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Script: fix links messed up in conversion

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== The Kruzky Empire ==

Note: If you want to see the Kruzky Empire's location on the Exalted map, 
with it's area of influence and boundaries marked, drop an e-mail to 
Miedvied@si . rr . com (omit the spaces). I'll gladly send it over; 
be forewarned it's about 1.3 megs (I just added the Kruzky Empire to 
Stephen Sheppard's amazing map, which you can find on the links section 
of my userpage).

== History ==

Gunnar, son of Hilgard, High King of Kruzky, Dancer in the Flames of 
Creation's Pyre, and Axe of the Winter Lord Cholod. He once stood at 
such a height as to give a Tyrant Lizard pause, and bore such ice in 
his heart as to set that Lizard to flight - and t'would have it's tail 
tucked 'tween it's legs, if Gunnar hadn't'a ripped it off to wipe 'is 
arse with. Gunnar 'ad wild brown hair like a nest o' snakes, hanging down 
to 'is arse, and a beard o' of the same hitting his belly. Hair and beard 
both were parted, each in two braids, hung up with the finger bones of 
every man 'e ever killed in battle. He had so many bones that he rattled 
when he walked, and his men would call him Cow Bells, 'cause you could hear 
'im coming from a distance. Old Gunnar, though he just laughs. 

I'm tellin' ya these things 'cause an empire - and the Kruzky Empire, 
really - is like the man that rules it, in a lot of ways. At's important 
to remember, when you think of the strength in ol' Gunnar's bones; a 
hunnerd little scars on his old-man body, skin hangin' off his bones 
like the skin on day-old boiled milk, and he could still wrap his hands 
aroun' a bear's neck and throttle the furry son of a bitch to the ground. 
Importan' to remember that, it is. 

The Kruzky Empire didn't used to be one, y'see. An empire, that is. Once, 
there was just the capital city of Krag, on the height of Mount Forn, 
the tallest mountain in the range. It was ruled over by a group of black- 
haired white-skinned farmer-peasants, huddled against the cold and hanging 
up charms to ward off the Little Gods as best they could. These people didn't 
get along none too well with the Gods, and just did their best to live in 
hiding from 'em. 

There were a whole lot of other little kingdoms dotting the ranges, though; 
most of 'em didn't run too far outside of a mountainside or two. There 
were occasionally one that dwelled in a valley, but those were rare; the 
cold tends to settle in the valleys at night, and up north there, that'd be 
so cold as to freeze a man in his sleep. So, most of these kingdoms, they stuck 
to the south-sides of the mountains; protected from the Northern winds, and 
up above the cold-settled valleys. And there were lots of little one-mountain 
kingdoms dotting the mountains. 

Now, these little kingdoms, they're all more or less alike, you see. They 
tended to clear their lands out of the trees that dotted the mountain-sides 
(they weren't real trees, but actually carvin's of ice, decked with snow, made 
by the Glade Witches), with just a few paths leading the ways to their lands. 
The forest ways were dangerous; not many of anyone would go through the forests 
to deal with the Glade Witches, so those ways didn't need much protecting. The 
cleared paths (paid for with blood; either with sacrifices sent out to the 
witches or with the men that took blade in hand and fought the Witches every 
inch of the way) were blockaded with massive wooden palisades, and the kingdoms 
(very rarely more than two or three closely connected settlements) would be 
surrounded by the same. 

The economies in these little places weren't worth mentioning, in those 
times. Most of the peoples, there, they tried to farm - but the land 
weren't so rich to support much farmin'. And they tried to herd and raise 
livestock, but it was so cold that if'n you went to milk the cow, you'd 
be squeezin' out icicles. They got fresh water from the ever-fallin' snows, 
but didn't have no rivers or coastlines to get them any access to fish 
(except the southernmost kingdom of Fjara, which dominated a chain of mountains 
and almost two hundred miles of coastline; their closeness to the Imperial 
Navy required them to tithe to the Dynasty, but they could fish and trade 
and that gave them the strongest economy in the area.) Mostly, the people 
that lived roundabout there would hunt the great big eagles and rocs that flew 
around the mountains, and the massive bears and wolves that plodded through 
the forests, and paid tithe to the Winter Lord Cholod, who made sure that 
the Gods under him always kept the Ice Forests around the mountains there 
filled with animals to be hunted. 

Now, with all this hardship and cold and all these sorts of problems, living 
in wood-and-thatch houses in little wooden-pallisaded villages, more ice on 
the ground than crops, these people didn't really want to go wasting their best 
hunters on wars. But, people are people, and that means that when they disagree 
with someun', they figure the best way of changing someone's mind is by bashing 
it out with a rock. Problem is, when you're all caught up in killin' each other, 
you forget to send the yearly tithe of virgins and livestock and crops to the Winter 
Lord Cholod. What happens then is that this God gets pissy - the way they tend to 
do these days, when they don't get their bribes - and he maybe says to his 
underlings not to bring around the eagles and the rocs and the wolves and the bears 
this year. When everyone in the mountains is starving to death, they fight harder 
and harder, blaming each other. And then, they don't fight at all - because there 
ain't enough of 'em left fit enough to fight, y'see. 

That's when you find another way of settling your disputes. 

So, every little kingdom, they send all their representatives to the city of 
Krag, in the kingdom of Kruzky. They get together, and they start talking, and 
what they decide is this: every Kingdom is going to have it's own little Arena, 
and it's own team of gladiators. And from now on, they'd still settle their disa- 
greements with combat, but it'd just be teams of gladiators against teams of 
gladiators. 'Course, people still died - but these were specially designated people, 
and the teams were never to be larger than a dozen regulars, with up to two dozen 
in training - a tiny portion of the population, to let the rest get on with the hunting 
and the propitiatin' and the governing and the other things that keep a society 
funkshinin'. 

Well, people will be people - so they start lookin' fer ways to take 
advantage of this. Now, they realized this system was the best way to go 
- it got Cholod's blessing, and ain't no one been lookin' to piss off 
Cholod. But, that didn't mean they had to toss out just any ol' guys with 
big fists and bigger skulls. Every little kingdom started lookin' to get 
the upper-hand; breeding with the biggest baddest Gods they could try and 
get in the sack, or paying outcaste Dynasts to join their arenas, or any 
variety of ideas. Heck, the Nayr even tried recruiting Glade Witches to 
their team - well, that worked just fine till the Witches just up and mind 
-charmed the Nayr's rulers and took over the whole lil' kingdom. Stupid sons 
of bitches. 

Well, Farbjodr, the ruler of Kruzky, he finds this tribe of barbarian warriors 
-(heck, all of these people were barbarians more or less - but this tribe, 
they were definitely more) - called the Myrkr. Well, he sees these out- 
and-out savages, and he gets a whole handful to come join his arena, in return 
for giving them three great big bears every winter and a half-dozen virgins 
every other spring, for eight years. Well, that year, they absolutely demolish 
every kingdom they meet in the arenas. 

These other fellas, they ain't stupid - they start recruiting themselves. Before 
the eight years were good and up, every kingdom in Cholod's mountains had at least 
a handful of Myrkr. The Myrkr, for the cost of a hundred of their mediocre 
warriors had assured that it would always be well-fed, and every man would have his 
own small harem. Well, the eight years is up, and it comes time for Kruzky to 
renegotiate terms with the Myrkr - he certainly ain't givin' up his finest gladiators, 
after all. He ain't all that stupid, either; he's been makin' sure to have his Myrkr 
knock up as many maidens as they could get it up for - but them babies wouldn't be for 
fightin' age for a couple decades yet. 

Well, surprises to the heavens, the Myrkr say okay - they'll give him more or less the 
same terms as he got last time, except he has to take a few more fighters on his 
team from the Myrkr. Well, he thinks, stupid barbarians - that's perfect. Okay, sure. 

Perfect. 

Everybody negotiates the same deal, so pretty soon, the arenas ain't got nothing but 
Myrkr. What you get is, societies that get used to dealin without violence - all their 
finest men are archers and hunters, not swordfighters. Their own were steadily removed 
from the arena, where they could learn to fight. So, two decades down the road, Hilgard 
- the ruler of the Myrkr - he passes on. Now, some say that his son put a knife in his 
back to take power. I was there, and I can tell ya that just ain't the truth. It wasn't 
a knife, it was - at worst - a shortsword. 

Well, Gunnar, he says - enough is enough. He says, we're living like pigs. He says, 
we're settling down to be as weak as these wood-dwelling people, living off the food 
they send us, screwing the women they give us, and not doing a damn thing anymore. 

Gunnar, he calls for war. 

It was short, and it was bloody, and it erupted out of every Arena through 
the mountains. Every last kingdom's ruling body was gone in a day, sending 
them into wild confusion and chaos. The Myrkr, Gunnar marching at their head, 
swept across the mountains, conquering and consolidating every kingdom they 
passed as they went. It was easy enough; these people so unused to war and 
violence and chaos were being told, "Shut up, stay quiet, go back to living 
the way you've always lived - there'll just be someone new calling the shots." 
So, they did. A few resisted; a few always do. Cholod knew which way the wind 
was going to blow, though, and granted the Myrkr his blessings. When the 
resistance fighters couldn't even feed themselves, that was enough to settle 
the issue. 

Okay, maybe I'm oversimplifying it a bit - I make it sound like it took a week. 
Really, it took almost five years; but anyway, it happened, and results are what 
matter. Fjara held out the longest, gianing some Imperial support and being able 
to fish helped them resist the lack of Cholod's help. Still, Fjara wasn't big on 
the Imperial's list of important cities, and Gunnar sent a representative to the 
Empire stating that they would gladly double Fjara's current annual tithes - and 
that was enough. A dragon of Imperial Troops withdrawing from the defense of Fjara 
was enough to clinch the battle, and Fjara fell to the Myrkr. By RY 640, Gunnar and 
the Myrkr dominated the entire range of mountains from the nothernmost Kingdom of 
Sveit (about five hundred miles south of The Hidden Tabernacle) to the southernmost 
Fjara. 

Gunnar has since brought about the economic situation in the Kruzky Empire (he chose 
to take Krag of Kruzky as his capitol, as it is the tallest mountain and the home 
to Cholod) under control; fish from Fjara provide added sustenance throughout the 
Empire, while ever-cold ice from Sveit and nearby districts are brought south and 
traded to the Dynasty in return for fruits, vegetables, and other finished goods. The 
Empire also accepts gladiators from the Dynasty and other lands, attracting a certain 
level of tourism that was previously unheard of in the region. Gunnar has bought from 
the Heptagram a series of low-powered artifacts which have brought fertility to the 
frozen lands, allowing the Empire to begin its own agricultural development. 

At the moment, the Empire has gained enough economic autonomy that it is considering 
calling off all tithing to the Dynasts - courting a war. They are ready, however; the 
mountainous kingdom covered in a cursed forest of massive icy trees and pocketed with 
pallisaded villages housing barbarian warriors and some of the finest archers in 
Creation ... 

It certainly isn't Lookshy, and a concerted effort on the part of the Dynasty will send 
it toppling, but it isn't a bloodless exercise, and may well be far more expensive than 
it's worth - with all of the Dynasty's other issues, it may be in their best interests 
to simply trade. Then again, that's just another sign of the failing Imperial Dynasty, 
isn't it ... ? 

-As excerpted from a report by Stalwart Wasteland Prince, Chosen of Journeys 

== Characters and Gods ==

[[Miedvied/Gunnar | Gunnar, the aging Emperor of Kruzky ]] 
[[Miedvied/Hugis | Hugis, Gunnar's son ]] 
[[Miedvied/Mina | Mina, Gunnar's daughter ]] 
[[Miedvied/Cholod | The Winter Lord, Cholod ]] 
[[Miedvied/GladeWs | The Glade Witches ]] 
[[Miedvied/Grizfeld | Grizfeld the Butcher ]] 
[[Miedvied/Myrkr | Myrkr, the patron of the Myrkr tribe ]]

== Comments ==

I was looking for something to spice up the North/North East, and this fits the bill perfectly, good work. [[Jamez]]

Very cool. I rather liked the accented report as well [[Ageis]]

@@ Line 204: / Line 204: @@
 == Characters and Gods ==
-[[Miedvied/Gunnar | Gunnar, the aging Emperor of Kruzky ]] <br>
+[[Miedvied/Gunnar|Gunnar, the aging Emperor of Kruzky ]] <br>
-[[Miedvied/Hugis | Hugis, Gunnar's son ]]<br>
+[[Miedvied/Hugis|Hugis, Gunnar's son ]]<br>
-[[Miedvied/Mina | Mina, Gunnar's daughter ]]<br>
+[[Miedvied/Mina|Mina, Gunnar's daughter ]]<br>
-[[Miedvied/Cholod | The Winter Lord, Cholod ]]<br>
+[[Miedvied/Cholod|The Winter Lord, Cholod ]]<br>
-[[Miedvied/GladeWs | The Glade Witches ]]<br>
+[[Miedvied/GladeWs|The Glade Witches ]]<br>
-[[Miedvied/Grizfeld | Grizfeld the Butcher ]]<br>
+[[Miedvied/Grizfeld|Grizfeld the Butcher ]]<br>
-[[Miedvied/Myrkr | Myrkr, the patron of the Myrkr tribe ]]
+[[Miedvied/Myrkr|Myrkr, the patron of the Myrkr tribe ]]
 == Comments ==
-I was looking for something to spice up the [[NorthMiedvied/Kruzky/North]] East, and this fits the bill perfectly, good work. [[Jamez]]
+I was looking for something to spice up the [[NorthMiedvied/North]] East, and this fits the bill perfectly, good work. [[Jamez]]
 Very cool. I rather liked the accented report as well [[Ageis]]

@@ Line 214: / Line 214: @@
 == Comments ==
-I was looking for something to spice up the North[[/North]] East, and this fits the bill perfectly, good work. [[Jamez]]
+I was looking for something to spice up the [[NorthMiedvied/Kruzky/North]] East, and this fits the bill perfectly, good work. [[Jamez]]
 Very cool. I rather liked the accented report as well [[Ageis]]

Miedvied/Kruzky - Revision history

Wordman: Script: fix links messed up in conversion

Conversion script: link fix

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