Above: A Slovarian village. Originally the first Slovarian permanent settlements would've looked like this, and the less-civilized "nations" in the Slovarian kingdom still build their villages in much the same fashion
The Slovarians originally started as a nomadic people related to the Falinesti and share much of their religious beliefs. According to myth, the Slovarian Confederacy was first founded by the great warrior Aladoric, whom then built he first major settlement of Slovanos which would grow to become a splendorous city and a center of trade and culture. Eventually the original Slovarians with their new capital quickly became very powerful, with lesser brethren tribes of their race settling down in the region and offering fealty to the Aladorian line of kings reigning in Slovanos. The tribes that refused were conquered by the confederation.
Looking outwards, the Slovarians originally appeared hostile to more-civilized peoples to their south. They continued their raiding lifestyle, attacking settlements both by land and by ship, taking away food, gold and women to feed the great Slovarian kingdom. Finally the Slovarians were defeated in a great battle between them and the civilized cities of the south. This defeat led to the decline of raiding and eventually allowed for the Slovarians to venture southwards for more peaceful purposes. King Asadoran, great grandson of Aladoric, first made the trip to the "Great Villages of White Gold" to negotiate peace with his wealthy neighbors. When he arrived, he was stunned by the great beauty and cleanliness of such a place and returned home inspired by it all. He decreed that all his sons, and their sons and so on were required to visit the southern cities, become educated their for three years, and return home to share what they had learned. This led Slovanos, and then other notable Slovarian capitals, to start building settlements built out of stone and marble, both of which were plentiful in their homeland.
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
Above: The remains of the Royal Agroran, which was destroyed tragically in a fire.
Today, the Slovarians still exist as a semi-civilized kingdom bound by traditions shared from the most backwoods settlement on the frontier to the very city center (Agroran) of Slovanos.
^Yeah, srsly I need you guys to at least vote yay/nay on my compromises for an Asian/Aboriginal divide. I've even quoted it already on the last page, so there should be absolutely no way for anyone to miss it. That stuff being held up has also forced several players to hold off from writing/posting their cultures & civs for a week as of today, which is pretty unfair.
Also I wouldn't mind comments & criticism on the Falinesti, you guys know I won't bite your heads off if you criticize 'em But that's not as important as the above. Speaking of which, I'll probably post another update on the Falinesti later today.
@EB I'm liking it thus far. Though, could you place the Slovarians on the map & assign some dates (founding, contact with Arion, etc.)? This is how far Arion has spread as of 4170 AU, for the record.
Reposting my vote for option 2 or the fourth option I suggested on the page 2 :
The Asiatic cultures could be offshoot of the Deltic culture that moved north(like in idea 3) that could be divided into two groups, a northern one that as in idea #3 merges with the Aboriginals while the southern one remains more Deltic.
Here we go then, as I said earlier, this is the next update on the Falinesti - specifically, on their Dark Age years. Note that there are still two major WIP areas that I'll write about later, one dealing with the Perhe (G2TC's faction) and another on stuff along the Falinesti's SE border, b/c I'm about to run out of free time right now.
History of the Falinesti, part IV: The Middle Era
Middle Era Falinesti culture
In most regards, Middle Falinesti culture is barely distinguishable from late Dark Age Falinesti culture. The biggest difference, of course, is that the specter of Arion no longer loomed over them. The other major difference is that a proto-feudal system began to organize in earnest, even in areas where Arionic influence had been minimal; local petty-kings, particularly those who had been granted more consolidated kingdoms by Arionic decree, began to actively parcel out chunks of their own land to their finer warriors in exchange for their continued service, and the peasants living in those lands were to work for their newest lord in exchange for protection from bandits and hostile armies. The concept of the Varanva'at or heavy stirrup-equipped mounted lancer, having first spread out of Fa-Telanesti lands, merged seamlessly into this new social development to give rise to one of the dominant social forces of the late Middle Era & the succeeding High Era - the Vahan, or 'knight': a man who was part professional warrior, part sworn servant and part lord who had to maintain his own fort (the precursor to the High Era's famous castles), horses and equipment (traditionally at least a suit of chainmail, a helmet and a lance), who was expected to always either be off fighting a war or training for one, and who was most certainly duty-bound to follow his overlord into combat and to defend the peasants sworn to him whenever called upon.
A Vahan & his lady wife of the Middle Falinesti Era, c. 4700 AU
What this era is especially notable for is the complete breakdown in civil order all across Navashiral following Arion's defeat and the disintegration of Falinasht's empire. This was an age of chaos, of rapid change for both good and bad; for the next ~400 years petty-kings warred with one another as they had before the coming of Arion, bandits prowled the countryside and occasionally became petty-kings themselves, peasant rebels at times too could cast down millennia-old dynasties and take their place, countless ancient artifacts and texts were destroyed whether accidentally or on purpose, and foreigners such as the Dafcikar and men from the East struck at the divided Falinesti. Needless to say, it was in such an atmosphere that the Vahan'a, being a caste of professional warriors, could prosper for the first time. But this also marked the import of new ideas, the intense theological debates of the councils that would give rise to the High Falinesti Church of Aba-Favra and the cultural renaissance it brought, and renewed feelings of pan-Falinesti solidarity - this time lasting a good deal longer than it had under the Third High Kingdom and the Great Spring.
Middle Era Falinesti warfare
Middle Falinesti warfare represented a decline from the large, centralized professional or semi-professional armies of the Arionic era. Without a strong centralized authority, and due to the resource drain from constant warfare between Falinesti petty-kings as well as the rise of banditry caused by a breakdown in the social order, it became impossible for lords to maintain armies larger than a few thousand men. These hosts were a throwback to the Early Falinesti warbands, being made up of a core of professional noble warriors sworn to the local king and surrounded by a mob of conscripted peasants, and battles between them rarely featured more than 8,000 combatants total. Also like Early Falinesti warfare, tactics were not often very complicated - not necessarily because the lords in charge are idiots, but simply because most of their troops don't have the training & discipline to execute complicated maneuvers - and the Falinesti would thus traditionally fight in either a dense shield wall when on foot, with the best-armed men forming the front line and everybody marching to meet the opponent with shields locked (in this case, the two opposing shield walls would essentially keep pushing & bashing one another until one broke), or in simple two/three-rank-deep lines and wedges when mounted. A chronic lack of funds and centralized order (on account of the state of anarchy & unceasing small-scale warfare plaguing this era) meant that the Arionic-era foundries could not be maintained outside of a few very rich cities on the eastern coast, which in turn meant a sharp decline in the quality of equipment used by virtually everybody from the lowest peasant conscript to the highest kings.
A Halanesti shield wall, c. 4750 AU
That said, a major custom from less civilized times that persisted among the Falinesti through the Dark Age and to this era was the collection of enemy heads. Knights and commoners alike would sever the heads of their kills for confirmation before their overlords; the more heads you had, the greater your share of the plunder. Peasants who brought enough heads, say seven to ten, could even be dubbed Vahan'a on the spot by particularly charitable lords.
Perhaps the single most important development to have arisen in this time period was the advent of the Vahan'a. As touched upon in the 'Culture' section, they were essentially professional warriors who also played the role of lord & servant, but their chief function was always that of the heavy, melee-oriented cavalryman. The stirrup allowed these men to 'couch' their lances before charging at full gallop by effectively standing in their saddles & leaning forward with the lance held underarm; upon impact, the momentum of the charge would be fully transferred onto and through the tip of the lance. The shock value of these knightly charges cannot be underestimated: a proper charging Vahan could skewer a lightly armored infantryman and the man behind him upon impact, and at least instantly kill a heavily armored foot soldier, even before his own body & that of his horse plowed into the ranks of the survivors at full speed to further scatter & panic them. For less decisive charges, the Vahan'a would hold their lances overarm instead of couching them underarm, thrust with them as they would with normal spears, and ride away before charging again. The Vahan'a of some peoples developed additional tactics & weapons based around their region and cultural traditions - for example, Wodanesti Vahan'a trained to double as horse archers & would often loose at least one volley before charging home, while Halanesti Vahan'a had fewer problems fighting on foot than those of the other Falinesti & would indeed traditionally form the front line of their shield-walls, and Fa-Telanesti Vahan'a were known to throw light axes ahead of their charge - but the basic idea behind them, that of the mounted heavy lancer, always remained the same. For that matter, their equipment was largely identical no matter which Falinesti cultural group they belonged to: pretty much any Vahan worth the name would have to have at least a mail hauberk, some kind of iron helmet (usually a spangenhelm or ridge helmet) or a mail coif, a lance, a slashing sword (alternatively, axes and simple maces were also quite common) and a round shield, with wealthier nobles and kings often possessing more fanciful helmets and additional protection in the form of greaves, gauntlets and leather or scale cuirasses over their chainmail.
The Vahan'a of three different Falinesti regions
A Birinasht Vahan of the Riverlands
A Halanasht Vahan of the Earth's Spine
A Fa-Telanasht Vahan of the Flower Fields
Middle Era Falinesti history
After the expulsion of the Arionic Empire from Navashiral in 4500 AU, the wartime empire forged by Falinasht and held together by his son Hevanasht promptly imploded. As far as most Falinesti kings were concerned, their secular obligations to Falinasht no longer applied once the threat they'd signed up to fight against was gone, and in the span of months Hevanasht saw his territories decline to a thinstrip of land on the shores of the Leliphabaal. The Falinesti again warred heavily amongst themselves; the economy and law of Navashiral broke down; and no religious renaissance, whether of the old Circle or the new Church of Aba-Favra, seemed to be within reach. All in all, it surely seemed like the Children of the Spring had just traded one Dark Age for another.
But it was not so, thanks to the descendants of Falinasht, who were known at this time as the 'Bali-nic'a' ('blood of the savior') and within another 500 years would be best known as the 'House of Beanique', the High and Late Falinesti rendering of their Dark Age name.
Bali-nec'a/Beanique banner, 4500-5169 AU
The Bali-nic'a/Beanique rump state, c. 4500 AU
From their secular and temporal capital at Shiral Aba-Favralesti, the Bali-nica'a fought for four hundred years to realize their illustrious founder's dream of a wholly united Falinesti empire. This was not easy - more than once they faced alliances of local petty-kings determined to stop their advance, with those kings of the far west/north/south who had never sworn fealty to Falinasht being among their most stubborn enemies, and they had their fair share of defeats (some quite serious) alongside victories. But a few factors sped up the reunification process quite nicely. First and foremost of course was the disunity of the other Falinesti petty-kings and queens; they were perpetually at war with each other, more than a few royal houses had blood-feuds blazing between them, and any alliance between these men & women were understood by all parties involved to be purely temporary arrangements meant to stave off a greater threat & broken down immediately after said threat had passed so they could get back to killing each other, which allowed the Bali'nica-a to pick them off one by one or drive wedges in-between their alliances with gold, promises of religious salvation or hostage-taking.
Holy King Thelvanasht I receives a Birinasht petty-king's fealty, 4695 AU
Second came the religious factor. As mentioned earlier, the near-total annihilation of the old Duanericesti priestly class and 200 hundred years' worth of Arionic efforts to assimilate the locals had done irreparable damage to the old Circle of Aba-Favra, leaving a population with at best confused ideas about their gods and at worst, prone to just abandoning the Circle entirely in favor of their own beliefs. Wars between the petty-kings and rampant banditry in the countryside also made it impossible for the lower classes to live comfortably in most places, and even where they could live safely they'd often be dragged off by their overlord to fight in conflicts they rarely had much stake in. This was perfect grounds then for a monotheistic, dualistic faith that saw everything as a struggle between light/good and darkness/evil, that promised salvation for all peoples regardless of social class, and which promised to use its power to shield the weak from the abusive mighty to rise, all with a tangible spiritual and temporal leader - like say, the new Church of Aba-Favra, directed by the Holy Kings and Queens from their white throne in the reconsecrated Holy of Holies.
After 150 years of wrangling over exactly what to incorporate into their holy texts, the Scriptures of the Children of the All-Father, and what beliefs constituted heresy, at the Sixth Great Council in 4653 AU the Beaniques and Sages finally laid out the Church's orthodox beliefs. They will be covered in full later - for the purposes of this article it is sufficient to say that they recognized the All-Father as the one true God and the old pantheon of Falinesti lesser deities as mere angels created to serve him; named the 'Mother of the Void' as an adversarial villainous deity of equal power who personified darkness, death and chaos, and who was the source of all evil; declared that the undying souls of mankind were trapped in an unending cycle of reincarnation, doomed to be forever bound to the sinful Earth, that came to be when the Mother tainted the All-Father's once-perfect creation; that only those humans whose virtue was exceptional could, in becoming saints, invite divine intervention to be pulled free from this cycle and up into Heaven by the All-Father, who after all is risking his life & therefore the continued existence of all good things by interfering; and that Falinasht was the literal biological son of the All-Father, and while he may have been killed by the machinations of the Void Mother as exercised through the traitorous king Redanach, his soul will be reincarnated to save all humans by breaking the cycle of reincarnation, slaying the Void Mother and ushering in an unending age of perfect harmony, justice and prosperity ruled directly by the All-Father at the end of days - but in the meantime, his spiritual and biological successors had a divine imperative to limit the Void Mother's influence by sheltering the weak, feeding the starving, clothing the naked, and serving out justice. The council also laid down the structure of the Church, and opened the door to the formation of holy orders. Needless to say, many peasants and merchants were attracted to this religion which promised universal salvation and protection from the savagery of the constantly-warring petty kings, and as time wore on it was not uncommon for lords who resisted the advance of the Bali-nic'a to face a mutiny from their own levies before battle was even joined.
A fresco of the Sixth Church Council in the Holy of Holies, dated to 5004 AU
But while the above transpired, the Bali-nic'a were far from the only ones to try to unite the Falinesti. Many other petty-kings too tried, and though all of them failed in the end, some did make impressive progress at first. The first of these were the Halanesti Beioulvas of Leshal: under Lion King Laudamer III, better known simply as the 'White Lion' or 'Lion of the West' after his family's sigil, from 4680 to 4725 they stormed across the Earth's Spine to bring their fellow Halanesti kings to heel, conquered various Birinesti lords down the Heraska River, and even threw the Dafcikar out of the hotly contested Central Highlands. The White Lion's successes must largely be attributed to his use of the Beioulva Vahan'a as mounted infantry - in essence, they would ride to key points on the battlefield on horseback but then dismount to fight on foot - as well as his sharp eye for favorable terrain and tactical genius. Unfortunately for Laudamer, in 4725 AU he had the misfortune of facing the allied Fa-Telanesti kings Meravis II Akhes and Ondoric Hanestroza as he struggled to expand further into the Fatela'i. At the Battle of Iul'vechenat ('Lion's Hill'), his shield wall initially repulsed several Fa-Telanesti cavalry charges from their safe position on the eponymous hill, and on their fifth charge he even managed to split the skull of King Ondoric with a powerful axe-blow; but as the Fa-Telanesti fled back down the hill in disorder, Laudamer unwisely ordered his men to pursue under the belief that his enemies had finally been broken (to be fair, this was their fifth failed charge) - only for his army to be routed in a surprise counterattack by the Fa-Telanesti reserve under King Meravis. Laudamer was felled in the fighting, and his empire crumbled not long after his body had turned cold.
A Beioulva shield-wall presses onward against the White Lion's enemies, 4715 AU
The White Lion's kingdom at its height (capital: Leshal), 4724 AU
The next to try would be Meravis' great-grandson, Marteyn Akhes. At Iul'vechenat his great-grandfather had proved the superiority of the mounted Vahan over the older, infantry-based style of Falinesti warfare, and now Marteyn was determined to exploit that advantage to the fullest. His mounted lancers, almost exclusively employing the couched-lance + charge tactic, tore their way across the Flower Fields and drove the Halanesti back into their mountains; by his death in 4868, he had united the Fa-Telanesti under his banner. After his death, his son Meravis III 'Longthorn' (so nicknamed for his great height and his family's flowery coat of arms) continued his work, expanding to the east against the Navanesti. By 4875, it seemed that House Akhes would beat the Bali-nec'a to unifying the Falinesti. But despite these initial successes, in that very year a whole new threat would emerge from the west to trample the Flower of the South underfoot before he could fully bloom; Toranaul or Agdu Baratun, a Dafčik warlord who had freshly unified his people and were now looking to avenge centuries of harassment by the Falinesti.
The 'Flower King' Meravis III Akhes himself, 4854 AU
'Let a thousand flowers bloom' - the Akhes domains (capital: Bedven), c. 4855 AU
From 4855 onward Agdu Baratun tore through western Navashiral as a whirlwind of death and destruction, breaking alliances of as many as thirty petty-kings and lords, razing hundreds of castles & hillforts, and killing tens of thousands while displacing or enslaving hundreds of thousands more. The Longthorn turned to face him but was defeated at Gras, Jailén, and finally Kerwasten, where he was killed along with 1,000 nobles and Vahan'a of his realm by the Dafčikar cavalry while they were still bogged down in combat with the Northern Dafčikar infantry. His capital at Bedven was sacked soon after while his family fled to - irony of ironies - the Beioulvas' mountain seat at Leshal, and the Akhes' efforts at setting up a High Kingdom crumbled to dust as quickly and surely as the White Lion's did over a century ago. Meanwhile, Agdu Baratun continued his rampage against the Falinesti without anyone capable of stopping him in sight, and was increasingly referred to as 'Shaba ta Veha-Mavra' or 'Sword of the Void Mother' by them in turn.
At the same time, to the north the Borvanesti were on the warpath, having been unified by Solsteyn IV Fyrstaad - by now having earned the nickname 'Dragon of the North' - in 4885 AU. After crowning himself the 'King of Winter', the Dragon led his forces on the offensive against both the Perhe living even further to the north, who were quickly reduced to a few fortified Hafnir holdouts, and the Wodanesti and Birinesti to the south, who had great difficulties fighting him in the winter. The Borvanesti armies moved quickly to engage & crush their enemies' forces in detail before they could fully mobilize and come together, using sleds and snowshoes (copied from the Perhe) to move quickly in winter while navigating the seas and rivers in longboats during warmer times, while also employing teams of mounted raiders to target their peasantry and food supplies. He too seemed undefeatable, and while the Perhe could barely survive his attacks, both the Children of the Woods and the Rivers were constantly on the retreat in the face of his fast and furious onslaughts.
The Dragon's horde on the march, c. 4888 AU
The Dragon's bite is cold and deep indeed (capital: Fyrnach), 4897 AU
In this dark hour, as the Falinesti peoples of the mainland searched for a savior to rescue them from the dual threat of Agdu Baratun's and Solsteyn Fyrstaad's hordes, the Bali-nec'a rose to the occasion as their progenitor did some 400 years earlier; this would be the third critical factor that allowed them to unite the Falinesti under their banner. From his seat at Shiral Aba-Favralesti, Holy King Rellic II (who was already at war with the Borvanesti, and whose predecessors had already made great strides in uniting the Riverlands and Filashiral under their rule) took advantage of the situation by proclaiming that he would gladly aid the lords of the west against this new threat - so long as they offered him their fealty and adopt the Church of Aba-Favra, for why should he lift a finger to aid unbelievers and traitors? This was done, and at the climax of the Siege of Lashal in 4904 Rellic attacked the 60,000-strong besieging force from behind with 35,000 warriors of his own while the Beioulva Lion King Tynven IV sallied forth with his garrison, driving the Dafčikar back with great loss and dealing Agdu Baratun the first defeat in his illustrious career. The warlord died a year later, and in the succeeding years Rellic had made great strides in liberating western Navashiral from his children - acquiring the allegiance of the displaced Fa-Telanesti, Navanesti and Halanesti who had lived in Agdu Baratun's path in the process.
The Bali-nec'a/Beanique border with Agdu Baratun's empire at the time of their first clash at Leshal, 4904 AU
The Borvanesti problem, meanwhile, was solved quite conveniently by the Wodanesti, whose Leaf King Grisleic Briarar slew the Dragon of the North with a ballista in the Battle under the Glades, 4897 AU. Fyrstaad's realm collapsed soon afterward; the Wodanesti and (under the Bali-nec'a) Birinesti easily pushed his remaining disorganized forces off the mainland, while the Perhe swept out of their strongholds and tore through their positions in the far north. In the interest of not being crushed flat between the offensives from south and north, the Borvanesti kings (including Fyrstaad's son Ormleic) bent their knees before Rellic in 4905 AU, while the Wodanesti had been badly weakened by their earlier war with the Dragon and either followed suit (as Grisleic did), or were bowled over by the pan-Falinesti armies of Rellic II and his successors in the coming decades.
Left to right: A Wodanasht scout and Borvanasht heavy infantryman of the Dragon's last years, 4890-4897 AU
Rellic demanded every petty-king under him to renounce their royal titles in favor of becoming 'mere' nobility and to melt down their crowns before him as a sign of their allegiance, forever placing them underneath the Bali'neca-a in the Falinesti hierarchy; and while some revolted at this point, Rellic commanded more than enough loyal troops to put them down, often quite messily. The three basic noble ranks were:
Magan (Duke)
Mulan (Count)
Pal'shukal (Baron)
Each rank of nobility had to swear oaths of allegiance to those immediately above them, in addition to the Beaniques. (Landed Vahan'a were traditionally sworn to Pal'shukali, though some were powerful enough to instead have to swear to a Mulan) Among the Dalanesti, Fa-Telanesti, Birinesti and Navanesti, the additional dignities of Ai-Magan ('Grand Duke', 'High Duke' or 'Archduke') and Se-Mulan (literally 'half-count', but taken to mean 'Viscount') were also used.
Between 4900 and 5000 AU, in addition to pushing back the Dafčikar in a succession of holy wars ('Saka-Rama'i valu Lebavashti', 'Holy Wars against the Bastards of the Lake', but usually shortened to just the 'Veshe Saka-Rama'i' or 'Western Holy Wars'), the Bali-nec'a fought hard to subdue those Falinesti kings who were still independent from them.
Bali-nec'a Vahan'a & warriors head out to battle the Dafcikar, 4924 AU
Aside from wars with the other Falinesti and the Dafčikar, the early Beaniques also embarked on two massive projects of conquest; one to the southeast, where they faced slaver colonists from Anvakhano, and one to the far north, which ended with the Perhe being either subjugated and steadily assimilated into the Borvanesti or being expelled altogether from Khio Na.
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
By 4950, the Beaniques had reached the west coast and would have little trouble mopping up the remaining independent Falinesti statelets that still eluded their grasp. It is then only natural for this dynasty, still driven by the burning religious fervor and hunt for social justice that characterized their most famed ancestor's rise to power, to turn against new 'villainous' threats to its 'righteous' attempts to dominate the western continent; and what could better fit this job description, than the slaver cities dotting the southeastern coast? Established by slaving lords from Anvakhano in ancient times, when the Children of the Spring were still organized into petty-kingdoms that covered areas smaller than the Beaniques' gardens, these colonies were originally little more than outposts meant to shelter passing slaving ships but had grown into cities in their own right by 4200 AU. Through sheer virtue of distance they were able to remain independent, though their motherland and neighbors too fell before the might of Arion, and once forced to stand on their own legs they grew into bustling metropolises in their own right; on land they raided the Sazhanesti ('Children of the Sands', as the desert-dwelling descendants of various Falinesti refugees fleeing Arion's advance came to be known) for slaves and demanded tribute from their chiefs, and on sea their fleets combed the shores of Arion-occupied Navashiral for yet more slaves and bounty, all of which would be used to build ever grander monuments in their capitals, fight wars for their masters or please said masters in bed for centuries.
The three slaver cities: Gas'tai, Na'mai, and Ha'mor
Black - Gas'tai
Blue - Na'mai
Green - Ha'mor
Needless to say, the Beaniques of 4950 considered these cities a cancer on Navashiral, and finally under the Holy King Remian I they would have the strength (and a lack of distractions) to actually do something about it. And by 'something', of course we mean 'organize an army and declare unending holy war against them'.
In the spring of 4950 Remian called a crusade, the 'Saka-Rema a'-Louvane' or 'Holy War of Liberation', against the slave-cities of the Southern Arm, completing his lengthy address to the Falinesti nobility and commoners alike with this famous statement: "As my most honored ancestor - our Savior - gave his life to make us free, so too let us die to make these people free!" By fall he had amassed an army of 30,000 men, primarily Dala/Biri/Nava/Udalanesti but also including small contingents from the western Falinesti (most prominently 1,400 Halanesti under Arncytel Beioulva, brother of the Magan of Lashal; 800 Fa-Telanesti Vahan'a and armored horse archers under the Mulan Hermanavig Hanestroza; and 1,000 Wodanesti longbowmen under Fellac Shantenayn, third son of the Magan of Urgall), and thus he led the march south through the Unforgiving Rocks of the Udalanesti and along the southeastern coast of Navashiral. Along the way, he was further reinforced by 6,000 light horsemen and horse-archers of the Sazhanesti, whose kings paid him homage in exchange for protection from - and a chance for revenge on - the slavers of the coast. A Dalanesti fleet would shadow the advance of the crusader host, ever ready to blockade the slavers' ports and destroy their navies in battle.
Middle Era Sazhanesti cavalry in Beanique service, 4950 AU
The northernmost of the slaver cities, Gas'tai, would be the crusaders' first stop. In the winter of 4950 Remian sent an envoy demanding their surrender, promising to allow the slave-lords to leave their city in ships with all the riches they could carry save their slaves, but the slave-lords instead tortured this emissary to death and flung her head from their walls. Remian thus swore that by the next month, not one of these slaving houses would still live. Dalanesti engineers and sappers undermined the ancient black walls of Gas'tai while their comrades fought off countermining efforts and his agents within the city gathered intelligence from rebellious slaves. In the earliest hours of the last day of the month, these agents and their rebellious allies painted the doors of the city's slaveowners with red stripes, and at dawn that day the northern wall collapsed entirely. The crusaders promptly swept in, and without their defensive works the city garrison was no match for the sheer numbers and religious zeal of their enemies; the streets ran red with slaver blood and those houses marked with red stripes were ransacked, yet all who claimed to be a slave and could have other slaves vouch for them were spared from the sword, as were those who owned no slaves and thus had unmarked doors. The slave-lords and their households were dragged into the city plaza, where they were massacred by the crusaders and their former slaves; not a man, woman or child was spared, just as Remian swore. 15,000 ex-slaves volunteered to join the ranks of the crusaders.
The second slaver city, Na'mai, was next to fall. In spring of 4951, once more Remian sent an envoy to the slaver-lords of the Blue City to offer them a chance to surrender and immediately depart from Navashiral, sans slaves of course. Having seen exactly what happened to Gas'tai, the lords of Na'mai were wise enough to not execute this diplomat, but instead treated him to a feast and sent him back not only gifts, but also with word that they would do as Remian commanded - though they intended to bring as many slaves as they could take on their ships as well, and would not budge from this condition. This Remian could not abide, and when his own noble lords advised him to take the slavers' offer - reasoning that there was 'no reason' to force an 'unnecessary' confrontation with an already unwilling opponent - he asked how many slaves resided in Na'mai; upon being informed that there were 150,000, he remarked solemnly, "Then we have 150,000 reasons to fight these monsters." The army of Na'mai (some 8,000 true soldiers, mainly mercenaries, and as many as 20,000 conscripted slaves) marched out to face the crusaders in open battle rather than hide behind their walls as the men of Gas'tai did, and Remian was more than happy to engage. At the Plain of Nirnuada the two armies clashed, with the Na'maian professionals leading the way; their camels were an unexpected element that kept Remian's heaviest cavalry at bay, but were ultimately countered by his elite infantry, and when called on to reinforce the front line the slave soldiers instead mutinied and waited until the 8,000 had been annihilated before surrendering to the crusaders. Upon seeing his victorious army arrive just outside their gates with 20,000 more soldiers, the lords of Na'mai opened their gates and threw themselves at the Holy King's feet, begging for mercy. As they did not kill his envoy and force him to waste a month besieging them, Remian 'only' took a finger from each member of the slavers' pro-war faction before allowing them to go their own way, though this time they could neither take their slaves nor any more belongings than what they needed to survive for two months' seaborne journey.
Dalanesti and Birinesti crusaders at Nirnuada, 4951 AU
Finally Remian came to Ha'mor, the southernmost of the continent's slaver cities, and also the youngest yet most powerful among them. His envoy was refused entrance to the city, and when she insisted she was chased off with arrows. However, that night his agents were able to slip over the walls, and began to foment a slave revolt while his forces laid siege to the Jade City. On the last night of the year 4951, Remian launched a three-pronged assault - the bulk of his crusaders assailed the gates and walls of Ha'mor, another Falinesti contingent launched an amphibious assault on the city's port, and some 2,000 slaves revolted within the city proper. These rebellious slaves were able to fight their way to the western gate and throw them open, allowing the Falinesti cavalry to charge in. By dawn, the Jade City had fallen, its slaveowners and their families great & small once more executed down to the infants while crusaders made off with their belongings and Remian treated his nobles to a lavish feast in the city's greatest pyramid with food plundered from their stocks. The Liberating Crusade was proclaimed a great success by its leader, soon nicknamed 'Remian the Emancipator', but now came the far more difficult task of dividing land-lots between the crusaders interested in settling and organizing the freedmen into a new society from the ground up...
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
Having conquered the south, Holy King Remian I began to turn his gaze north in 4978. The Borvanasht Magan Verner Rabac of Vyrshiele led a delegation of his fellow Borvanesti nobles to request that he purge northern Khio Na of the 'heathen' Perhe, who had continued to engage in tit-for-tat raids with the Borvanesti even after the latter's submission to the Beaniques. With no more distractions to occupy his time, Remian agreed and declared the beginning of a 'Saka-Rama valu Haka-Jelkala' ('Holy War against the Northern Barbarians'), with Rabac appointed to lead the Falinesti armies; no doubt old King Remian had House Rabac's track record for zealously enforcing the new Church of Aba-Favra upon their fellow Borvanesti, and Verner's own impressive military record against both Perhe raiders and the less-than-faithful among his own people, in mind when he made the appointment. In any case, this was a task that Rabac - a man who had lost his younger sister to Perhe raiders, and whose father was killed trying to rescue her - took to with relish; from the onset his campaign was absolutely brutal, as the crusaders (most of whom were still Borvanesti) took few, if any, prisoners in battle, and sent out raiding parties ahead of their main forces with orders to not only burn down every village they find, steal everything they can carry and destroy anything they cannot, but to also murder any Perhe they find as savagely as they could. The Perhe unfortunate enough to live in the way of crusader advances could only hope to live if they surrendered immediately and made at least token gestures toward conversion to the Church of Aba-Favra; the alternative was to end up disemboweled, burnt at the stake, or impaled. This was done not only to intimidate other Perhe into surrender, but as part of Rabac's (and the Borvanesti's) running vendetta with the Northern natives.
Borvanesti raiders slipping away from a Perhe village they just sacked, 4980 AU
Needless to say, the Perhe didn't exactly respond by turning the other cheek, and (as one may expect out of a holy war) the crusade quickly degenerated into an atrocity-fest with both sides trying to outdo the other in terms of grisly war crimes. Though the crusaders made impressive progress in the first year of the war, their advance gradually slowed over the second year and completely stalled by the third, in no small part thanks to the swarms of surviving Perhe who fought behind their lines; they'd been given no reason to trust, much less like, the new invaders after all. On the other hand, Rabac and company retaliated by collectively punishing Perhe communities; for every one of their men killed outside of combat, they'd execute 10 randomly selected Perhe with no regard to occupation, rank in society, sex or age. For the next ~7 years the front line of the war fluctuated wildly as the Perhe and Falinesti crusaders hurled attacks & counterattacks at each other through both blazing summers and freezing winters, each time reversing the other's gains. Both sides could boast of scoring great victories in this part of the war, none of which actually mattered all that much on the strategic level; for example, in 4981 the crusaders scored a glorious triumph over the Perhe at Ushkanal, where their Vahan'a pulverized the Perhe ranks and killed some 3,000 of the enemy in the rout, only to taste the sting of defeat a year later at Tuvahal when the same crusader army were ambushed and thrown back with great losses in the middle of a raging blizzard.
In 4985, Remian's successor Thalmian took a keen interest in the situation after receiving reports of the Battle of Ika-Leba (the 'Ice Lake'), where 2,000 Vahan'a and other cavalrymen of the crusading host died after being lured into charging across a frozen lake by the Perhe. He brought with him over 20,000 reinforcements drawn from the rest of the Falinesti nations, and understanding better than Rabac the need to win over the locals' hearts and minds if they were to have anything short of a hellish time as an occupying power, assumed personal command of the crusade while bumping the bloodthirsty warlord down to 'merely' his chief lieutenant - he needed the man's expertise in sub-Arctic combat and local knowledge too much to seriously punish him for his laundry list of atrocities, after all. Against these overwhelming reinforcements, the already badly-bloodied Perhe could not hope to stand. They were slowly but steadily forced back over the next four years, with the final nail in their coffin being hammered in by Rabac himself in 4988; at the Battle of Hakapene ('Northpoint'), he led 8,000 Falinesti in a successful mid-blizzard ambush on the 17,000-strong host of the united Perhe, their last field army worth the name, with only about 800 casualties to his opponents' 7,000 dead (most from being pursued over another frozen lake, ironically) and 7,000 captured (and then killed) - the dreadful warlord was notably personally involved in the fighting and killed several of the Perhe chiefs with his own hands. Without much of an army left, the surviving Perhe chieftains had no choice but to surrender to Thalmian, who gave them three choices: they could bend the knee, be baptized into the Church of the All-Father and live as his vassals, in which case he would shield them from the arbitrary wrath of Rabac and his ilk as he would any other law-abiding subject of his; they could choose to die on their feet over living on their knees; or they could pack their belongings and leave Khio Na.
The dreadful Verner Rabac himself, immediately after the Battle of Hakapene 4988 AU
While most Perhe chose either the first or third options, a good number of them chose to die free instead, and holed themselves up in the city of Hjollnia on a small island just off the northwest coast of the icy 'little continent' they'd just been forced off of. Here, they weathered Falinesti assault after Falinesti assault; in the summer the crusaders' efforts to storm it by sea, up to and including mounting siege towers onto their ships, failed in the face of Perhe flaming arrows and catapults, and in the winter their attempts to scale its icy walls were repulsed by the defenders just the same. After almost a year of fruitless attacks, the frustrated Thalmian ordered his men to lash their ships together into a pontoon bridge spanning the strait between Hjollnia's island and the northern shores of the Bruva-Lensha'i, an arduous process in which the Falinesti had to endure yet more Perhe harassment (including one daring raid in which the Perhe nearly succeeded in burning down their entire navy); but once this undertaking was completed, they promptly swarmed across the newly completed bridge in force and once again stormed Hjollnia's walls. Further assisting the Falinesti cause was a traitor in Hjollnia, who had grown quite sick of the siege and lost all faith in the garrison after witnessing the construction of the Falinesti pontoon bridge; in exchange for his life and that of his family, he unlocked a small postern gate hours before the crusaders' final assault. After nine hours of heavy fighting, the city was taken and, as per Thalmian's earlier offer, every single Perhe to have survived the attack was put to the sword regardless of age, status or gender. The sole exception was the traitor and his family, who were taken back to Shiral Aba-Favralesti and lived at Thalmian's court for many years; after said traitor had perished, his son was made a lord of the Borvanesti, who by that time had been given mastery of all the former Perhe lands. Those Perhe who stayed behind were assimilated into the Borvanesti in time, while as for those who had left Khio Na - well, the Falinesti could not have cared less where they went.
The site of Hjollnia and the bridge built to attack it, 4989-4990 AU
By about 5000 AU the Falinesti lands to the west had been recovered in full from the Dafcikar, the internal situation of the Fifth High Kingdom had stabilized and life was getting better and better for the Falinesti. Enough the Falinesti lordlings had either killed each other off or gotten killed in foreign invasions/rebellions, and the rest sufficiently cowed by the might of the Church, to actually guarantee most of their subjects a fairly peaceful life; Lines of trade and communication, both between the Falinesti groups themselves and the outside world, had been restored and expanded to facilitate an economic renaissance. And finally, the predominance of the Church of Aba-Favra, with all of its heresies as well as the Dark Age religions of the Falinesti either suppressed or eradicated entirely. The chaos of the Middle Era also splintered several of the older Falinesti culture groups into new ones and saw the rise of entirely new ethnicities, all of which will be detailed later in the 'High Era' section. A golden age of internal peace, albeit one that was built on hundreds of thousands if not millions of bodies and a sea of their blood, and (even more) outward expansion was now at hand.
Map of the Beanique Holy Kingdom, 5000 AU
Last edited by Barry Goldwater; September 19, 2014 at 09:38 PM.
Sorry Danny, I've been busy with college for the past few days so I haven't had a lot of time to sit down and read much from here. I was thinking this would be the current extent of the Slovarian Kingdom.
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
Sorry if this conflicts with anybody's own realms.
Batman, how did the Slovarians reach where the Egyptian culture/Gesh are located and defeat them? As your history posted yesterday seems to place them to the north of Arion on the continent of Mannasin Dest.
Last edited by Xion; September 15, 2014 at 02:38 PM.
I think swathes of the huge southern continent are still free especially in the west/center areas, plus much of the northern continent; you could play a post-Arionic state in its southern half (like...Italian city-states or the Byzantines, role-wise, considering that Arion = our Rome) or a Barbarian Culture state further north (where you could interact with EB, who's in that area, or G2TC if he ends up having his Perhe migrate there - you'll want to ask them both ofc). Alternatively, I have an idea involving the Falinesti; if you're interested, PM me
The Dark Age Cerayanesti have little cultural change from the early period of the culture besides a gradual increase in Falinesti(primarily Wodanesti and Halanesti with trace elements of Fa-Telanesti) influences. Cerayanesti interactions with Arion would be limited to border raids by the Cerayanesti(supporting the independent Wodanesti or Falinesti rebellions) and a fifteen year invasion of the Yugushiral by Arion after the First False Spring to attempt to conquer the Cerayanesti. The invasion would meet with some success(heavily damaging several settlements, including the seats of at least four Cerayanesti petty kings)and make temporary gains of land for Arion in the independent Wodanesti and Cerayanesti lands, but would end in the legionaries being chased into the Southlands and then divided at Petrai to have a group head towards Londian and the other into the Earth's Spine. Both groups would be destroyed to a man by the Cerayanesti.
Above is a summary of the Dark Age for the Cerayanesti. details are wip
Middle Era Cerayanesti
Culture
While in the Dark Age, the Cerayanesti culture remained relatively the same as it was prior, but with growing Falinesti influence in the eastern territories of the Yugushiral and Southlands, the Middle Era is where the next step of the evolution of the Cerayanesti occurs, with them dividing into three distinct culture groups. First is the Children of the Dragon Sea, comprising of the islanders and Dragon's Fang Peninsula. Still having little to no Falinesti influences, their society still follows localized Teisarian influences(Example, Londian, the Jewel of the Fang, Dark Age and MiddleEra soldiers, Early Middle Era clothing) for military equipment, clothing, building styles, and artwork. However they have adopted some Arionic and Falinesti style in government and laws.
The second is the Yugushiral, which could be further divided into the coastal cities centered around Senlian, the old Kuronesti settlements around the Lake of the Moon in the forest's center, and the Trakare, who live in the clearings of the eastern edges of the forest and hills of the region. The denziens of the Yugushiral's center reside mostly in modernized and expanded versions of their ancient settlements, a wooden motte and bailey keep usually being present. Several large towns with stone walls and keeps are located in key points, serving as a noble's seat of power or the capital of a petty kingdom. Culturally, they remain relatively untouched by the Falinesti and Arion, but there is notable Falinesti influence. The coastal denziens remain an example of the Yoitaren, a mixture of Kuronesti and Teisarian influences. Over time several lesser cities would be established around Senlian to the north and south, representing a budding merchant and artisan class influenced by those from Senlian, Londian, or Munodai. Later on, Senlian and these smaller ports would be the first mainland stop on the northern route of the Akatemei-doro(Dawn Road), a overland and overseas trade lane connecting Shiral Aba-Favralesti and other Falinesti major cities(Lesalia, Aurial, Lencolia) to the Teisarian Empire. The final subgroup of the Yugushiral, the Trakare or 'Men of the Glades' reverse the trend of minimal Falinesti influence by having heavy Falinesti influences, many localized versions of names used by the Wodanesti and Halanesti. Their aristocracy reside in hill forts in small glades or mountains since their culture formed. They would clear more of their segement of the Yugushiral for fields and establish rudimentary roads influenced by the old Third Kingdom's roadways over the course of the Middle Era. (Gladesmen levy, Gladesmen retainers, civilian clothing, Ravenborg Castle)
The final group is the Southlands, divided into the 'Children of the High Lake' who live in the Dragon's Home/Spine mountains and the land on either side of the mountains, and the contested Southlands with the Dafcikar. The older cultures of the Cerayanesti land are present in varying degrees in all of these, with Teisarian being predominant in the Children of the Dragon, Kuronesti in the western parts of the Yugushiral(center and norther coastal regions) and the Dragon's Spine mountains, and Dafcikar in the Southlands. (Three Fortresses of Petrai, Shield of the Southlands, Southlands levy and horseman). They still breed their warhounds, the nobility and upper class still having domesticated-wolf like dogs while the rest of the Southlands society have dogs of a more mixed heritage.
Warfare
Cerayanesti warfare is not much different than Falinesti warfare of this time, besides the continued influence of the guerrilla tactics adopted to fend off Dafcikar and Arion incursions during the Dark Age. Besides the elite core of retainers and the levy, the Cerayanesti continued to use light troops initially designed to be raiders as scouts and harassing forces, sending them ahead of their main force to find the enemy and harass their advance, then when the two forces meet, these soldiers were supposed to flank the enemy, although in most cases they ended up engaging their counterparts of the enemy force and that engagement would lead into the main battle. (Dragon Sea and Yugushiral Vahan'a, Middle Era)
The Southlands however, having to constantly fend off Dafcikar raiders or invasions along with attempt to reclaim lost land, would develop a more professionalized levy that could be assembled in less time than other Cerayanesti kings' forces and if not raised, serve as a militia to defend their homes from the Dafcikar or rival kings' forces. Besides fortifying their settlements, an example being the Three Fortresses of Petrai, one overlooking each of the roads into the settlement that has only been conquered twice - Once by Gavril I Volkas and the other by a general of Agdu Baratun. Their military would be a mixture of light foot and horse troops and a mounted nobility who fight as medium horse archers who fight with a retinue of horsemen or medium-heavy armored footmen to support their overlord and lesser nobility in battle, similar to the old Fa-Telanesti retinue.(Southlands Vahan'a, Early Middle Era)
History
After the Fall of Arion, with the lack of a mutual enemy like Arion or the Falinesti were initially, the Cerayanesti's loose alliance with each other falls apart within two decades of Arion's withdrawal and erupting skirmishes over territory in the Southlands and Yugushiral that would lead to multiple wars occurring between petty kings and the larger states of each respective region. In the Dragon Sea, multiple wars would also occur, with the Nakatomi, Mizushima, Makisawa, and Shiuchi competing to rule the Dragon Sea, Yukimura and their few vassals raiding the coastline of the Yugushiral and other islands(Yukimura raider, Early Middle Era) for loot, and lesser houses attempting to overthrow their respective overlord or break free from their rule. Over the course of two hundred years, these wars would result in the Gwlachmai ruling much of the Yugushiral with the Men of the Glades remaining independent as a collection of clans and petty warlords, Volkas and Asen ruling most of the northern and southern portions of the Southlands respectively with several petty kingdoms remaining for some time but would be conquered by either of the emerging kingdoms or the Dafcikar within another century. The Dragon Sea would be divided into the Kingdom of Munodai, Kingdom of Londian, and Kingdom of Senlian after the first century of conflict, and by the end of the second the Nakatomi-ruled Kingdom of Munodai would rule most if not all of the islands while Senlian and Londain ruled their respective regions of the Cerayanesti(coastal Yugushiral and Dragon's Fang Peninsula respectively). Yukimura raiders(Wokou) would remain a problem for all states bordering the Dragon Sea until 4735 when the Nakatomi conquered the Yukimura-ruled island. In 4634, Ivar I Kyffin would lead an army to invade the Wodanesti to the east, gaining a signifigant amount of land that would be lost by his successor within two decades.
Over the course of the Middle Era, the descendants of (X), the sole Cerayanesti Sage and Confessor of the Church of Aba-Favra(formerly a High Priest of the Cerayanesti faith(name wip) would continue working on converting the Cerayanesti to the church through multiple epistles and merging elements of the Cerayanesti faith with those of the Church. Gaining support first amongst the merchant classes and the peasantry in the Southlands and the Glades, they would remain a minority until over the course of several decades, several major Cerayanesti rulers would convert to the Church of Aba-Favra, beginning with the petty kings of the Glades and ending with the Southlands aristocracy. This would result in religious wars occurring in the Yugushiral until 4854, when the last Cerayanesti lords would convert to the Church of Aba-Favra(Cerayanesti faith priestess, Church of Aba-Favra Confessor). One such war would be the 'Holy War of the Lake', in which Trakare-led forces would attempt to conquer the Lake of the Moon from the Gwlachmai, resulting in thirty years of warfare that would only end with a tenuous truce that would have small-scale fighting continue until the 4800s.
In 4875, a great host of Dafcikar under Isqan Baratun and Chetur Maysh, one of Agdu Baratun's sons and generals respectively would storm into the Southlands while the Asen and Volkas were distracted fighting each other over the port town of Severin, but would hastily ally and muster as many forces from their lands and allies as possible to attempt to fend off the Dafcikar horde approaching, engaging the host at the Battle of Vrastaiv, a small farming town ten miles from the Cerayanesti-Dafcikar border of the time, with the Dafcikar force inflicting heavy losses on the Southlands force, and opening up the roads to Oltevite, Petrai, and Londian to the Dafcikar horde. Petrai would be the first major settlement to fall to the Dacikar, with it's 11,000 defenders(half being militia and conscripts) holding out for eight months in the city with the fortresses falling halfway through the siege. The Dafcikar would winter in Petrai before dividing into two hosts, one numbering 16,000 to march on the Dragon's Fang peninsula under Isqan Baratun while the second under Maysh continued northwards with 20,000 soldiers. 4,000 under a lieutenant remained to garrison Petrai and had to deal with the local resistance .
The conquest of the Dragon's Fang met little resistance until they reached Londian, where a force of 7,500 soldiers and 3,000 militia from refugees of outlying settlements, peasants conscripted, etc. would meet the now 14,000 strong host that has conquered the rest of the peninsula. An attempt by a supporting Dafcikar fleet to blockade Londian failed after they were defeated by a combined fleet from Londian, Ochebi, and Senlian. The siege would continue for two months until Isqan had prepared enough siege engines to break through the walls and after the rejection of his last offer to surrender, intended to massacre the city's inhabitants. The first two days of assaults were repulsed, and during the night after the second day, several oil barrels were thrown over the walls by the defenders using their catapults. The next day, the remaining 7,000 defenders assembled outside of the walls as if to face the Dafcikar in a field battle, and while the larger Dafcikar host was forming ranks, the catapults fired barrels filled with dragon's flame(an incindiary weapon brought over from Teisaria by the original colonists and very few of the Cerayanesti know how to make it still, the remaining scrolls detailing the process are highly guarded by the few who have them). The resulting firestorm killed 3,000 Dafcikar including Baratun, while the rest were driven back by the defenders initally, but as they managed to rally, 5,000 soldiers appeared from the coasts as the Cerayanesti fleets land reinforcements that sent the rest of the Dafcikar into a full retreat to Petrai.
The northern campaign would begin with a series of battles between the second Dafcikar force and the remaining Asen-Volkas forces as they gradually were pushed north towards Olteviste in the Dragon's Spine mountains. After conquering the town of Csetivero, 4,000 soldiers would be detached from the Dafcikar host to continue conquering northern Southlands villages and castles, before pushing into the Yugushiral while the main force besieges Olteviste with 12,000 men. The detached force would run into 8,000 soldiers under Azulos Gwlachmai and be driven southwards with half their number. The main force would also be driven southwards after a daring midnight attack in the winter of 4881 by the 3,000 soldiers of the garrison of Olteviste and 2,500 remaining from the earlier battles led by the newly crowned Valentin II Volkas and his sister, Sveta(who would become Queen of Olteviste after her brother's death in 4899). With the northern and western campaigns defeated, the Dafcikar focused on holding Petrai and cracking down on the Asen loyalists and other resistance groups still harassing them. An army of 11,000 would march down from the Yugushiral led by King Azulos and Taido Hideki Kojizo to reinforce the reformed Southlands army of 8,000, while a force of 10,000 drawn from Londian and the Dragon Sea Islands would march eastward. In 4887, Petrai would be reconquered by the Cerayanesti and the Dafcikar pushed back to their lands, until 4896 when a second invasion force led by Maysh and several other generals would attack the Cerayanesti and push further than they had in the first one, taking Olteviste and reaching the Lake of the Moon before being defeated and by the time of Agdu Baratun's defeat and death a year after said defeat, the Cerayanesti had reclaimed up to the old Asen Kingdom and Dragon's Fang besides Londian. The last Dafcikar force in Cerayanesti lands would be defeated in 4912.
With the Dafcikar less of the threat and the Cerayanesti still rebuilding from nearly forty years of constant warfare, the Holy Kingdom of Navashiral ruled by the Beaniques reached the border of the Yugushiral and Southlands. The clans and petty kings of the Glades would swear fealty to the Beaniques in 4916, after a delegation led by Ivar Kyffin, Edvar Blackwell, and Anja Ravenborg to Shiral Aba-Favralesti met with Holy King Rellic II. Several years later, a Beanique army led by a Fa-Telanesti Magan, Halanesti Mulan, and Ivar Kyffin, the first Ai-Magan of the Cerayanesti would invade the Southlands that were still recovering from the Dafcikar invasion, having been the location of most of the fighting and devastation. Queen Sveta Volkas and King Karmir Asen would meet the Beanique host in battle several times over the course of two years before being defeated outside Petrai. Asen would swear fealty while Volkas resists for another year before swearing fealty. With that, only the Yugushiral's western sections, Dragon Sea, and Dragon's Fange remain independent of Beanique rule.
A decade after subjugating the Southlands, a two-front invasion of the Yugushiral would be launched, with one army marching north from Olteviste and another marching west from the Glades into the Yugushiral's heart and coastlands with Cerayanesti scouts leading the way. A protracted guerrilla war would occur while settlements surrounding the Lake of the Moon would change hands multiple times, with the war coming to an end in 4936 after the death of King Azulos at the age of 75, when his heir Folant would kneel after securing the safety of most of his vassals. Senlian would kneel to the Beaniques in 4937 when the remaining forces of their invasion invested the city. At this point, the only independent Cerayanesti still would be the Dragon's Fang and Dragon Sea Islands.
wip. All dates and events below are placeholders.
The final major event of the Cerayanesti Midde Era would be the War of the Dragonhawks, a civil war(beginning in 4943) between the four legitimate children and one baseborn of Nakatomi Masaki after his death fighting Dafcikar corsairs raiding the Dragon Sea. His baseborn(and eldest) son, Sora would be present at the battle and manage to take command of the force to take the Nakatomi seat of Munodai for himself and after killing several priests and the city's Confessor, have a self-proclaimed 'Grand Priestess' of the old faith crown him Emperor of the Dragon Sea. His three younger brothers and sister would raise forces while Sora wastes the treasury on mercenaries and hiring Dafcikar corsairs to fight his enemies, causing many to believe he arranged his father's death when news of the corsairs fighting for him leaks out.
Major events -
4945-4980 : War of the Dragonhawks - Nakatomi civil war, ends with the Islanders becoming part of the Beanique Holy Kingdom
Last edited by Xion; September 18, 2014 at 02:45 PM.
Updated the Middle Era history, not just with the new additions on southern & northern expansion (finally managed to get around formatting issues by spoilering instead of contentboxing them, yay!) but also with a number of new maps + a flag. If G2TC or anyone who'd like to take the SE corner of the continent has any changes they'd like to propose, as usual I'm all ears, you won't even have to PM me - just suggest them right here in this thread.
Hey, I'm very interested in this, surprised I wasn't told about it before.
Suggestions?
My thoughts are something sea-born, in the sense of the Polynesians, Majapahit empire, and the Sea Peoples (related to the ancestors of the Greeks, Etruscans, Philistines?) of the Mediterranean.
Last edited by Dirty Chai; September 16, 2014 at 03:51 PM.
Yeah, I meant to invite you earlier, but I haven't been able to get on Skype for a while (actually I won't be back on it until like Friday, I think). There's still space in the massive steppe (beige) area on the southern continent (Kaitsar may have plans for it, so you guys could split it I suppose), or you could take the eastern part of the savanna (yellow) north of it and be our only black civilization atm (Xion had designs on the Egypt-like western end, I'm pretty sure), and finally there are those big islands just off the eastern coast of the northern continent if you're down for playing some kind of a post-Roman state.
Would it at all be possible to change out some of the eastern island holdings so they belong to the Slovarians? I find that the Falinesti are quite sizable and powerful.
Last edited by EmperorBatman999; September 16, 2014 at 05:32 PM.
What I seem to be picturing is like if Native Americans were a little more... evolved(?) culturally, and had some aesthetics similar to the Ainu.
So clothes (and hair) like this and this and this, with a cultural art style taken from the Ainu and the symbols in Team Ico games.
They've developed a very powerful longbow of sorts, and their society has risen out of a simplistic culture of island tribes (villages and boats like the Arawak indians) into complex chiefdoms at war with each like the Nahua city states or Mississippian mound-cities.
The bows they use are best used at sea (or that's how they use it anyways) to shoot other guys on other boats, developed to be used in the ocean winds and such.
Their shamanistic religion is probably being eclipsed by a foreign set of beliefs, like how Indonesia was Indianized before the coming of Islam.
I'm looking at those islands off to the east - Essita-en. Probably northern part, considering the southern part is tropical.
Last edited by Dirty Chai; September 16, 2014 at 07:11 PM.
Re: [BAW 2.0] Chapter III
But that's not as important as the above. Speaking of which, I'll probably post another update on the Falinesti later today.
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Originally Posted by chesser2538
