North King
blech
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End of Empires - Update Twenty-one
And So The Day Fell
Ten Years
570 - 580 SR by the Seshweay Calendar
459 - 469 RM by the Satar Calendar
285 - 295 IL by the Leunan Calendar
560 - 570 SH by the Sharhi Calendar
And So The Day Fell
Ten Years
570 - 580 SR by the Seshweay Calendar
459 - 469 RM by the Satar Calendar
285 - 295 IL by the Leunan Calendar
560 - 570 SH by the Sharhi Calendar
In the capital, they say that no one can sleep, for the rantings of madmen fill the night air. - Kratoan text from before the War of the Crimson Elephant
In Dremai, we will begin to undo what has been done to our country! ~ Laeulayei Maeriouhau, of the Faeoria Council, shortly after the Treda
* * * * * * * * *
In the wake of Empire, what remains? Few would have believed that they had already seen the final days of the Dulama, but the doubts crept in as the war dragged on. No longer just children teenagers lived who could not remember the Emprie united. Some generals in the far west had never seen the city of Dula, or even the highlands in which it rested. And while one might argue that their origins mattered little in this modern day and age, the mystique of the old was fading, and with it, the desire to restore what had once been faded too...
Perhaps it was telling that the main struggle for the Emprie took place nowhere near the center of the universe, but instead on the level plain between Mora and Aeda. After all, the nobility of the Highlands had been reduced to a mere afterthought, struggling over Tiagho with the Hai Vithana, like two dogs scrabbling over a bone. Ther had been overrun, and Naran seemed content to wait out the melee. The stage was empty, really, apart from two brothers, Tlara and Aidren, whose sibling rivalry seemed poised to destroy an Empire.
The deadlock between the brothers had lasted for nearly a decade now, but it was hardly the sort of stalemate that this implied. Huge armies had been raised, clashed, and died, with thousands of young men falling to each others' blades. The slaughter was so great that songs of the scarlet River Thala would be sung for centuries after; the problem was that neither brother could completely eliminate the armies of the other, and were so depleted in victory that they could do scarcely more than capture one or two cities before retiring to raise the next army.
In short, it was a study in military incompetence.
All this finally came to an end when Emperor Tlara put a new general, Sotl, in charge of his main field army. Sotl, one of the few intelligent nobles to rise to the rank of command in the latter days of the Dulama Empire, had been stuck in a rather obscure role fighting the Vithana in the upper reaches of the eastern River Thala. His command had been one of the few to actually see some success against the nomads, and he alone combined that with a seeming lack of ambition to overthrow the Emperor and install himself. All in all, it was quite the recommendation.
Sotl did not have extensive experience fighting his own brethren, but he was willing to listen to his subordinates who did. He streamlined the army, recodifying the banner system that served as field communication, cutting away unnecessary commands, and leaving the less effective of his soldiers on garrison duty. When push came to shove, his military reforms had not changed much about the way the army fought, but it certainly made it a more responsive force.
Advancing in what would turn out to be the last of these fratricidal campaigns, Sotl attacked Aidren's army around the city of Luchas. A series of tree-covered hills lay between Sotl and the Thala, and though both forces sent some skirmishers into the trees, it would not be enough. A contingent of Sotl's army looped around the southern edge of the hills, and Aidren moved to intercept them, while Sotl used the cover of the trees to send the majority of his cavalry around the other way, attacking their enemy from north and south together.
Normally, this would be a nightmare for Sotl to coordinate, but Aidren's sluggish army relied on the outmoded banner system, and could barely turn a single legion to face the enemy in time. Meanwhile, Sotl subtly directed his generals from across the field to press the advantage from both sides. The confusion turned Aidren's defeat into a rout, and with Sotl's main army firmly in their path back to Luchas, the westerners broke in the direction of Aeda. Corralled by cavalry, the entirety of Aidren's army was crushed in the bend of the Thala, some of them within sight of the walls of their capital.
His army gone, Aidren himself was captured by Sotl, and brought before his brother in chains. Tlara declared that though his brother had good intentions, and though he dearly wished that they could laugh together once again, his brother had still committed treason most high. He had Aidren blinded, and sent him into seclusion in a northern Maichai monastery, never to be influential again.
Tlara's main rival, nominally, had been dealt with.
But as he turned to face the situation in the rest of the Empire, it became immediately clear how much remained to be done. In Sotl's absence, the Hai Vithana had begun to advance once more, taking Fetlar, and threatening the cities of Mora and Cairhay from the north. The warlord Shetlan, responsible for the assault against Ther, had finally conquered that foe, and parts of his army readied to advance on Naran from another direction, but Shetlan himself barely acknowledged the Emperor's missives his loyalty seemed to be only notional.
And all the while, the rest of the Dulama continued to fall apart at the seams. Tigaho had fallen to Cairl, at long last, but the warlord of Dula seemed mostly content with that. Rumors abounded that he had reached an agreement with the Hai Vithana that would leave much of the Empire to the latter while Cairl sat on the throne in the highlands. Indeed, by the end of the decade, Cairl had begun to use the title Emperor of Dula, rather than Emperor of the Dulama, a subtle but telling shift. At the same time, the pirate king Paitlo crowned himself a pirate emperor, fully setting aside any professions of loyalty to the lord in Mora.
Initially, it seemed like Tlara would fight the splintering to the bitter end.
First, he sallied against Paitlo and the Hai Vithana both attempts failing. Frustrated there, he decided that, if nothing else, he ought to bring the warlord Shetlan to heel, and secure the western flank.
A new army under Sotl advanced along the Grand Canal, twenty thousand strong. Making camp at Hachtli, Sotl sent word to the warlord, warning that he would feel the full brunt of the victorious armies of the Empire if he did not agree to submit to Tlara. Shetlan had not anticipated quite this strong a reaction, and quickly came to the negotiating table essentially, he requested some autonomy in his half of the Empire, in return for supporting the Emperor in his ongoing struggles against his numerous foes.
It was not a deal that appealed to Tlara, but given the situation in the rest of the Empire, it seemed to be prudent to eliminate at least one enemy. Shortly after that, he made peace with the southern Sechm, which left only the Vithana and the Narannue as real threats to his rule.
The Onnaran, it seemed, had done little with the intervening years. A series of clashes against Aidren had gone nowhere, as the Narannue had hesitated to press what advantage they had gained. Instead, they had mostly secured the gold mines in the upper Thala valley, even attempting to connect the Thala to their homeland with a great canal this lattermost project failing, owing to the fairly rugged terrain in between. A beautiful temple had been constructed in the pass, but no new forces had been raised.
All in all, it seemed as though the Onnaran had no idea how much danger he was in.
Furious at what they viewed as a backstabbing attack in the middle of an already difficult war, Tlara launched a two-pronged assault on the Narannue, one force under Shetlan putting the recently conquered city of Dael under siege, and Sotl advancing directly against the captured gold mines. The fortifications that Naran had constructed in the valley served to stymie Sotl's initial advances, but they had not anticipated the quick collapse of Ther, and Shetlan's forces came close to menacing Limach itself before they became bogged down around Dael.
Renewed Hai Vithana attacks in the west gave Naran some breathing space, but some already worried at the potential disaster that could result.
South of the chaos, Trahana's golden age reached new heights. The last few independent cities on the western side of the peninsula were conquered, and the Empire seemed ready to expand still further. The monastic communities had exploded into the northern foothills, while merchants and farmers alike settled all across the west. Really, the only remaining rival to the Trahana was the Haina, and that Empire had undergone something of a decline in recent years.
The Haina had hoped their long eastern adventure would open new markets, access new trade partners, and overall, bring an enormous new stream of revenue to the state. In the end, it did only a couple of those things, and its impact on the Haina treasury was far less than they could have anticipated indeed, it proved more of a drain than anything else. At the same time, Trahana merchants had started to take more and more of the market share in the Airendhe, with the Haina increasingly unable to keep them out of what had once been exclusively theirs.
Indeed, the main opposition to Trahana merchants would be a confusing combination of piracy and competing merchants from the Paitloma Empire, whose attacks more or less monopolized any trade with the Dulama littoral.
A minor people, the Opul'annai, came to the knowledge of the surrounding peoples at this time as well, though they certainly presented no challenge to the established powers of the Airendhe yet. A bizarre society mixing a shipwrecked group of very, very lost Opulensi, and a native population, the Opul'annai seemed mostly content to develop slowly along the eastern coast of the sea.
By far the most surprising blow in the whole of the west fell on the Hai Vithana, from a direction no one could have anticipated. As the khagan continued his campaign against the Dulama in the south, and as the Tribe of the Arrow left their armies to participate in the Karapeshai Civil War in the far north, a new foe emerged.
The Moti.
Following his Southern march, the Ayasi had returned home to Gaci covered in glory, absolutely supreme on his throne. His reign soon ran into trouble with the clergy, however, and it seemed that the Chief of Chiefs had no taste for such matters he resolved them as best as he could, as we shall see below, and immediately rode off to begin a new war. The advance preparations had been in the works for some time, to be sure, but when the campaign itself began it was like a hammer-blow.
First to fall was Karamha. The trading city had long since overgrown its walls, new buildings sprawling over the once firm defenses, secure in the knowledge that they would never be raided by the steppe so long as the Hai Vithana remained their stewards. This left them quite unprepared for an assault from the east, and the city fell almost without a fight the city militia was barely raised before it was cut down, and the Moti continued onward.
Reaching Eshirath, they found a city rather more well-defended, but with the vast majority of the Vithana off on their war, it had no relief in sight. A Moti siege lasted only a few weeks before the city capitulated peacefully.
Last to fall, naturally, was Amhatr. Distant from the Moti's homeland, Amhatr might have been unassailable had the Ayasi struck at any other time, with the Vithana ready to raid them from every other quarter, and the desert proving inadequate to feed the Moti. But between the war, and the Satar leaving for their homeland, and a much-reduced garrison given the tight budget from the current war, it proved easy pickings for the Ayasi's army. Taking it in a furious morning assault, they let the population flee into the desert, then burned the city to the ground, with no intention of keeping it.
The Ayasi now prepared for a Hai Vithana counterattack, but aside from some token raids, the horsemen seemed surprisingly content with losing their homeland. Some of the tribesmen returned to defend it, or reclaim it, or attempt to carve out a new kingdom for themselves, but the khagan and most of his immediate comitatus recognized that their opportunities for glory not to mention riches were far greater in the empire they had just carved for themselves than in that which they had just lost.
* * * * * * * * *
Meanwhile, in the Holy Empire itself, much hinged on how the latest council of Iralliam would fall. Sokar had answered the Ayasi's summons, arriving in Gaci with crowds gathering on the main road to greet him, to acclaim him, and some to hurt him. His Recrimination of the Patriarchs, delivered in the Imperial Palace itself, revealed the abuses of the clergy to those who had not yet known. Only a heavy presence by the Golden Hats had kept the whole thing from boiling over into riots and violence on either side. The arrival of the Patriarchs to the city did not quite match the arrival of this mendicant, at least in terms of a reaction from the crowds something that no doubt bothered the Patriarchs, especially the Grandpatriarch, to no end. But they came nonetheless, preparing for the council, to be held in the chambers of the Grand Church of Gaci.
In the shadow of sculptures that told of the life of the Prophet, the Ayasi declared that he would be the impartial mediator, requesting that the Patriarchs present their defense to the lengthy list of wrongdoings that Sokar had already laid forth.
They explained patiently that these excesses were both obscure, and exaggerated by Sokar. They began to tell of how they occurred mostly beyond the cities, and certainly beyond the seats of the Patriarchs themselves, when Sokar interrupted them. The breach of decorum led to a shouting match, but the fiery preacher dominated the room with his sheer presence, and he thunderously declared that if the Patriarchs did not know of the excesses, then they had clearly never left their chambers and perhaps, he added sarcastically, never entered them, either.
The Ayasi called for order, and Fifth-Frei's weighty voice calmed Sokar, for the moment. He bade the mendicant sit and allow the Patriarchs to speak their mind, reminding him that if they were truly liars at heart, he would have nothing to fear from them, for the Chief of Chiefs could see through such paltry deceptions, and cut to the heart of the matter.
As the Council adjourned for the first time, agents of Tarci, the Ayasi's councillor, came to many of the priests individually, feeling out support on one side or another. All this finally culminated in a series of reforms, proposed on the fifth day by the Ayasi, who said that the priesthood ought to be open to all, depending only on the qualifications of the would-be clergy, and not their birth. Many of the Patriarchs objected, but their arguments were swept aside rather easily, and the Ayasi further decreed the creation of the Order of Faith, which would observe such excesses.
The room seemed to hold its breath, but neither the Grandpatriarch nor Sokar raised their voices in opposition. The Ayasi's proposal passed with the endorsement of the Church, and Sokar went home, fairly satisfied.
The ink had scarcely dried on the decree when the Grandpatriarch and his underlings moved to subvert it. The Ayasi staffed the Order of Faith with his own men, even while leaving it under the Grandpatriarch's power, but the latter man moved much and more of the de facto power to his own office, ensuring that he would oversee appointments. While he did, in fact, work to root out much of the corruption that had spread through the Church, he retained his own power, and determinedly ensured that the most important offices were still staffed by men he could trust.
* * * * * * * * *
She slipped south like a thief in the night, avoiding the gaze of officials, sheltering with families she knew were sympathetic to her cause. Not that she thought her brother would try to kill her he just wasn't much of a believer in her divinity, or their late mother's, and she wanted to avoid awkward the family dinner conversations that might result. And then again, her brother was also probably thinking about trying to kill her.
Thus did Kintyra, daughter of Aelona, and acclaimed the Fifth Aitah in the north, weave her way across the desert of the Dual Empire.
Aelona had clung to life, busily converting the lingering Maninist population in Brunn and adding to her writings until the end, but she finally succumbed to the cancer that ate at her that last winter. Kintyra, quite convinced of her own divinity, did not linger long in Brunn. As she told the somewhat forlorn King Vantaist, she would return, but not while he still lived. Indeed, the King died while she was in the south.
Kintyra's path took her through the lands of the Ethir, a strange people of hill-forts and elk riders, but she did not stay there, instead proceeding through the lands of the Savirai, finally arriving in Reppaba, and boarding a ship bound for Caroha.
The capital of the Farubaida was an enormous city, and quite beautiful: it was studded with numerous new construction projects. The Carohans had raised a dozen great theaters, libraries, and temples; it was to one of the latter that Kintyra proceeded almost immediately. She declared that she was the Fifth Aitah, the avatar of the Intercessor, and that she sought recognition from her kin in the south. There, she was promptly arrested.
Agents of the Aitahist priests had warned them of the approach of this new Aitah, and a cabal of them were determined to stamp out this nonsense before it spread to the Farubaida at large. The idea of the Third Aitah who had converted the Dual Empire had been acceptable, to be sure, but the Fourth and Fifth? The high priests declared that neither Kintyra nor her mother had fulfilled the signs, and that thus, neither of them could be called the Aitah. Kintyra, naturally, argued against this, displaying a surprising knowledge of Aitahist theological canon.
Temprorarily stymied by this, the priests called a council of many of the greatest minds in the Farubaida, where both sides presented their cases. In reality, it was all purely for show there was no way that the Orthodox Aitahists would accept the northern Aitahs; in the end, they settled on a simple Creed of the Faith, one that definitively excluded Kintyra:
We believe in the Ancestors, those who came before and who created the world;
We believe that the Ancestors have turned from us because of the error we made;
We believe that an ancestor, Aya'se, came down to lead us into salvation;
We believe that he failed, but left us his beloved daughter, Aitah;
We believe that Aitah is of the Ancestors and Us;
We believe that she will lead us to salvation and correct our errors;
We believe that she has died, been born again, and will come again;
We believe that her rebirth is presaged by signs which are known;
This is what believe and this is what is true.
Disappointed, but probably not surprised, Kintyra gave a reply that was simultaneously serene and searing declaring that these priests did not know their business, and, for that matter, that the Creed still included both her and her mother. With that, she boarded a ship bound for the Dual Empire. Her cover broken, there was little chance she could return home anonymously; she instead found herself on a path to meet her long-estranged brother. His escort met her ship in Nahar, and with a large honor guard, she proceeded north to Gurach.
The citadel on the rock had long been the spiritual heart of the Savirai, and his willingness to meet her there seemed to bode well. But Qasaarai soon explained to her that, though he bore her no ill-will, it was a political impossibility to support her claim to be the Fifth Aitah. Their mother, certainly, he would recognize, even in the face of backlash from the more conservative nobles in his country. But to have a living Aitah seemed too inconvenient for him to accept, regardless of what legitimacy she might grant him.
Nevertheless, he treated her with dignity, and told her that he would grant her what hospitality he could he would even guarantee her safety in his lands, if she desired to preach there for one reason or another.
But Kintyra would have none of that. Furious with her brother's refusal to grant her official recognition, she returned north, to a new king in Brunn, and a situation that was much changed.
* * * * * * * * *
Whatever lull had resulted from the Battle of Subal, it would be short-lived. The struggling Exatai and Farubaida paused to regroup after the battle, but both almost immediately plunged once more into the fight. The Carohans attacked into the Had River Delta, intending to take it piece by piece, and use it as a springboard to liberate the entire valley, but this would be a long slog through a heavily defended, hotly contested region.
The Kothari, by contrast, moved quickly.
Slave rebellions had nearly crippled their war effort, but as of yet, they were still scattered, and quite uncoordinated. The Redeemer Kartis seized what seemed like a narrow window of possibility, and attacked the rebel groups, one by one, avoiding the gaze of the Carohans, and managing to hide his actions for quite some time. Soon, only a few groups remained in the Had Delta, where the Farubaidan forces propped them up, and in Palmyra, where they had slowly gathered speed and strength as the Kothari focused on other areas.
Digging deep into his reserves of gold, the Redeemer replaced much of the losses he had suffered in the war up until now, and assembled a new army. Though it and the Carohan army might have been fairly evenly matched, the Kothari fought a much more desperate battle, and as a result, fought far more tenaciously. Kartis attacked the Delta, and a series of vicious battles drove the Carohans out of the region almost entirely apart from a small group of rebels that remained in the remote quarters of the delta, most of the allied force withdrew to Subal, where it weathered attacks from the Kothari for some time thereafter.
The focus shifted to Palmyria, and beyond that. Carohan vessels scoured the coasts, capturing Beran, Sivi, and finally, Jakauii, and penetrating even further. Soon, they even began to appear in coastal regions all along the southern Kothari coast, attempting to incite rebellion amongst the Zyeshu and Hamakuans. But the Farubaida had miscalculated somewhat the Hamakuan region now held enough Satar natives to keep it fairly loyal, if not peaceable (house to house fighting broke out in some towns), while the Zyeshu hesitated to rebel, not wanting to deal with the potential consequences of failure. The war, simply put, was still too close for them to risk it.
Determined to make up for the setbacks in the south, the Redeemer pressed his advantage, attacking Subal. The Kothari army startled the Carohans, who had not anticipated their ability to remain intact for quite so long much less that the army could remain roughly equal to the Carohans themselves. Nevertheless, they marched out to meet one another, and yet another Battle of Subal commenced.
The battle proceeded much as one might have expected, with both sides struggling to gain the upper hand. As usual, the Kothari advantage in cavalry gave them much superior mobility, and as usual, the experience and training of the Carohans allowed them to best the Kothari infantry in a fair fight. In the end, this time, the Kothari triumphed, breaking the Farubaidan lines in multiple places, and sending them scurrying backwards, laying siege to Subal.
The defeat was problematic, to be sure, but the Carohans still felt reasonably confident their position seemed rather more tenable than the Kothari, who constantly worried at the threat of renewed rebellion behind them. Indeed, the Palmyrian rebellion had seized much of the countryside. Now, a savage guerilla war raged between Palmyrian rebels and of all people, the Doral. Constantly forgotten by history, the beleaguered people somehow clung onto life, and now were among the most pro-Satar of the Exatai's minorities.
Perhaps the most worrying of the secondary theaters in the war was the north, where the city of Dremai was slowly being rebuilt by the Farubaida, absorbing funds that detractors argued would have been better spent on the war effort.
Despite the concerns of the Senate, Dremai did not fall under serious Kothari threat at this point. Instead, the Exatai directed their raiding parties at Neruss. The small city-state fought the incursions all across their frontier, a situation that the Kothari could not have liked more, as it bled their opponents far more than it did them. At the same time, Neruss had an influence all out of proportion to its size, with one of the seats on the Pentapartite Council (and, of course, the gold road that passed through the city). Unsurprisingly, then, the Farubaida shuffled new defenders to the city, and pushed back the Kothari, hoping to contain them to the Senet Desert.
Neither side, then, had really gained the advantage. And so the war continued, almost absurd in its indecisiveness, with slave and master dying over and over as it wore on. Nearly all the tricks had been spent, but no one had emerged on top.
Meanwhile, the Opulensi Civil War had nearly ground to a halt.
A near-total withdrawal of Farubaidan support, combined with lackluster leadership from the Leunan Republic, meant that the Daharai and the Opulensi were left to fight almost entirely on their own. The matchup, between what amounted to the Emperor's old army against the Emperor's current navy, naturally led precisely nowhere the Daharai's influence ended where the waters began, and any Imperial attack on their possessions would be repelled the moment it left the water.
However, they were only almost entirely on their own. Almost, because the Dual Empire remained in the war, very much peeved at the fact that everyone still ignored them.
Qasaarai emerged from his meeting with Kintyra, his support among the nobility still somewhat shaky, and needing something to distract them. He therefore hired a whole slew of warships that had deserted over the course of the war, refitting them and gathering a new army in the far south. With these in hand, he sailed across the Kbrilma Sea, and shattered the remaining Opulensi garrisons on Dinyart, seizing the most sacred island of Indagahor in a single stroke. Qasaarai only narrowly convinced his generals not to unleash the soldiers on a furious looting spree of the temples there, but the damage they did cause infuriated both Opulensi and Daharai.
Still, both sides of the civil war remained impotent; the Savirai position on the island remained secure, and Qasaarai's eyes turned south, to the island of Treha.
Through the centuries, Treha had been the toughest nut to crack of any in the Spice Islands a veritable fortress island, impregnable to traditional naval assault, with an absurdly well-fortified double harbor, and strong landward walls as well. But even Treha did not prove safe.
Nervous that the Savirai would take the island before them, the Daharai and the Carohans assembled a massive force, over two hundred ships, and some fifty thousand men. Landing them on the south of the island, the force attacked the city in full force, and simply overwhelmed its defenses with sheer numbers. By the end of the day, the city had fallen, and as the Chimoai Islands, too, succumbed to the Carohans, one by one, the Opulensi Empire had finally been vanquished.
It was the start of a new era.
