.”

“But you understand what is going on.”

“Somewhat.”

“Tell me what you know, then.”

Hinya sighed, and looked out over the sea. He remained silent for so long that Esca wondered if he should prompt the man, before finally, he began. “We came over the ocean almost a century ago, now. It was... perhaps not the wisest decision ever made. My ancestors had some strange sense of wanderlust, I suppose. We are not like your people; when we see a horizon, we wonder what is beyond it.

“And so we came west. We found these lands, and we found a new people, with your thousand islands and your new ideas and new things. It seemed like the greatest discovery made by men. But...”

“But?”

“The gods did not share our enthusiasm, it seems. Our people have grown wealthy since we came here, but we have also sickened and died. Tens of thousands in the old Kitaluk realm... thousands here...”

“And so they isolated themselves.”

“It seemed the sensible thing to do.”

“But not to you.”

Hinya laughed. “Oh, no, to me as well. I should not be here, on this side of the ocean. But here I am, with a lovely woman and a lovely trading empire. There's no reason to live on their side of the divide, but there is a reason for a divide.”

“So... you think this will persist?”

“Well, that is the question, isn't it?” Hinya leaned back, stirring his drink idly. “We Kitaluk do not lend ourselves to factionalism, as a rule. Have you heard the saying? – 'Not all Kitaluk need be sailors, but all sailors are Kitaluk.' Fighting – especially with one another – is not in our nature.”

Esca was starting to grow impatient. “Do you think they'll bridge the gap, then?”

“If they will, then they certainly haven't yet told me.”

“Can you find out?”

“I? An old man? I am hardly spry enough to slip into the Kitaluk ports, to finagle my way into an audience before the captains there... Even if I could get there, could I convince them to abandon their course, to potentially rend their society apart again for the sake of your benefit? I have my doubts.”

“Not you, then. But perhaps another? Someone you know?”

“Perhaps...”


The fall of the Imperial Throne propelled Leun into a new age, marked mostly be pragmatism and ambition. Where the Empire had been mostly limited to provincial visions, hemmed in on the western side by the seemingly immovable Opulensi, and thus forced to curtail their operations in Acaya, the Republic felt much freer to act. The Opulensi, after all, were tied down by both their civil war and the latest in a series of sprawling conflicts, and seemed hardly in any fit state to launch an offensive.

And so the eastern war began in earnest.

With their mortal enemy Gadia besieged on all sides by thousands of men, the Leunans turned their attention to the only remaining power in the region who might challenge them: the ever-growing threat of Iolha in the far north. Long had Leun attempted to array the Acayans into an alliance against the northern city-state, but with little real success – Iolha might have been an imperial threat, but they were at least an Acayan imperial threat. Leun, as foreigners, was more threatening, even if they promised independence and cooperation with every second breath.

Nevertheless, Leun did have allies – most notably their co-religionists in the Tazari nomads, and a few others who yet remained secret. Iolha, on the other hand, felt fairly isolated. Promises had come from Lesa to help, but the Acayans trusted them very little indeed. Other Acayans might have been inclined to assist, but the Iolhan capture of Araña in 552 SR alarmed them – even if it was from the Leunans. And so, when they marched south at long last to try and liberate Gadia, they marched almost entirely alone.

An enormous column of men travled south along the coast, harried and harassed by the Tazari, and facing increasingly daunting odds as Leunan ships swarmed the coasts, raising a blockade, attempting to cut off supplies and foment resistance. Even with the loss of Araña and its valuable port, the Leunans truly ruled the seas, with almost nothing getting through to the Iolhans.

Almost.

As it turned out, several select groups did not appreciate the Leunan policy, and slipped through the attempts at a blockade anyway. Food, weapons – most importantly, information – filtered through to the Iolhans, and they had ample warning of several of their enemy's most nefarious plots. In particular, that of Lesa, who tried to seize Iolhan cities while their garrisons were pulled away to the war was easily averted by the city militias, soldiers of unusual quality that easily defeated the relatively undisciplined men from the far north. Worse still, several Leunan agents were apprehended and executed, while the maneuvers served only to offend the other Acayans even further.

And so, the arrival of the Parthecans near Gadé seemed like it might be a turning point. The Leunans had been set on their heels, and with a new foe joining the fray, perhaps it would end their imperial adventure even before it had gotten started.

But naturally, the Parthecans, like the Lesans before them, had little intention of fighting on the Acayan side. They plotted to turn on the Gadians, taking the city from the inside. Lucky for the latter that the Gadian general had turned paranoid from the years of sieges and attacks, and he refused to open his gates for them. The Parthecans were caught in a difficult situation: remain where they were, near the Leunan siege lines and maintain a pretense of fighting against them until the Iolhans came and they would be forced to truly declare their allegiance with the Acayans breathing down their necks, or turn their cloaks now and fight under the aegis of the Leunan Republic.

Prince Harca, commander of the Parthecans, might have opted for the more dangerous course, to stick to the plan that he and the Leunans had crafted so carefully. But clan chiefs and guild representatives alike pointed out the dangers of that course – they were a small army, far from home, and they did not want to risk their lives for the prospect of loot alone.

And so this particular trick, too, failed to live up to expectations, and in the end, it would be less strategems and more the clash of the two armies that decided the fate of the east.

Of course, this was what the Leunans had been counting on all along. They knew their enemy would want to engage, that it would be the only sensible course of action when delay might mean utter destruction through attrition. They had a large army positioned to the south of Gadé, and another force besieging the city with a contingent of Parthecan auxilliaries – and the advance of the Iolhans would undoubtedly end up between them.

But the position was far less favorable than appearances might have suggested. The gap between the two armies was sufficient that communication was a difficult and long process, and there was a chance the Iolhans could focus on one, destroy it, then attack the other. Even with the constant raiding by the Tazari, the Iolhans only had their main force to keep together; if Leun wasn't careful, the Acayans could dictate the terms of engagement entirely.

Seizing the opportunity, the Iolhans pounced on the besieging army, pinning it against the walls of Gadé and the adjacent River Centa. The attack was sudden and sharp, and for a time it looked as though the allied force might crumble before the combined might of the Acayans, but luckily they held out until nightfall, when they were able to withdraw across the river out from under their enemies' noses.

More than a little miffed at how this all had turned out, the Leunan general massed his forces once more and ordered another attack, hoping to crush the Iolhans and trap their remnants in Gadé along with the rest of the Acayans. His Tazari allies, long waiting in the wings, managed to mostly neuter the Acayan cavalry, while the Parthecan shock troops rattled their foes' battle lines long enough to create the gaps necessary. Soon, the Iolhans were forced to retreat, though their good order and competence allowed them to escape destruction, along with much of the Gadian army, which withdrew with them to the north even as their city fell to the enemy advance.

The Battle at Gadé, fought in 559 SR, had signaled the dominance of Leun over their longtime Acayan rivals – if it wasn't already obvious.

And what of the Opulensi?

Embroiled in their civil war, the old empire seemed to linger on long past their time, as the Daharai advanced on the Emperor's seat in Epichirisi. The threat to the seat of the empire did not go unnoticed, and the rebels were met with fierce resistance the closer they drew. But even as they were turned back in several places, the Emperor found it increasingly hard to stand against them. His move against them a few scant years earlier had put his, the longest unbroken ruling line, in mortal danger.

In the end, the real salvation of the Emperor came in his command over the fleets – the one, critical area where the Daharai influence was less potent. Escaping by sea from the advancing Daharai forces, he launched several campaigns around the empire to retake minor outposts from whatever commander had seized them; within a few years, the loyalists had regained much of the empire outside of Spitos itself.

Of course, Spitos was the heart of the Opulensi, and a standoff between the Spice Isle and the outlying regions could only harm the empire. And the empire was beset by foes.

Luckily for the empire, their foes seemed almost too kind to them. The Farubaida focused almost entirely on the Peko and the Kothari, only making cursory moves against the cities in the Hulinui. The Savirai pushed the Opulensi out of Nahar, but this was only a quick strike by the desert clans; the main body of the northern empire remained in faraway Tarena. Leun, as we have seen, focused on Acaya. And so, in its weakest moment, only a couple of countries bothered to attack the golden empire. And even that was almost enough.

Farea, the one power which had maintained its head through the whole explosion in the east, attacked the last few Opulensi possessions on Naelsia. Even after expeditions by the loyalists against the Daharai in the region, the Empire maintained a fairly large force in the region, but it was outnumbered heavily by the Fareans and a substantial, if smaller, Leunan expeditionary force. A quick strike from Farea opened the campaign and took Cynta with almost no casualties; resistance in Tars and Cheidia was much more challenging, but these cities fell after a few years of siege.

Within a decade, nearly all the Opulensi gains against what had been the Eastern League were undone.

Even with the embroilment of the entire region in war, other events continued backstage.

The Leunan Republic had all but endorsed Aitahism, a move implicit in their very adoption of the ancient Seshweay system of rule, and the religion had taken a firm hold in the country, spread by (rumors said) the very same Aitah who had been born in the Dual Empire. How else to explain the sudden surge in popularity that the faith experienced, one that nearly drove out the old Indagahor faith from the heartland of the Republic?

Naturally, the politics of the era conflated religious change with the ongoing war – Leun being seen as the standard bearer for Aitahism, and their foes for the old order. In reality, the religious leaders themselves had little animosity for one another, eastern Indagahor being a fairly tolerant philosophy to begin with, and Aitahism seeing no reason why the two faiths couldn't coexist within a single person, let alone within a country. Nevertheless, the spread of Aitahism traveled along political lines, with missionaries popping up in the few Acayan states sympathetic to Leun, and even faraway Partheca, while those more supportive of Iolha clung even more firmly to their ancient polytheisms.

For its part, the Republic contented itself with sponsoring some of the largest temples that had been raised to the Goddess for some time – modeled after those Khatai had built in the Peko Valley at the beginning of his reign. Much smaller churches emerged all across the northern reaches of Auona, built at first in imitation of the Aitahist shrines in Helsia, but eventually developing their own, distinctly Leunan bent, with stucco walls and red-tiled roofs.

The efforts of a few of the Taparsuencen in Parthe to bridge the gap that yawned between themselves and the Kitaluk met with little success at first, though a few contacts were made in secret, and low-level trade resumed.


Far to the south, meanwhile, the war continued as it had for many years on the isle of the Ilfolk. Despite all the death, it seemed that all three (or maybe four?) sides had plenty of lives to throw at the conflict still. Finally, however, the Opulensi merchants and the priests of the Slangtempl reached an accord, sharing power between them in a sort of oligarchic structure, aligning their interests to face their remaining rivals – the far southern Ilfolk, and the more immediate threat of the Baribai.

Deciding to focus on the northern islanders, they launched dozens of new boats, fighting their way onto the northern archipelago and securing a safer sea route to the north. Despite these successes, however, the future looked rather bleak: the ongoing Opulensi civil war meant that the merchants received less and less support from their families back home. Soon, they could be left to the vagaries of the south, with no more tools than had their Ilfolk allies.


Border skirmishes had been a fact of life on the Kothari's Helsian frontier for centuries. On and off raids had occupied the time of generations of warriors on either side, dating back to the time of the Empire of Helsia, and it seemed that the Kothari regarded this new and latest war as just another one of these conflicts – perhaps a little larger, but certainly nothing to get worked up over. They launched a few probes into southern Helsia, but none reached particularly far.

The Farubaida o Caroha did not share their views.

A massive force of some sixty thousand soldiers was assembled at Aramaia. Its task was quite simple – to seize Subal and end the centuries long Satar occupation of the last bit of the traditional Helsian lands that remained outside the Farubaida.

Meeting little resistance at the borders, the Helsians crushed Satar raiding parties that had lingered a little too long, and defeated the rather minor Kothari field army in the area, reaching Subal within a couple of weeks of marching. Only now did it seem to dawn on the Exatai that their neighbors meant serious business, and by the time they had begun to muster an army near Hiuttu, the Farubaida had completely invested the city of Subal, hoping to reduce it via a fairly quick siege.

At the same time, the Carohans maintained large forces on other fronts. Their armies in the Hulinui took a conservative approach, barely rousing themselves even with the chaos in their Opulensi foes. On the other side, however, a small expeditionary force, along with considerable naval forces, aimed to help the Savirai retake the River Peko. The sheer inaccessibility of the Lovi Sea (with only two narrow entries) meant the Carohans felt rather secure on its waves, but this illusion was shattered by the arrival of an immense Karapeshai and Cyvekt navy, a Grand Fleet that slipped past the defenses at Caroha itself, and looked to disrupt the allied campaign in the Peko.

Despite the factor of surprise, and despite their new maritime prowess, however, the Satar could not quite challenge the Farubaida in its home waters. With significantly better-maintained ships and crews far more experienced in the Lovi Sea, they drove off the Grand Fleet in a series of heated naval engagements, and though the Farubaidan fleet was quite weakened by the battles, they still helped Khatai drive the Airani out of Reppaba, securing the Lovi as an Aitahist lake once more.

The armies of the Kothari, meanwhile, had finally amassed in force, and marched to take on the Helsians around Subal. Meeting just south of the city in 555 SR, the two sides found themselves evenly matched, trading blows for several days, neither side giving ground, before the Farubaidan general Maeriu Paetronau took a daring risk, personally leading a charge into the Satar right flank. There, the Kothari had relied on a thickly wooded hillock to protect their wing. Surprising them, Maeriu routed their cavalry screen, soon after breaking the Satar host entire.

Merely a week after the battle of the knoll, the Farubaidans returned to Subal, securing the surrender of the city, and rejoicing at the final reconquest of the old Helsian heartland.

Still, much remained uncertain. Maeriu's subsequent efforts to attack the Kothari power base in Hu'ut met with only one failure after another, as the Satar turned away all attacks by force of arms or enormous fortifications. Unable to truly focus on the Kothari alone, the Farubaida found itself stymied at a new line of stalemate, only a little further south than the traditional one.


In contrast to the dozens of wars that raged everywhere else in the known world, the Holy Moti Empire continued along in a peaceful, almost sedate era of prosperity. Naturally, not all was well with the Empire, even given peace, plenty, and the fact that everyone was well-fed. Tensions continued to rise between the Aitahist-leaning bureaucracy and the relatively newer urban elites and the traditional landed aristocracy and Iralliamite conservatives.

Almost oblivious to this, a new Ayasi, Fifth-Frei, rose to power in an almost painless succession. Youthful, clever, but quite naïve in the ways of court and backstabbing, he decided that he ought to win some great martial victory, and struck out with his forces to conquer new lands for the glory of the Great Family.

Concerned agents through the Empire let out a sigh of relief when they discovered that his target was none of the other great powers. Instead, Fifth-Frei turned on the mostly harmless Putran rebels who continued to give his vassal, the Clan of Kogur, so much trouble across the Galas Sea. A mighty expedition of nearly forty thousand men sailed down the coast, landing on the jungle coast. Immediately, they put to flight all real resistance; the Putrans had held on mostly by virtue of sheer tenacity and cleverness, but neither were much help when they were outnumbered ten to one.

Almost disappointed with the ease of his victory, Fifth-Frei decided to continue the campaign southward, reaching and crossing the border of Shentha, bringing that city state to its knees almost as soon as he arrived at its walls. He put the city to the sword, and, perhaps deciding that this war business was good fun after all, took his armies all the way to the capital of the extreme southern state of Parna, setting it alight and forcing the local potentates to swear oaths of allegiance to this strange intruder before finally withdrawing northward.

It had been perhaps an unwise expenditure of time and resources, especially when so many other powers in the known world were jockeying for better position, but it certainly earned Fifth-Frei something of a reputation, one that he would not soon shed.

By the time he returned, he discovered that much had changed.

Councillor Afari, his hand-picked steward, had run the country extremely efficiently in the intervening year, but for all his intelligence and forward thinking, remained extraordinarily unpopular with the traditional landed elite. A relatively minor dispute over land rights in the valley of the River Kiyaj had flared into open conflict, with local aristocrats blatantly ignoring imperial decrees that they ought to cede lands to a newly arrived lord in the region. Imperial troops had arrived to put things aright, but found the situation nearly spiraling out of control. Annoyed, Fifth-Frei personally travelled through the region, and brought surprisingly level-headed judgement to the situation, listening to both sides and finding a compromise that neither like but both accepted.

It had been a small scare, but it was symptomatic of something much larger that was wrong with the Empire. A shadow war, fought in the theater of politics and law, had started between the two factions.

To make matters more muddled, a populist religious movement arose in the Had River valley, started by some renegade priest named Sokar. Sokar's teachings ran that the Church had grown corrupted, and that many of its practices served only to secure the wealth of church officials and maintain the social status quo – charges which were, of course, entirely accurate. His followers acclaimed priests on their own, without the ordination of any Patriarch, quickly earning the wrath of local officials but gaining much support in the cosmopolitan cities of the valley.

On the whole, though, all this uncertainty did little to truly hurt the lives of the common man, or even the upper classes. For them, the period would be noted more for the sudden explosion of architectural ingenuity throughout the Empire – a new style of church-building spread through the land, with enormous vaulted ceilings. These, of course echoed with the strains of the polyphonic music in the Kothari style that had been popular for decades now; the sacred music helped along by new notation systems that were quickly adapted by the Aitahists for their own hymnals as far as the Farubaida itself.

Both of these began to filter west, into the Hai Vithana khaganate, where a truly interesting religious situation would be quickly overshadowed by political developments...


Even as Avetas left for the east, taking much of the Karapeshai army with him, the nobility of the Exatai seemed neither jingoistic nor conservative. Indeed, the feeling in the Exatai was one of great tenseness, an unease which had nothing to do with the two wars that rimmed the great empire. Dangers lurked within the borders of the realm, perhaps greater than those outside. Every Prince feared the other – and there were none more feared than the Letoriate, the Accan bastion of the banking clans, ruled with an iron fist by Zelarri, wife of the late, great Arto Rutarri.

And yet none of her rivals could do much about her. Most of the Princedoms were in debt to the Accans, and while the Redeemer Avetas lived, maneuvers could only be political... a realm that the Accans were exceedingly good at.

And so the Exatai fought on through its twin wars. The threat of the Vischa had reached something of a high tide mark by 440 RM, and through rumor had it that they met with Xieni and Evyni emmissaries to discuss secret alliances, it came to nothing. The Xieni Prince Laeng died in 441, and his son Taexi seemed much more amenable to remaining within the Exatai than his father ever had. It was no mystery, then, why the Vischa advance suddenly halted. Indeed, within a year, Prince of the Moon Karal had struck a blow at the Vischa near Asihkar, throwing them back west, and more or less securing the western frontier.

A succession struggle among the Vischa shortly thereafter ended – or at least significantly delayed – the resumption of the border war, and so the steppe domain of the Exatai, too, slipped into this uneasy stillness, a slow game of kalis.

Construction at Atracta slowed without the Redeemer to oversee it, but much of the heart of the city had been completed by the time he left. The Sephashim and Princely palaces grew yearly, and the city grew still larger with the northward movement of Accans and Satar alike.

Nor was this movement limited to the merchantry or nobility. For the first time since the declaration of Ytauzi tolerance in the north, Ardavani priests and monks started to proselytize there in earnest. Translations of the Kaphaiavai into Avaimi and Taudo were completed in 445 RM, and new temples were raised in Alusille and Anyais. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the religion was slow to catch on here, for despite efforts by the missionaries to make it more accessible to those coming from the dualist northern faiths, the Avaimi were nothing if not famously conservative. Much greater strides were made in the realms of the Taudo, and the northern Evyni countryside, where the Ytauzi and Maninist faiths had often acted as cover for pagans anyway, and there was much to be gained socially by conversion.

Even with the growing mobility of the populace, much of the north had yet to recover from the Satar campaign of devastation against the central Einan. Indeed, perhaps it never would, for it seemed that no one's hand strayed far from the sword here.

By 448 RM, word reached the Exatai that Avetas had died. This was not altogether unexpected, for he was old and had been on campaign for long years, and the timing probably could not have been better, for the War of the Empty Throne already seemed to be winding down. Nevertheless, it still sparked a conflict that would shake the Exatai to its very core.

Word of the Redeemer's death was barely fresh off the boat when Zelarri made her move. She revealed her son Taro to be the issue of Avetas, not Arto; Taro, renaming himself Tephras in a transparent bid to identify with his Satar heritage, declared that he would seek the golden mask. Immediately, most of the Accan banking families supported her son, seizing the chance to gain even more control over the Exatai that was gradually becoming theirs. Avetas old Princedom fell to Tephras, as well, and thus, with a single stroke, the Accans had secured the center of the Exatai.

To many in the old guard, this simply would not do. Tephras (or whatever he named himself now) and his mother represented the Accans, and the sea, but most of all they represented the gradual corruption of Satar values by a small coastal conspiracy bent on creating a second Accan Exatai, and everyone knew where the first one had led.

And so it was that in the west, Karal, son of the old Redeemer Jahan, declared that he, too, would seek the golden mask. Challenging Tephras to single combat, he received no response, as expected, and set out raising an army of his own. With recent successes against the Vischa in the steppe war, he had little trouble finding allies – both his own veterans, the forces of Prince Taexi, and the Prince of the Shield. The rest of the Exatai soon fell on one side or another, with the notable exception of the religious authorities, who noted that he who proved strongest in battle would be most worthy of the golden mask, and left it at that.

Even as the battle lines were still solidifying, the first blows fell. An expedition by Karal's own son struck at the lands of the Prince of the Spear, near the southern border, and wrecked much havoc, turning many in that southern region to the side of the Moon. At the same time, the Accans sent a significant fleet to the ports of the Taudo, who were immediately convinced to support Tephras. But the real war had yet to begin.

Icicles hung from the crenelations of Pamala, snow heaped atop the walls – both fell with errant gusts of wind. It made for treacherous approaches, this northern winter, treacherous approaches... and unhappy armies, huddled by the nightfires. For weeks it had worn on, colder than any winter in living memory, claiming toes and lives with equal abandon.

Fulwarc liked the cold. It reminded him of home.

“You cannot mean to go through with this plan. For a hundred years hence, men will sing of Fulwarc's folly.”

Fulwarc gave the speaker, some slight Satar, a withering look. The Prince of Bone was a fearsome sight, even in his elder years, as the beard that crept around the skull-mask gathered frost from his breath... but the Satar stood his ground. “Who is this one?” he asked, to no one in particular.

“Teretto, a longtime servant of the Letoratta,” the man replied.

“Teretto.” Fulwarc snorted. “If battle frightens you, follow me. You will never have to fight.”

The Satar scowled. “It is not your courage I doubt, Fulwarc, it is your tactics. Pamala has withstood a great number of sieges in its time, and there's no – ”

“So you want to continue with our siege?” Fulwarc smiled. The man had let him interrupt him. He still had that effect. “You want to continue, and hope that we'll do better than everyone before us?”

“It simply does not seem prudent to squander our resources, when the main force of Khatai lingers somewhere in the south.”

“He will never turn north unless he has reason to. We fight.” The Accan still looked displeased, and Fulwarc turned away, spitting into the snow. This newest tarkan was a coward, so unlike his true tarkan – the first one, long since dead. His eyes fell, and not for the first time, he found himself remembering Artaxeras. How long had it been? Ten years? Twenty? Time was starting to blur for him, and he seemed only to remember instead of act. Somewhere along the way, he had become an old man, and when, he could not say. Only a few years ago, he had crossed that too-proud warrior, Avetas – he had shown him real exatas. Surely he could not have been old then? Surely...

“My Prince?” A new voice, this one.

“What?” He turned to find another Accan. Too many Accans, too many double consonants. He couldn't keep them straight anymore.

“The army is ready. When shall we begin the attack?”

Fulwarc smiled. “At the sunrise.”

The moon that night was a watchful one. Somewhere, a Kothari astronomer was marking his notes, charting the appearance of the dark eye in his sketches. Perhaps he even theorized of the enormous hellfire that burned on the slopes of the Aresha's volcanoes... but to Fulwarc, it merely looked like a dark wound. Appropriate, that.

And even through the dark, he thought of old, dead things – women, food, drink... He always slept before a battle, but tonight, he couldn't. Not that he was worried: if anything, he felt oddly cheered by the thought of blood on the featureless snow. He simply felt no weariness. Worse, he had little to do, for the battle plan had long since been decided upon. Restless, he could only pace, watching the walls with old, dead eyes.

The light in the eastern sky came so slowly that he cursed the sun under his breath. The gods, he could not help but feel, wanted him to die of old age before the battle started. Typical.

By the time the sun finally summited the hills, the army had already massed behind the ramparts, so numerous that Fulwarc half-worried that the Tarenans would see the cloud of steam rising from their collective breath. But it was no matter. They had a dozen rams, hundreds of ladders, ballistae, and onagers – quite enough to take down the city, he judged.

“The horn,” he said to the tarkan. The Satar nodded; Fulwarc saw that he was no longer frowning. Courage, or hidden fear? It made no difference. The warhorns sounded. The battle was joined.

Every battle is a little different. The Prince of Bone had assaulted a dozen cities in his youth, but never like this – charging across a field of snow, the feet of ten thousand warriors turning it to ice and slush under the sheer weight of their feet. Soon the men behind him were slipping, sliding in the wet and the cold, crying out as the arrows fell all about them, the fallen landing in the slush, lifeless eyes frozen into the mud.

But Fulwarc was at the head of the charge, feet pounding through the unblemished white, shouting at the top of his lungs. Arrows scattered all about him, but they were meaningless little annoyances, pointless diversions that had no hope of bringing him down.

And then they were at the walls, the defenders casting stones from the battlements, and Fulwarc turned to see the ladders carried by onrushing groups of men. He would be the first on the walls, he thought eagerly, as they were raised against the stone; he would be covered in glory. He might be old, but this... this he could still do.

The first man up the walls was not Fulwarc, but it did not matter, since he died as soon as he got there, the snow beneath the walls stained with a spatter of red. The Prince of Bone was close behind that one, pushing back the defenders with his axe, and taking the blows on his other side with his shield. Grinning, he laid all about him, tearing open three Tarenans as easily as he might have cut a piece of liver, then turning to face their captain, a tall man in full armor – who did not look nearly as impressive after Fulwarc tripped him with the axe and stabbed him in a gap.

“Artaxeras!” he called with glee, but when he turned, he remembered it was a new tarkan now. The Accan fought off another man to his right, taking a hail of blows with a little disc of a shield – an absurd buckler, Fulwarc thought, but the man seemed to have some skill with it. More men were coming, and Fulwarc moved to meet them, the sound of steel on steel keening in his ears before he pushed one of them off the wall to tumble to the streets of the city behind him. He let the Accan finish off his man by himself before moving on, grinning from ear to ear. “Tarkan! Did I not tell you – stand behind me, and you won't even have to draw your sword!”

The Accan nodded, but still looked serious. Some did not feel the battle-rush, Fulwarc supposed. He felt sorry for the man.

One-two, another pair of defenders down, one with an axe to the side of the head, another slammed against the merlon by his shield, and collapsing in a crumpled heap. They kept coming, practically begging Fulwarc to kill them, and he obliged them. “Tarkan!” he shouted again. “They cannot even stand against an old man!”

“Mighty, as ever,” the Accan replied, and onward they pressed. The gatehouse lay only a little further along the wall.

Suddenly, Fulwarc stumbled, and smashed against the wall. Confused, he looked down, and discovered an arrow sprouting from his torso. “Cravens,” he muttered. It was no matter; it wasn't a gut wound. He would be fine. The next thicket of defenders charged forth, and he raised his axe in reply; his tarkan was screaming something, but it made no matter. Off with an arm, a blow to the eyes, one-two-three, down they went... but when he looked down now, he seemed to be bleeding more.

“My Prince! You need to fall back.”

“The Prince of Bone needs no bandages.”

“I may be a craven, Prince Fulwarc, but even I can see when a man has reached his limit.” The tarkan bulled in front of him to fend off the next group, his sword singing in the wind, and when he had finished, he turned back. “Come on!” he shouted, pulling Fulwarc back along the wall, to the safer places where his men had already come and gone. The footing here was treacherous, with the snow packed into ice, but the tarkan displayed more concern for his blood, which streamed onto the dirty white.

“I have bled before, tarkan,” Fulwarc started to say, but his vision was starting to blur.

“My Prince,” he heard, but the sound was curiously tinny, as though it came from the other end of some great feast hall. “Fulwarc! Fulwarc!”

His thoughts seemed slow, as though they were being read to him from a book. He slumped against the nearest merlon, and the most irrelevant of thoughts started to crowd his head: old smells, sights. “I will not make this journey,” he mumbled, half in remembrance and half in protest. The tarkan knelt beside him, fumbling at his wound, trying to bind it. Fulwarc still did not remember his name.

A last whisper: “Give me not this death.” And the tarkan was the only one around to hear him.


“A pretty thing, no doubt.” The Emperor tilts his head. “Where did you say she came from?”

“The south, my lord. I did not recognize the name.”

“The south...” he murmurs. The silk of the girl's dress rustles in the wind, bringing to mind whispers and dreams exchanged in the night. “Take her away.”

“My lord?” the servant looks confused, but leads her out. The door closes behind her, and as the servant turns, the Emperor speaks.

“Have you never read the Diadem Reforged?”

The servant bows his head, “I have not, my lord.”

“A marvelous tome. One of the few things the Trilui ever truly contributed to the world. But yes, as Juluiii said, 'Even the greatest men may fall prey to the charms of some lovely foreign serpent; better to have beauty without possibility of a blade.'”

“It is as you say, my lord.”

“As I say, and as he said. Leave me.” Khatai waves his hand, and within moments, he is alone, the hall nearly silent about him. He rises from the throne and walks to the side of the chamber, where a bolt of red cloth hangs from the ceiling. It is a temple he himself oversaw the repurposing of, some old Maninist hall, now a high-ceilinged monument to the Goddess he barely believes in.

A sound. He turns, but there is nothing there.

“Lord of the desert.” A voice from nowhere.

Khatai calls out, “I told you to leave.”

“You were wise to send the woman from you, but Wolves have many teeth.”

“Guards!” he calls, but it is a beat too late, and the shadow emerges from a nearby hanging. The knife is sudden and swift.

“What.”

Red spreads across red, staining the cloth and stones alike. The old guard exits.


The assassination of Emperor Khatai of the Dual Empire in 553 came as a surprise to nearly everyone except the Satar. Up until that point, the allied armies had been on the offensive. Rumors out of the north held that the Cyvekt raids intensified all along the Tarenan coastline, but Khatai's caution turned to youthful exuberance as the Satar attacked northward – the Savirai retook the valley of the Peko with the aid of the Farubaidan fleet, snatching victory from the jaws of defeat in a whirlwind campaign that broke the Airani forces. With his flank secured and the Airani driven out of the eastern Nahsjad, Khatai prepared his forces to move northward.

There, the Satar under Avetas had struck into Occara, with the intent of cutting Khatai's supply lines. Unfortunately for them, the Savirai had little need of supplies drawn through that narrow conduit, and it seemed like all would build to a titanic clash in the lands of the old Bhari Roshate between horselord and desert emperor.

None of that came to pass.

Khatai was murdered in Reppaba by a member of the mysterious Wolves of the Sable, and his death launched the Dual Empire into chaos. Khatai had two legitimate children by the Goddess Aelona, but Qasaarai was barely 11 at the time of his father's death, and he could hardly assume the mantle of leadership, and Qasra was even younger (and sickly, to boot). Though the field army in the Peko stayed intact under the command of Reman, an aging royal cousin, its offensive stalled, and Avetas began to eat away at the northern Peko once more.

At the same time, Fulwarc's soon-to-be famous assault on Pamala had reduced that city utterly, and nearly broken the Tarenans in a single stroke. Without the support of Khatai, King Vesper was left in an increasingly precarious position, with many of his former domestic allies advocating that they treat with the Satar, perhaps abandoning him entirely, and even his Savirai allies contemplating perhaps putting their own creature on the throne instead.

With most of their strong leaders gone, the Aitahist alliance lost ground across the front, their bulwarks in the middle of Gallat falling one by one to the combined Accan and Gallasene armies. The presence of Avetas' enormous field army encouraged long-dormant anti-Aitahist elements in Occara to resist the Savirai-controlled government, while Tarena's failures at Pamala lef them reeling, and in no state to repel numerous minor Cyvekt raids across the northern coastline.

The string of defeats was quite enough to convince several elements in Gurach that this northern experiment had been a miserable failure, and they made an attempt on their Goddess Aelona's life – she escaped, though only narrowly, and fled to northern, uncharted lands, leaving the center of the empire in chaos, as various clans jockeyed for position, with Qasra and Qasaarai being “supported” by any number of clan leaders nearby.

At the same time, not all was well on the other side. Quite aside from the Satar's difficulties across the sea, Fulwarc's death in battle, along with that of his son, Glynt (who, it was said, choked on a piece of cake at the victory celebration afterward), left the throne of Cyve completely open. Nominally, of course, Glynt's son Ephasir was the heir to the throne. But Glynt's numerous disgraces left the nobility almost entirely unsympathetic to Ephasir, whose residence in Atracta was seen as still more proof that he would be nothing but a Satar puppet.

As a result, the Cyvekt prince Cuskar, long ago the ally of Aelona and certainly no Satar sympathist, raised an enormous rebellion in northern Cyve. Driving to the capital at Lexevh, he laid siege to the fortifications built long before by Glynt, and after a fierce standoff, the city was surrendered by the local commander. Ephasir was left a king without a kingdom, a Prince of Bone without the bone mask of his grandfather.

Fighting in Nech only raised the stakes, as the Cyvekt and Seehlekt invaded the country simultaneously, with neither entirely sure how to react to the presence of the other; for the moment, an uneasy peace reigned.

By the end of the decade, of course, Qasaarai was quite old enough to fend for himself, and showed himself to be more a Savirai than even his father. Escaping from an “allied” clan who had adopted him as their own battle-standard, he vanished into the scrubland north of Gurach, and emerged a year later with an army of cavalry and camelry that thrashed the united desert clans near Vana, and declared himself Qasaarai V, Emperor of the Dual Thrones and Flamebearer of the Goddess.


The rebellion was almost a quarter of a century past, but its relics could be seen everywhere. Half-finished building projects in Mora, whose funds had trickled to a halt. The Great Sunken Temple in Aeda, ruined, with weeds growing in what had been the worship hall. Fields lying fallow, Iralliamites in the streets. None of them, by themselves, meant much. The Dulama were surely still the greatest empire the world had ever known, their armies unmatched by any nation, their splendor trumping that of any ruler. Their name still commanded fear.

But taken together, they were an insidious ailment, eating at the edges of grandeur, and the littlest thing could cause a relapse.

It was not much, at first. Reports of raids out of the northern mountains, men from the hills stealing gold and silver shipments bound for the capital in the center. Certainly irksome, but the local garrisons alone could probably deal with it. The Emperor took no chances, however, and sent a large expedition to deal with the raiders. What they found was simply stupefying: Narannue soldiers, holed in the mountains, occupying fortresses that could launch raids anywhere in the metal-rich valley.

The Emperor demanded to know what had transpired – how dare Naran intrude on their lands? – but the Onnaran turned away the emmissaries. And word was sent by secret mountain pass and black ship to the great alliance. Attack, it said. Destroy this latest of the western empires.

But before the allies could strike, the Narannue had to deal with the Dulama on their border. And much as they were used to defending mountains, they had simply underestimated the Dulama. Even though the Emperor had committed what was for them a tiny force, the Dulama still outnumbered the Narannue, and before anyone else could strike, he sent forth several more legions, battering Naran all across the southern front. Without aid, the little country would surely have fallen to the empire.

That never came to pass. Naran's allies were not numerous, and emerged only slowly, but their attacks all took the Dulama by surprise.

First, Ther, whose rulers were a branch of the ancient Tollanaugh line, struck at their ancestral homeland, reaching the River Thuaitl in a number of places before meeting the local governors in battle and coming to a halt.Then, the Hai Vithana chieftains, seeing an opportunity, and defying their senile khagan's wishes to invade the Laitra, struck across the border and threatened the Taidhe. The governor of Tiagho raised the standard of rebellion, followed swiftly by the still-angry nobility of the Dula highlands. The old priest-kings of Sechm, chafing under Dulama oppression, threw off their shackles as the local Dulama garrison left the country in order to try and participate in the conflagration to the north.

Just about the only thing that did not go wrong for the Dulama was the invasion of the Laitra by the Hai Vithana khagan – a bizarre move that left the former empire unable to strike at the valley of the Abrea.

Otherwise, the empire had gone from the pinnacle to chaos in the spain of a decade. While many provinces remained nominally loyal to the Emperor, it seemed it would only be a matter of time before the whole thing imploded. Aside from those of Tiagho and the Sechm border, a dozen other governors contemplated rebelling and attempting to seize their own little kingdoms, while to the south, the Haina and even Dehr lurked. The intrusion of the Vithana into the north threatened to split the empire in two, and the Emperor had increasingly little control over his own populace.

Only then was the Emperor murdered.

History would never record who did the deed – rumor or legend would have it that the killer was some jilted lover, but far more likely was some political rival or another. In any case, the line of succession was somewhat unclear, as the Emperor had left no heirs, and over a dozen family members claimed that they were the new ruler of the Empire. The two most successful claimaints, Aidren and Tlara, both brothers to the late Emperor, established themselves at Aeda and Mora respectively, and fought a series of titanic battles in the valley of the River Thala, neither gaining the upper hand by the end of the decade.

Even should one prevail, it was hard to see how any one man could restore unity or even a mild semblance of order to the west.

Hints of the war filtered even to the south, where prices rose dramatically. A string of assassinations in the higher echelons of the Haina government destabilized the country, while the increasingly tenuous situation in the far east called for a reexamination of the Thagnor's policy there.

In Trahana, by contrast, only the slight drop in trade profits was even noticed. Otherwise, the country had passed into what might be described as a quasi-golden age. Booming populations settled further and further west, displacing hundreds of thousands of locals along the way with the heavy-handed support of the Trahana military. Monasticism saw even more royal patronage than before, with a string of complexes built in the Kossai, as well as further to the north. Contact with Narannue voyagers seemed to hint at a sea route all the way around the peninsula, though neither side had exploited that very much yet.


The clouds rolled off the peaks that rimmed the horizon, white billows flowing from the mountains like heavenly sails. She walked on thunder, wandering through the high passes, the snow clinging to her brow and melting only slowly; the fire within her dimming, as if the Flame of the Goddess itself flickered.

The mountains grew sharper, the air clearer. She'd nearly run out of Nightdraft, and she wanted to save it for the end of her journey, when perhaps she would be able to record what prophecies she saw. The visions left her one by one, and the world pulled into focus, every breath of the chill mountain air seeming to push away that hazy veil that had lain over her eyes for so long.

“Empress.”

The word cut through the air, shattering the crystal peace around her. She looked to see a guard there, skin tanned by the years, but hair still bearing a hint of blond. One of her people. “Caerc.”

“Night falls. Perhaps we should make camp soon.”

“Here?” She looked about, and shook her head. “No. If we rest here, we will die. We must reach the valley.” Alpine meadows lay barely a mile before them, wildflowers of blue and gold beckoning her. She would nto stop here, among the rock and the snow.

“We may kill the horses if we keep up this pace.”

“A dead horse would be the least of your perils. Make for the vale. Tell the column to make haste. Go!” Caerc paused for what seemed like an eternity, then finally turned and spurred himself to the riders at the fore. She let out her breath. Sometimes they seemed not to regard her as the Goddess, but rather as a woman only, one they could ignore. Had they learned nothing from the trek of dreams into the southern desert?

The snow was falling again, and she could see the sun blaze behind the western mountains, as though they were teeth of some dark maw, closing over the world and dragging it into darkness.

But the Goddess did not fear the Darkness. Not even when Its apparition appeared, riding beside her, terrible and borne on a skeletal horse, shadows of wings imprinted on the sky above.

“Hail,” It said.

“Hail.”

Her new riding companion wore fantastic swirls of gems and gold, she noticed, as if attempting to cloak Its horrible visage in finery. But she knew Its face from half a hundred visions before. And thus she was closed to Its voice when it tried to impress Itself upon her.

“Dare you walk where dreams were made?”

She stared down the rider, unrattled. “I am the Dreamer, Redeemer. I fear not my sleep; even my nightmares obey me.”

“Do you think you are the only god to dream?” It asked. “You, Goddess, are the youngest, perhaps, of our world. The youngest, and the weakest. A squalling babe, a Pretend-God. You will be quieted.”

“By you, horselord?” She smiled. “Your sable-cloaks struck down my husband, that I grant you. But...” She paused, a realization coming to her. “But that does not make me weaker. His death only gives me strength. Too long did I sleep in the southern lands. Only now have I returned, and my Wrath shall be terrible. For my path is now free of his, and his mine, and forevermore must it be so. But it is through me that the world shall know salvation, and me alone.”

The apparition laughed, a terrible, cracking sound, like stone breaking bone. “You are arrogant, child-Goddess. And that shall undo you. You have come to earth to do battle; you have abandoned Heaven itself.”

The goddess drew herself up in the saddle. “And you reside in Heaven only, blind to its faults. I shall control the Earth. I shall control the Air. I shall control the Seas. You cannot win with heaven alone, for yours is a God-in-potentiality only, and my domain is here and there and everywhere.”

The demon's eyes narrowed. “Do not flatter yourself. You are losing in all four quarters of the universe.”

“Only thus far.”

The sky seemed to grow darker and lighter above her at once, and the apparition faded. The stars rose above her, winking in and out of existence like fireflies on the night air. Dimly, she grew aware that she was on her horse no longer, that the wildflowers lay all about her, a delicate blue laurel resting on her ears. The blond man knelt beside her, a cool cloth in his hands, a look of concern wrinkling his freckled brow. She met his gaze, and his eyes widened slightly in the dark.

“You fell from your horse,” Caerc said, apologetically. “We have spent a long time trying to wake, you, Goddess.”

“Aelona,” she said. “My name is Aelona.”


Maps:


Cities


Economic


Religious


Political


OOC:

Hey guys, as you can tell, update nineteen of this NES took a while longer than I'd hoped for, and longer even than I'd anticipated. I've had conversations with a couple of you about this, but essentially, between my problems in real life and the sheer scale of the story, I don't think End of Empires is, in its current form, sustainable.

First of all, I'm not ending the NES.

Quite aside from the fact that a number of my friends would kill me if I tried, I think the End of Empires universe still holds so much potential. At the risk of sounding conceited, and my love of LINES II notwithstanding, End of Empires is not just the best cradle NES in forum history, it is perhaps the one NES which has even approached the ideal of a cradle NES – from the birth of civilization onward, creating a world as detailed and diverse as Earth itself. But we're not done yet; we've got a long way to go, and I feel like we're still only creating the first round of stories.

That said, I still have an extremely unwieldy NES on my hands. After consulting with a few others, I think I'm going to roll out the following plan. If people have major objections to this, they should raise them now, because this is how I'll move forward from here on.

1) Updates will be monthly. In order to accomplish this, the average update length will be slashed from 20 pages to <10 pages. To maintain a narrative of all the important events, updates must be more cursory about events which do not directly impact players, and even those that do will be treated in a somewhat more succinct manner.

2) To keep up immersion and the level of detail we've been able to get up to this point, I will contribute a much higher level of detail through stories, reports, vignettes, and other such content that will be posted outside of the updates... still connected, still full of detail, but a lot more interactive. More to the point, it will distribute the writing a lot more evenly: I won't be doing a monument in a single go. You'll probably see what I mean starting this turn, there are a few developments I didn't feel fit in the update which I'll post soon.

3) I will deliberately restrict the geographic region where new players can join. Old players can be grandfathered in if they explicitly stay on with their countries after this update (please confirm in thread), but any new PCs will be limited to the region between Jipha, Leun, Cyve, and the Karapeshai. I'll label the specific countries people can join as when I put up new stats. People can of course petition me to start outside that region, and I'll expand it if most or all of the spots in that region fill up, but I want to keep the players focused on one another, rather than trying to spool multiple narratives together into a single update.

Let me know what you guys think, and please let me know if you're still staying on.

There are probably some inconsistencies here, as usually come with gaps this long between when you send orders and I get around to writing the update. Let me know about them if/when you find them.

Stats will be updated whenever I get a general idea of who's staying on.

Bravo NK! Excellent update.

Absolutely fantastic.

And the plot thickens into jello.

EDIT: I concede victory to North King. He has updated before I, through trials and troubles, he has won.

I forgot what our race was for, but I shall lethim dictate terms of his victory.

However, not all is lost. I hope to be able to update... tonight! All that is left is the Great Levantine Cluster-damnyouautoblock-, and I have already written 30 of the 50 years of heinous conflict of that region.

Very well done North King!