FrivYeti/EnliHis4
Contents
The Second Age of Man
The Rise Of Theocracy
At first, the effects of the Draconic Dynasty were confined to the Blessed Isle itself. The Blessed Isle itself was still suffering greatly; though it had been shielded from the worst effects of the fae, it was there that the war against the Deliberative had been the most fierce. Entire regions had been destroyed, and armies were stripped down to almost nothing as the people simply tried to survive. Remnants of the Deliberative, along with ambitious warlords, fled to the corners of the islands and beyond, setting up their own nations. For the first year after the war end, the Dynasty could only lay claim to just under a quarter of the island, though Immaculate influence radiated far beyond that.
This soon changed. Early in D.Y. 794, the recently crowned Empress Remisi met with influential leaders of the Immaculate Order, and laid out the future of the world as she saw it. Without a firm hand, she explained, the Immaculate faith, newly established and with only the most tentative control over the populace, would fade into obscurity. Given the choice between luxury and virtue, most people would be tempted by luxury, fall into cults to gods that would abuse this trust, and begin practicing forbidden arts once again. Instead, the Empress suggested, there was another path. Remisi herself was a devout follower of the Immaculate Faith, and was willing to name it the state faith - the only religion that could be practiced by the people of her burgeoning empire. The various monks and savants of the Empire would ensure that a proper schedule of worship was devised for the gods, treated each equally according to their station and co-operation with the Faith. In exchange, the Faith would preach the rightness and Virtue of dynastic rule, enthroning the Empire as the only proper government. Remisi saw clearly enough to know that this would help sway gods and mortals alike to her banner, hopefully creating a successor to the Deliberative, founded on virtue rather than might.
Her suggestion was one that was at first greeted with suspicion. After all, it was a unified political bloc that had caused problems in the first place, and many Immaculates did not believe that replacing one dictator with another would be effective. Ultimately, however, the leadership of the Order decided to grant Remisi's request, and the merger of the Immaculate Order and the Draconic Dynasty was made. In honour of the event, the Immaculate Order declared the beginning of a new calender - the Realm Year, in honour of the Realm of Dragons that was growing from the centre of Creation.
Growth of the Empire
The new Realm stood through many challenges in its early years, as it spread across the Blessed Isle. Many gods were not pleased with the new systems the Immaculates had devised, preferring their own power gained through years of corruption. Though the Incarna had accepted the Immaculate Faith, they would not fight either for or against it, feeling that this went against the concept of the Choosing Wars - as such, individual gods were left to take stands as they would. Warlords, either suspicious of Immaculate motives or greedy for power, refused to accept Remisi as Empress, and went to war against her. The first thirty years of the Empire were marked with unending warfare and shifting alliances, as the Immaculates attempted to sway opinion and Remisi was forced to use more artifacts and magics to gain territory and crush enemies.
Ultimately, it was a union of three warlords that gained Remisi the throne. Lord Cathak Vald, Lord Ragara Suun, and Lady Iselsi Cydine chose to swear allegiance to Remisi after years of uncertainty, and they brought with them money, armies, and territory - enough to guarantee that the Realm would gain the upper hand in the war for the Isle. In return, each was guaranteed prestige and positions within the new Deliberative, a political and spiritual body that served to support the Empress while restricting her power. This started a trend where the Empress named new Houses to the Deliberative, which had to prove their devotion and virtue in order to govern. Houses were loosely based on family lines, but could adopt new persons of virtue, and all House members were required to study the Immaculate Martial Arts - each House tended towards a favorite Art, and began to align their concepts with the element of the Dragon they sought to emulate. Five such Houses were created - Ledaal of Air, Ragara of Earth, Cathak of Fire, Iselsi of Water, and V'Neef of Wood. Remisi herself had no House, but her children passed into whatever House was most appropriate for them. A succession was also established, where every five rulers of the Realm would come from different Houses, ensuring that each House ruled once in a given span, and then the cycle would renew itself. Remisi felt that this would prevent the Realm from sinking too far towards one Virtue at the expense of others, while allowing flexibility if a House had no truly inspired leaders prepared.
The Holy Crusade
By the time of Remisi's death in R.Y. 97, the Realm covered the entire Blessed Isle; every would-be opponent had been defeated and forced to join with the Realm and the Order. A purge of non-Order martial arts followed, and masters fled the Isle in droves to found schools across the Threshold. It was not to last, however; Remisi herself had been content to hold the Isle, purifying it in the name of the Order and rebuilding from the damage done over the previous century. Her first son, Ragara Chenow, was not so certain. A master of the Earth Dragon and Fire Dragon paths, he was also a fanatical Immaculate and a fervent crusader, and he named a Dragon Crusade, which was to be the first of many. His goal - beginning the conquest of all of Creation, starting with the fertile East.
The result was more of a 'disaster'. While the Blessed Isle had gathered allies on the shores of the Inner Sea, the overall opinion across the Threshold was that they could, to be blunt, go and stuff themselves. Gods and Enlightened alike had spent the last hundred years reinforcing their own positions, and many of their wars had been against the monsters that entered the world after the Contagion and the leftovers of the Deliberative. Armies that had been fighting one another wheeled on the newcomers, striking against the Dynasty everwhere. Immaculate splinter sects preached that no political power could exist untainted, and that the politics of the Isle were doomed to failure. Chenow led the Isle into a brutal and costly war that lasted another twenty years and nearly bankrupted the Isle; it ended only when he himself died of wounds sustained at the Second Battle of Deheleshann in R.Y. 119.
Recovery and Expansion
From R.Y. 120 to R.Y. 700, the Realm gradually and slowly expanded. Warned by Chenow's examples, his successors were significantly more cautious. They sought to lead by example, using their armies primarily to defend their own satrapies from ambitious neighbours, while wielding economic and religious might to try and gradually persuade new nations to join. The expansion of the Realm was thus slow, steady, and marked with a steady stream of minor wars and conquests, most of which the Dynasty won. The East, having felt the brunt of the Crusade, was most hostile to the Realm on principle, and expansion there was all but non-existant; but in the other quarters of the world, the Realm grew. It was a rare year in which at least one kingdom did not join the expanding ranks of the Realm, and as one kingdom joined, another would be forced to renegotiate terms.
In R.Y. 466, however, a disaster occured that nearly shattered the Realm, and revealed to many how fragile its apparant strength truly was. The event began with the death of Cathak Cainan, the last ruler of his Cycle - without naming an appropriate heir. Iselsi Narra and Ragara Mnemon were both valid candidates, with no clear means of determining which had the better claim. Both claimed to be the best Empress to begin the new cycle, and debates on which of them should take the throne grew increasingly heated; even the Immaculate Order, the traditional tiebreaker in such situations, could not come to a unified decision. Ultimately, the debate broke out in violence, and the resulting civil war lasted for six years and drove families apart, as armies marched across the Blessed Isle. During this time, a number of nations that had been on the verge of joining, or had recently joined, broke off from the Realm, setting it back fifty years.
The war ended with the rise of Mnemon, and the fall of Narra. Victorious and angry, Mnemon disbanded House Iselsi, which had supported Narra wholesale and many of whom were dead, replacing it with the newly formed House Peleps. She then set about trying to repair the damage done to the nation, and the march of the Realm resumed.
The Collapse Begins
The Realm continued expanding until R.Y. 706, when the new Emperor, Peleps Deled, decided that advances in the East were proceeding too slowly compared to the rest of the world. While over half the world followed the Realm now, the East remained almost totally independant, and they contained most of the remaining important nations that were not Realm protectorates. Wanting to break the spirit of the rebellious Easterners once and for all, he engineered a series of minor revolts and incidents that allowed him a pretext to declare a new Crusade against the East. Naming it the Phoenix Crusade, he hoped to break the East once and for all, hastening the final rise of the Realm under the Immaculate Faith.
His plot went as badly as the first crusade had. The Phoenix Crusade was a poorly designed political manuever, and it lasted through forty years of sputtering and false starts, the occasional capture of an Eastern nation soon followed by the capture of a Realm one in response. By the time it ended in R.Y. 736, after the death of Empress Ragara Maachi, the East was actually less controlled by the Realm than it had been before. Worse, the rest of the world, including numerous formerly loyal satrapies, were muttering restively and wondering whether this sort of thing would become the norm if the Realm did manage to conquer everything. Maachi's replacement, Emperor V'Neef Soras - already an old man at the time of his ascent - spent the next twenty-nine years working tirelessly to undo the harm done to the Realm's public image, with little benefit. For the first time, nations began to pull away from the Realm, and some satraps had to call for the Realm's legions to surpress revolts and uprisings.
When Soras died in R.Y. 765, he left no immediate heirs, and his death ended an elemental Cycle. While many cycles had ended peacefully, this time every House has a contender that they consider to be a proper successor to the Realm. No House is willing to properly consider the ascension of another, for everyone acutely feels that the next leader might be the one to preside over the Realm's rebirth, or its destruction. Smelling weakness, kingdoms are declaring their neutrality and backing away from the Realm in ever-greater numbers. Civil war looms on the horizon, and the world shudders. Omens agree that the Second Age of Man is coming to an end, and that the coming years will usher in a Third Age - but who will rule it, and how, remains very much in doubt.
