Miedvied/Kruzky

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

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

Comments

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