End of Empires - Update Twenty
To Dream of Ruin
Ten Years
560 - 570 SR by the Seshweay Calendar
449 - 459 RM by the Satar Calendar
275 - 285 IL by the Leunan Calendar
550 - 560 SH by the Sharhi Calendar
“Of course! Haiaou is giving them happiness, and they are sharing none of it with me! No matter, I’ll take it for myself.” - From the Tale of Graeo
"What would happen...if they won?"
"If the slaves rose up and killed us?"
"Yes."
"Then they would be the Satar, and we would be the slaves." - Satores, later Prince of the Arrow, and his father
* * * * * * * * *
As the sun sets in the east, so it must in the west be high noon. Winter in the north is summer in the south, and the death of one creature oft means abundance for another. So it is with the natural world.
But not the world of men. It is itself like a man, whose failing heart means little good for the extremities; likewise, the death of one civilization does not ensure prosperity of its neighbors. Too often, the fall of one will mean only ill for the rest, like the ripples of a pond, disturbed in the center, growing in rings until the whole pond is disturbed, serenity but a memory on the broken surface.
The Opulensi Empire had been in free-fall for nearly a decade, and its enighbors had all pounced. Word had it that the end was nearing ever closer for that ancient empire. The mood in the Farubaida grew more and more jubiliant as time went on – their main trading rival on the Nakalani seemed altogether doomed, and the war with the Kothari had proceeded to satisfaction thus far. Indeed, preparations were being made to bring the Exatai to its knees, hopefully ending the greatest remaining threat to Helsia.
Perhaps it was a little premature.
Though the Carohan military had grown impressively since the last major war, and indeed, they outnumbered the Kothari, they had enemis on multiple fronts. Even with the decline of the Opulensi, they had to commit significant forces to that frontier, and left an army of some seventy thousand encamped near Subal. Against this, the Kothari could commit nearly their entire field army – well over ninety thousand, with nearly a four-to-one cavalry advantage. A pitched battle would surely favor the Kothari.
The Carohans, though, had a card up their sleeve. Their contacts in the Exatai were spread thickly among the enormous slave population, and enacted a clever plan. Knotted cords were passed from slave to slave – innocuous to any overseer, but with a hidden message. Every dawn, they would untie a knot. When the cord was fully undone, it was time to attack. Distributing weapons, especially in a realm waried by war, proved a bit trickier, but still well within the capabilities of the Farubaida.
Simultaneously attacking farms all along the River Had, the slaves presented the Exatai with a frustrating dilemma. If they attacked the Carohans, they might be able to cut off the rebellion's source of weapons and organization, but they would expose themselves to the rebellion; attacking the rebellion would leave them exposed to the Farubaida. But the Exatai had men to spare: it devoted a significant force to suppressing rebel movements along the river valley, and took a somewhat depleted host northward to attend to the Carohans in Subal. Even though the Farubaida now held the numerical advantage, the Satar still had many more cavalry, and the scales were almost evenly balanced now.
Even while the armies approached one another, however, the Farubaida pressed its other advantage – their enormous fleet. Swiftly crushing Kothari resistance on the water in the Battle of the Delta (564), they almost immediately had free reign to attack the entire northern Koathari coast. They were quite happy to use it: amphibious raids inflicted some damage on the cities of Palmyra and Jakauii. More significant was the seaborne infiltration of the Palmyar region of the Exatai – which allowed the Farubaida to foment another, somewhat smaller slave rebellion there as well.
All this was clearly just a distraction, however – if a decisive blow was to be struck early in the war by either side, it would be at Subal.
And suddenly, it seemed like everything went wrong at once. The Kothari had expected some supply problems here, but soon both armies were beset by them; the region was soon denuded of crops. Attacking swiftly, hoping to strike before the rebellion seriously affected them, the Kothari met the Carohans in battle just south of Subal, near a village called Nadramai. The larger Carohan army advanced in a great arc, hoping to stifle any attempts at encirclement by the Kothari, but the Satar army had other plans in mind. Attacking directly into the center of the Carohans, the Satar cataphracts nearly broke their foes with the first charge.
The Carohans fought back viciously, but the army started to bow inwards under the pressure in the middle; soon they seemed in danger of getting cut in two.
The banners of the wolves rampant across the field, the Satar moved to press their advantage, but soon fell prey to a new twist: a sudden storm rolling in from the sea. The clouds slammed into the coast rapidly, and rain fell in sheets, almost a hurricane in its ferocity, and the battlefield turned into a morass of mud and slime. The cataphracts ground almost to a halt, unable to make use of their superb mobility in the combination of confined quarters and awful conditions. The mostly-infantry force of the Carohans pressed their advantage, and the Farubaidan general Paetronau directed his reserves into the mess, hoping to rout the Satar all at once.
The Kothari had little taste for such a struggle, and began to withdraw, the Carohans giving pursuit, but both armies soon almost lost themselves in the driving rain and winds. The battle had to be broken off, and as the storm continued, neither side could fight for nearly a week after.
Finally, though, the skies cleared, and the Carohans readied themselves for battle once more. Only then did they find that the Satar had stolen a march on them, leaving behind much of their heavy cavalry's horses, and fighting as a massed army. The surprise attack caught them off-guard, and even without the advantage in mounted troops, the Kothari had gained the upper hand. Paetronau soon was fighting for his life, and gave the order to retreat – only for the Satar to finally send in their horse archers, who harassed the retreating Carohans mercilessly.
Leaving a strong garrison at Subal, Paetronau took the bulk of his army northward, almost to the border itself. The city itself could not support such a large mass of men, but the presence of so large an army nearby would stop the Kothari from assaulting the city, or even resting easily in a siege.
Neither side, though, had the strength to break the stalemate that had ensued at Subal. Always in danger of losing supplies entirely from the impacts of the slave rebellion, the Kothari had the more perilous position, but their raids into the south of Helsia put the Farubaida on edge as well.
The breaking point, though, came with a much larger Kothari raid. Determined to set the Farubaidans back somehow, the Redeemer sent a surprisingly large force – nearly ten thousand men – on a northward journey. Rounding the westernmost foothills of Helsia, they descended on the city of Dremai, intent on reenacting the Treda: the utter ruin of Helsia by the Satar of old, in the War of the Crimson Elephant some three hundred and fifty years before. Dremai, a city that had escaped destruction that time, burned.
Suddenly, everything had changed. Much-mythologized memories of the burning of Trovin, of Farou flooded back into the Helsian consciousness more strongly than ever; memories of cultural treasures lost, of artists massacred, of cities ruined, their old stone halls now half-collapsed overgrown with weeds.
The Assembly panicked. The Pentapartite Council did not, but they still had been stirred into a towering fury. The Opulensi, they declared, were not half the threat that these Kothari were. Quite nearly the entire Farubaidan force on the eastern frontier was drawn back to the homeland. New levies were raised in the Faerouhaiaou highlands, while fortifications were strengthened in northern towns, and the walls in Trovin redoubled in strength.
And the Carohan army attacked.
Smashing the Kothari at Dremai, they easily drove out the Exatai's raiders. The shattered remnant of that host fled to the southwest, a splinter force briefly threatening Neruss, but never doing much more than burning the outlying farms of that country. The Carohans continued on southwards, reinforcing their army in southern Helsia, and pressing for a decisive confrontation at Subal.
Driving forth, they caught the Satar near the walls of that city. Exhausted and hungry, the Satar could not withstand an attack of this magnitude. Defeated at Subal, they fled southward, pursued by the furious Carohan army, which reached the River Had by the end of the decade, within sight of the camps of one of the largest slave rebellions in the region. Scattering in several directions, the Kothari heavily garrisoned Ioppson, Jahip, and Hiuttu, hunkering down in preparation for what seemed to be a Helsian vengeance fantasy come true.
To make things worse still, rumor had it that not only were the Opulensi vanquished, but now the Kothari subjects in the south were themselves increasingly restless.
And yet, despite all this, hope was not lost for the Exatai. The bulk of their forces had not been eliminated, and they still had well over eighty thousand men at arms. The Carohan army outnumbered them, true, but its cavalry force was pitiful. Momentum and superior logistics had carried them to victory thus far, but even with the Hu'ut rebellion raging all around them, their attack had stalled at the River Had, and they had been forced to shift their attention away from the Opulensi theater – a move which would have significant consequences there.
* * * * * * * * *
Begun in 562 SR, the Great Church of Gaci was a marvelous edifice. The worship-hall extended nearly five hundred feet in length, and rose to more than a hundred and fifty feet in height. Those entering would walk through an arched entranceway, over fifty feet in height, the arch lined with sculptures of hundreds of different animals, real and mythological. Granite of a dozen different hues rose in enormous columns to the vaulted ceiling, broken on either side by a hundred stained glass windows, in abstract patterns mimicking the heavens and the earth, allowing a cascade of variegated light into the hall. The colors played over reliefs and sculptures depicting the life and times of the Prophet Kleos, showing his struggles and his triumphs, a grand narrative of the holiest man in Iralliam.
Attached to the worship hall were a dozen different rooms, home to a thousand priests, theologians, and mendicants, all servicing the spiritual needs of the city of Gaci. This was the most triumphant example of the explosion in church building, funding now by generous donations from the Ayasi, and by the Grandpatriarch himself. None of the rest were nearly as beautiful, nor as visually striking as the Great Church, of course, but they still impressed. Fifth-Gaci had not been ruling for very long, but after his Southern March and the Great Church, he already had impressive achievements to his name. This was fortunate, because there were questions as to whether he would last much longer.
The tension between the traditional elite of the Holy Moti Empire and the new(er) bureaucracy, open to Aitahist ideas and dangerous reformism, had been evident for quite some time. So was the rivalry between the Ayasi and the Grandpatriarch, both of whom could claim spiritual leadership over the Empire, even if the former easily had more political power. And the friction between the elite of the church and a more populist movement led by the rogue priest Sokar, while new, had already spread across the country.
All of these things started to come to a head during the reign of Fifth-Frei.
It began with the appointment of a new Councillor, Tarci. The Ayasi's old Councillor Afari had reached such an age that he had to step down – or at least, that was the reason given by the Chief of Chiefs. Others had their suspicions, especially since Tarci just so happened to be the Ayasi's younger brother. A Councillor from the ruling Elephant Family would have been bad enough on its own, but Tarsi had radical reformist ideas, hoping to overhaul not only the bureaucracy, but the whole structure of the upper echelons of Uggor society.
Establishing a series of Orders to oversee various aspects of the bureaucracy, Tarci set up one in particular – the Order of Ranks – to target the excesses and corruption among the Great Families, particularly the lesser ones who could not defend themselves against the Elephant Family. Removing dozens of corrupt officials from power, his sweeping moves caught the Great Families off-guard, who could hardly believe the Ayasi's lapdog would act in such a brazen manner. Over a dozen official petitions were brought before the imperial court, but all of them were turned aside.
Still, the Great Families clamored for the attention of the Ayasi, protesting that his overreach was changing the very fabric of the Empire – an accusation which, it must be said, was rather true. Rumblings could be heard amongst the Great Families, particularly the great estates that stretched on the Motian plain, and while they had not yet come to anything, the threat of rebellion was suddenly a very real one.
Meanwhile, though the Ayasi's patronage of church construction had done something to dampen the flames of religious upheaval in the Empire, he could only distract them for so long. Pressured by the conservatives to deal with Sokar's movement, and by the populists to deal with the excesses of Church officials, he finally summoned Sokar to appear before him in person, probably intending to patiently hear out the grievances and smooth things over in a way that let both factions feel as though they had won.
Unfortunately, Sokar used the opportunity to deliver what would quickly become a famous speech, the Recrimination of the Patriarchs. This was a searing indictment of the centuries of accumulation of Church power, a power that had allowed them to accrue more and more land to their name, living in wealth while the poor continued to live in squalor. He noted the nepotistic nature of Church appointments, how the Grandpatriarchy had been passed between Patriarchs hailing from the same dozen or so areas since its inception, how those areas had appointed Patriarchs with personal connections to one another since their inception. He declared that the Church had lost its way, its original, more egalitarian and populist nature being suppressed by a hierarchy that had grown until it could barely support its own weight, how it existed largely to fill the purses of “holy” men, rather than to support the spiritual needs of the state.
All of these problems had been known before the speech to one degree or another – at the least, the Ayasi himself would have known of them. But never had they been declared in so succinct and so public a manner. The Ayasi was left with no choice but to call a great Church Council, only the third of its kind, the results of which had yet to be seen.
Almost an afterthought in all the religious and political conniving, a strange new disease swept through the ports of Krato, and in a trail all the way north to Gaci-city. The Shaking Sickness, as it was called, seems to have resulted from the Southern March: a jungle fever that followed the invaders home.
Between all of these events, the turmoil in both west and east had started to fray the edges of the Empire, too, and the long-maintained trade links between the Moti and their neighbors started to weaken. For decades, they had been able to remain aloof, unaffected by the problems that had beset the countries on every side, but their concerns had grown larger than the Empire itself.
* * * * * * * * *
With each passing year, the struggle for control of the Dulama Empire only accelerated. The ancient empire was beset by foes on quite literally every side, and even as early as 560 SR, it might have seemed like the whole edifice was doomed to destruction.
Of course, collapse is never quite as simple as doom.
Though no one agreed on who should rule the Empire, few within its boundaries viewed its dissolution as inevitable – and even fewer thought it a good idea. Each of the Dulama factions aimed to reunite their Empire in totality, and to drive out the foreign invaders. Surprisingly, they even cooperated to achieve the latter aim in some places.
The next stage happened in the center, on the great plain of the Taidhe. Irrigated and carefully managed by centuries of slowly advancing Dulama farmers, the plain was rich agricultural land, among the best in the Empire. This was the first target of the Hai Vithana, who had recently acclaimed a new khagan in Amhatr, Avralkha. Avralkha had made peace with the Laitra Empire, and withdrawn totally from their lands, instead throwing his full weight behind the chiefs who had already begun the invasion of the northern Empire.
The Taidhe had long been protected by a series of frontier fortifications. Though impressive, they were also ancient, and not particularly useful against their extraordinarily mobile enemy in the first place – they had been overrun in the first few months of the war. These fortresses in hand, Avralkha attacked with an enormous horde, some twenty thousand horse and a similar number of infantry, striking at the city of Elapo. Emperor Tlara's forces had been almost entirely withdrawn into the north to face his brother, and the city's walls fell easily to the Vithana assault.
Secure behind Elapo's walls, Avralkha's raiders ranged further and further into the Taidhe, meeting little resistance to the east. By 568 SR, they had reached the River Abrea, and clashes with the armies of Tiagho and Dula had begun. Though of course the Dulama were alarmed, they could do little, divided as they were.
That changed a little after Tiagho and the Emperor Cairl XVII of Dula reached a truce, uniting their forces in alliance against the Hai Vithana. A new expedition, led by Avralkha's younger brother, threatened Tiagho itself. Tiagho, a sprawling, truly ancient city, was protected by high walls, newly repaired, and the core of the city by a canal that swept through the center of the city, usually used to control overflow from the Abrea, but now filled to guard against the intruders.
The Hai Vithana attacked in force, deploying siege engines designed by seemingly omnipresent Seshweay engineers, attempting to bridge the canal and attack the walls directly with enormous machines. The city seemed more vulnerable now than ever, and its fall would probably ensure the collapse of the eastern half of the Empire, outside of the Dulama Highlands themselves. Sallying forth repeatedly, the defenders barely kept their city free for more than a week, before Cairl's army arrived triumphantly in the north, bearing aloft the ancient eagle standards of the Empire.
One might imagine the cavalry crashing into the flank of the Hai Vithana, scattering them, and reclaiming the glory of the empire. Certainly, that is what Cairl expected when he led his force south.
He was wrong.
Alerted by superb reconnaissance, the Vithana redeployed to face the northern threat before it had arrived, and offered them pitched battle on fairly even terms. The Dulama force attacked in earnest all across the front, confident in their own numbers and military abilities, but the nobility had not fought a real battle in decades. Streaming forth without much coordination, they quickly bunched in the more difficult spots along the battle-lines.
Though they had the upper hand for much of that day, the Vithana were caught off-guard by yet another sally from the walls of Tiagho. Cairl had sent a small force to reinforce the garrison, and they attacked at the rear of the Vithana army. Recognizing that they were in an inferior position, the Vithana covered their retreat with several cavalry forays, but ultimately withdrew to the west, and the south. The eastern half of the Dulama empire had remained standing.
Triumph was short-lived. Cairl demanded the submission of Tiagho, which, of course, refused. Going back on the offensive, the Dulama were once again at each other's throats, while barbarians marched in from the southern frontier, new rebellions rose along the southwest of the Abrea, and the Hai Vithana gathered for another strike.
Things in the western half of the empire were, if anything, just as confused.
Emperor Tlara, as the reigning monarch in Mora, seemed the most legitimate of the various contenders for the throne, and therefore had the nominal support of many of the wrlords running about. The most prominent of these was Cain, the former governor-general of the puppet state in Sechm, who had taken his garrison northward to seize the River Thuaitl. Cain took the river valley without too much trouble, and rapidly turned the tables on the invading Theran armies from the north; he struck back and put Ther itself under siege, nearly extinguishing the old Tollanaugh line in a single stroke.
But his allegiance extended only so far – he blatantly refused to help the Emperor attack the pretender Aidren in Aeda. Thus, the Emperor was left to continue his series of indecisive battles, never quite gaining the upper hand, especially as he was forced to divert increasingly large forces to the eastern border against the Hai Vithana.
Indeed, the stalemate only turned through the actions of the Naranue.
Continuing their campaign in the north, Naran took advantage of the increasingly desperate position of Aidren. When he depleted his garrisons even a little bit, the northern Empire attacked in force, entirely seizing the headwaters of the River Thala, along with its vital precious metal deposits. Though Aidren launched a series of campaigns to retake his mines, he ultimately could do little against the assembled northern forces. Without the gold production to cover for the ravaged economy of the region, his forces went almost entirely unpaid, and desertion and rebellion became a serious problem once more. His brother Tlara started to attack upriver, and the northern Dulama faction seemed close to ruin.
At the same time, supposedly secret envoys traveled from Naran to Mora, where they made clear that the Naranue would willingly accept the legitimacy of Tlara – and that they might accept an alliance against Emperor Aidren.
In the south, the Empire's almost nonexistent garrisons allowed in several hordes of barbarians, including the forces of the priest-kings of Sechm. This was to be expected – far worse was the seizure of Saigh.
The estuary at the northern end of the Airendhe had long been a haven for pirates and ruffians of all kinds, its numerous winding channels and hidden sandbanks hiding their fleets from everyone. There, rumor had it, a pirate by the name of Paitlo had declared himself the king of Saigh. The greater part of the Dulama fleet stationed in the city went over to this pretender almost immediately, and he established himself all along the shores of the bay.
Though Paitlo's power was almost entirely maritime, and he posed little threat to the Emperor upriver (or so it seemed at the time), the fall of Saigh had greater consequences. With the Hai Vithana to the north, the riverrine route was the last thing linking the two halves of the Empire together. Even with the civil war, at least the Empire had seemed like a real idea; now the threat of its fracturing seemed more real than ever before.
South of the Dulama, the peninsular kingdoms continued largely on the courses they had already charted. The Haina had sent further expeditions eastward, finally destroying some of the last refuges of the old Suran kingdom, and establishing stronger trading ties with the Kayana. But all that, and even the added revenue from the new trade emerging with the Naranue and Noaunnaha, did little to offset the continuing burden of maintaining their far-flung empire. The merchantry at the center of the empire grew more and more restless, decrying the wastes of money that were the furthest colonies. Even more grew alarmed at the rise of the pirate king in Saigh, pressuring the king to destroy the greatest threat to shipping that the Airendhe had seen in centuries.
In contrast to their stagnating neighbors, the Trahana continued to bloom, to a degree that some had taken to calling the Empire a rebirth of the mythic peninsular empire of ancient times. Retired soldiers settled in the far north, and the old Dehran cities had started to become productive centers of production once more. The lands in between were increasingly cultivated by the numerous monasteries which had arisen there, heavily patronized by the king himself.
Feverish expansion westwards was reinforced by alliances with at least some of the locals, and the foundation of several new towns. Deposits of iron and copper in the foothills spurred their settlement as well, while numerous excellent harbors on the southwestern coast of the peninsula began to be settled by a growing merchant community.
This lattermost development did lead to certain problems – the new merchant class resented the influence of the monasteries that they neighbored – and the rapidly expanding volume of trade brought conflict with the Trahana's neighbors. The Haina, in particular, felt like the Trahana were stepping on what had traditionally been their turf, even if the Trahana merchantry sailed mostly in the far west. On the other side, Naranue ships and Noaunnaha resented the intrusion of a new force into what had been their duopoly for centuries. Compounding all these problems, the lack of central government on the west coast of the peninsula had led to a chaotic situation, with piracy running rampant.
* * * * * * * * *
Despite the expectations of many of the nobility, the Laitra Empire did not join the increasingly messy Dulama conflict. The new Emperor, Piras I, seemed far more concerned with internal affairs – or perhaps he simply recognized that the Empire was not yet ready to take on their western neighbors.
Making peace with the Hai Vithana (as we have seen, Avralkha was only too glad to accept), the Emperor invested heavily into the capital at Ghaon, providing it with, amongst other things, new roads, new sewers, and a great Iralliamite church (funded partially with donations from the Church itself). Investigations into supposed crypto-paganism among the nobility had few results; mostly they were viewed as an attempt by the Emperor to collect more power himself.
Perhaps of more interest to the wider world, the Laitra launched a new expedition to the far south, into the unknown lands along the far southern Yensai. Spectacular in their finery and gifts, they favorably impressed the fairly isolated tribes there, convincing at least one large group to swear fealty to Piras outright. At the end of their trail, they reached the northern outposts of the mysterious Dziltocampal.
The two sides eyed each other warily for some time, neither quite willing to make the first move yet. The Laitra learned that their southern neighbors had been a tribe rising in the deepest reaches of the jungles, almost completely isolated from the outside world for centuries. They followed a pagan religion whose prophet, named Ekna Kambal, supposedly had the power to communicate with numerous divinities.
For their part, Dziltocampal had started to divide the administration of the kingdom between the family of the king, which tightened their grip on some of the furthest reaches of the realm. Moreover, they had been expanding their military recently, especially after contact with the Haina merchants to the west, and now the Laitra to the north. But it was clear that the Laitra represented a power much more impressive than any they had even suspected existed in this world. Worryingly, it was a power that seemed devoted to the foreign faith of Iralliam, a dualistic, evangelist religion – one which apparently did not have a track record of being particularly friendly to the “pagans” it had previously encountered.
* * * * * * * * *
