Interdimensional Observer Posted July 26, 2017 Share Posted July 26, 2017 My attempt at writing some world building for SoV. I'm not sure if I break with anything directly stated in SoV, but I tried to stay in line with the world built in SoV. Some of my numbers might not line up perfectly with each other due to there being so many of them. At times this is a little randomly organized and repetitive, but I hope it's decent. I'll add more later, like a history of the Rigel and Zofian monarchies and some overview of economics, all of which should flesh out the Silver Age you otherwise find me lacking details on. Some general introductory remarks: Spoiler The Kingdoms of Zofia and Rigel Zofia and Rigel were founded 402 years prior to the start of SoV, with the establishment of a nonaggression pact between the dragon god Mila and Duma and their respective kingdoms. This was the ending for a war between the two dragon gods and their followers which had lasted for about 50 years. The war followed what had been a period of peaceful coexistence in Valentia, which the Divine Dragon Queen Naga who ruled over dragonkind in Archanea had once bestowed her blessings upon. The peace had come to an end due to the rise of humanity, which had intrigued the dragons. Both dragons admired humanity and cultivated humans as their own children- albeit in different ways. The two disagreed over how to treat humanity, and criticized the other’s parenting style, which given their love for humanity resulted in things getting out of hand and war breaking out between the two dragon gods and their devotees. The nonaggression pact which ended the war split Valentia in two, giving the northern half (not an equal half- but rather a relative half according to terrain) of the continent to Duma and his followers, and the southern half to Mila and her’s. However, prior to the war, there had been no strict divide between the devotees geographically as the dragon gods preached across the lands. What became Zofia had Duma Faithful and what became Rigel had Mila Faithful. Though the dragon gods and their peoples swore not to interfere in the affairs of the other within their borders, there was the lightly written and mostly implied rule that merchants, pilgrims of the other Faithful, and native Zofians/Rigels of the other Faithful would be tolerated provided they behaved themselves. At least token representation was thus made of each dragon god in the other’s territory. When compared to the geopolitics of the Archanean continent, Valentia is a stark contrast in terms of state size. Archanea’s countries are much smaller and more numerous than Valentia mere two, despite being of a comparable and roughly equal technological and societal level. Why is this? There are several reasons, but one cause is by far the most responsible of all for this- the dragon gods of Mila and Duma. The gods were effectively co-rulers over Rigel and Zofia, and without them, the logistics of effectively ruling such vast areas would be impossible. During the silver age of the gods, Duma and Mila would travel their realms and observe their peoples, and from time to time issue declarations and orders which superseded that of the human monarchs when they were in conflict. This is not to say the monarchs were unnecessary, the gods themselves did not get themselves involved in every little detail. The monarchs and human governments did much of the daily work, while the gods only toured their realms, kept their humans in check, and spent much of their time in occultations performing rituals to bestow blessings upon the earth and upon humanity. Architecture and Its Purpose The major structures of Valentia have reasons for their placement. If one were to divide Zofia and Rigel in half, which would certainly be the case if the gods were not present, the clearly most reasonable divide would be along a north-south axis with bending according to the terrain. Zofia Castle and Rigel Castle alike would serve as fine capitals of the west, and in the east, the capitals would be the Temple of Mila and Duma Tower. And in practice, Duma Tower and Mila Temple are the capitals of the eastern regions of Rigel and Zofia, and in effect the eastern half of the continent has had a larger direct influence from the gods than the western one. Yet, this is not to say the power of the monarchs of Rigel and Zofia was practically null in the east. The monarchs made active efforts to visit every bit of their kingdoms, and the gods just the same visited the western halves of their realms just the same. Duma Tower furthermore was designed by Duma to be a place from where he could look into the horizon and observe the entirety of the land he blessed. West of Duma Tower, is a series of long and labyrinthine flooded cave tunnels extending for hundreds of miles, which connect it to Duma Temple underneath Rigel Castle. Duma and his personal retinue alone navigates the system, as can the King of Rigel and a select few other high ranking officials and clergy of the Duma Faithful- it takes decades for one how undertakes the honorable vocation of ferryman to learn the correct path through the tunnels, even using the primitive magical guidance system bestowed by Duma long ago. For normal travel between east and west Rigel, travel over the Bay of Rigel is used, but the underground route is sacred and available when storms or ice make the Bay difficult to sail across (a perilous mountain path in south Rigel is also used frequently in good weather). Mila’s Temple is built where the fabled nonaggression pact was made. Explaining the Division of Valentian History Under the Dragon Gods into Three "Ages" Spoiler The Ages of Valentian History In retrospect, Valentian history insofar as Mila and Duma are involved can be divided into three periods- the Golden, Silver, and Bronze Ages of the Dragon Gods. The Golden Age of the Dragon Gods began when Mila and Duma discovered humanity in Valentia and nurtured it in peaceful coexistence. In this phase, everything was in harmony and all was good as everyone partook in both gods and were showered in their blessings. The Golden Age officially ended with the outbreak of the Mila-Duma War, which lasted for about 50 years before the gods had exhausted themselves and their allied humans sufficiently to make them desiring of peace and an end to terrible tragedy. The signing of the nonaggression pact became the epoch of the current Valentian calendar and ushered in the Silver Age. Where, Mila and Duma restricted their blessings primarily (though not entirely) to those within their particular realm of Zofia and Rigel respectively. Though the dragon gods had separated themselves, this was still a wonderful time in the history of Valentia, and the prosperity lost in the Duma-Mila War returned. As Mila and Duma declined due to dragon degeneration from not restricting the use of their powers, Valentia entered its Bronze Age, where prosperity declined and corruption among the political elite and of the environment itself grew. This culminated with the “Twilight” or “Downfall” of the Dragon Gods, a brief war wherein Alm and Celica slew Duma and unified the continent. The Golden Age: Spoiler The Golden Age Around the year -704 on the Valentian calendar, which corresponds to year -500 on the Archanean calendar, Naga died at Thabes. Knowing this, and knowing that the Earth Dragons and their allies struck out against humanity around the year -700 (-944 Valentian), and that the dragons began to decline around -1000 (-1244 Valentian), and that Mila and Duma migrated to Valentia prior to the dragon decline, we can thus place their arrival in Valentia as being before -1244. How much earlier? This is not currently known, but while this is in the prehistory period of humanity, it is not in the prehistory of dragonkind at all. While we know there simply must have been some account no matter how small made of Mila's and Duma’s departure from Archanea, we do not know if anywhere in Dolhr or other Manakete settlements, or amid the ruins of Thabes or other former dragon places of residence, that that all important record survives. What we do know, as Mila and Duma alike stated in the written records of Valentia, is that they came alone, not a single other dragon came with them. The native dragons found on the Valentia continent are in fact Lesser Dragons, related to their Archanean counterparts, but not of the same cognitive capacity. Nonetheless, Mila and Duma when they arrived in Valentia treated these dragons as their equals and nurtured strong bonds with them. Stronger, their bonds were, with these dragons than with humans initially. As for the question of the dragon decline- Naga did send warning to Mila and Duma several times when this issue arose in Archanea, but Mila and Duma shrugged them off. Removed from the crisis and the warring that was taking place in Archanea, the two appear not to have realized that not even the great Divine Dragons they were were immune to degeneration. They displayed no concern about infertility in particular- they had found children to adopt in Lesser Dragons who weren’t so devastated by decline, and in humanity. Where did the humans of Valentia originate? How long ago did they arise? Not even the dragons appear to have answers to these questions. But from what Mila and Duma spoke to their followers, when they first arrived in Valentia, they took no special notice of humanity. They were scarcely distinct from the other wild animals at first glance. But with time, over a hundred years at least, Mila and Duma took notice of humanity the same way Naga did in Archanea. They noticed how some humans had abandoned the migratory hunter-gatherer lifestyle, and had instead taken to settled non-intensive agriculture and small scale animal husbandry. Dragons had long ago before passed through similar stages of existence, and had done great things thereafter. Wishing to cultivate this parallel potential, Mila and Duma began to appear before the humans, but humans were afraid of them. To remedy this problem, the two two forms like those of humans, something which dragons had done for utilitarian purposes before. Yet they could not be called Manaketes per se- as they kept their draconic power completely unsealed. Mila and Duma walked and flew across Valentia together and apart alike during the Golden Age. There were not geopolitical borders upon this continent beyond the tiny ones of early human settlements. The two were very different individuals though siblings they were, but their differences, rather than divide, seemed to harmonize with each other. But as they grew obsessive in their cultivation of early Valentian humanity, they spent more and more time apart working on separate projects. The humans likewise at first revered them both, but as humans started seeing the two less and less together, they began to play favorites with the dragon siblings. Apart, the dragons developed their methods of nurturing humanity, and the morality, ethics, and values they taught them independently of each other, and due to the personality differences in the siblings, these systems turned out to be very different. Initially, Mila and Duma tolerated the differences they saw as simply being in line with their sibling’s nature. But as more and more years passed and humans came to worship the individual dragons, now called gods, without much regard for the other, the egos and arrogance of Mila and Duma grew. Their tolerance began to fade away, as they saw the ways of the other as indecent and insulting to what humanity deserved and should aspire to be. Public outbursts when the two siblings got together began to happen, and though loving each other deep down, they otherwise grew disgusted by the company of the other. Eventually, this reached a boiling point. Whose side cast the first stone is lost to history, but what is known is that among the humans, Mila devotees and Duma devotees began to feud with each other, and ultimately instances of bloodshed occurred. Mila and Duma alike demanded apologies from the other for the deaths and injuries dealt to their cherished humans. But neither conceded that the fault lay with them. They realized the other would not possibly change their ways anymore, barring under the threat of force. And so they marshaled all the power they could. They summoned the Lesser Dragons who would heed their cry, and that of the Griffons as well. Mila, though she liked spoiling her humans, did not flinch at arming them for conflict against Duma, who obviously did the same, and was even willing to nourish the land for the time being to provide for wartime foodstuffs. Thus began the War of Mila and Duma. Who dealt the first blow is like with the human feuding, lost to time, for all the accounts which remain are terribly biased. The war lasted about 50 years, and what an awful 50 years they were! Humanity had suffered thousands of losses on both sides, reducing Valentia’s population on the order of about half, possibly more. But these losses were naught compared to that of the Griffons, these majestic beasts lost about 90% of their total heeding the calls of Mila and Duma. The Lesser Dragons had it by far the worst- more than 95% had died, their corpses littered across the continent. Mila and Duma weeped at the ruin which they were responsible for, and had expended a great deal of their strength and needed to rest, which is why in the last few years of the war, the fighting was primarily purely a human conflict. They independently decided they would now try to rekindle things with their sibling. Exchanges of messengers led to the two siblings ultimately agreeing to meet once more accompanied by their leading humans. It took more than a year of bargaining before Mila and Duma finally came to a resolution both could agree to. They realized they and their peoples could no longer live with each other, and so they’d have to settle living adjacent but apart from each other. Dividing Valentia in two was agreed on, but it took some time to agree to the borders of their realms. During the war Mila and Duma and their allies fought everywhere and not infrequently moved around. They chose as the border the vertically narrowest part of Valentia not too far north or south, roughly halfway through the continent if not exactly so. To strengthen the sense of division and avoid blurry natural borders which could lead to fighting later, Mila and Duma mustered dragon form and in one last act of unity carved a great sluice through the agreed upon border. Signing the peace treaty/non-aggression pact soon thereafter, a grace period of two and a half years was given during which Duma and Mila devotees migrated to their preferred side of the border. The Griffons retreated from contact with humanity, and the gods forbade humans from endangering them, and the last handful of Lesser Dragons retreated into the earth for safety, with a few choosing to remain as vassals of the gods. The Silver Age and Bronze Age: Spoiler Origins of the End of the Silver Age and the Beginnings of the Bronze Age The temporal boundaries of the Silver Age are from year 1 when Duma and Mila crafted their realms, gave them names derived from the draconic language, and then bestowed them with monarchs and other leaders. This was a prosperous period for the people of Valentia in Rigel and Zofia alike, but Naga, had she been alive, would have heavily criticized Mila and Duma for how they made this prosperity be. Though they had took humanoid form much of the time, the constant blessings Duma and Mila bestowed on their entire kingdoms required a vast deal of draconic power, causing them to degenerate. In effect, Duma and Mila began to go mad out of their sense of love. The degeneration, like that of other dragons, had begun much earlier, but during and after the Duma-Mila War, the two dragons ratcheted up their bestowing of blessings from the fairly sustainable (for their sanity) and modest (for humanity) prewar levels, out of a sense of competition towards each other. Slight lapses in rational judgement and slight declines in power were at first imperceptible, but they added up over the years, unbeknownst to both Rigelians, used to toughing things out, and Zofians, still very much in ignorance and bliss from Mila’s continued blessings. Mila’s Decline But the effects of the decline were noticeable if one examined the statistics. Around year 300, Zofia’s population began to enter a slight decline after constant growth from pre-epoch to roughly 250, and stagnation more or less from then on for the next five decades. Another sign of Mila’s agricultural blessings growing weaker was Zofia Desert. Zofia Desert in the Silver Age had via Mila’s power seen it’s natural oases greatly expanded, and the green edges of the desert shrank away at the sands as well. She could not vanquish the sands completely and make the landscape perfectly fertile, not even she could totally overcome natural geology and weather patterns, but Mila sure as anything tried. Like with population in Zofia, centuries of greening turned to stagnation, and then gradual desertification. Monumental Zofian architecture, as sign of human matters affected by Mila’s degeneration, underwent a similar decline in quality and size- King Lima IV’s decor for Zofia Castle and his personal building projects would by earlier standards be considered sloppy mockeries of design and technique alike. Duma’s Decline Rigel’s declines were both less and more noticeable. Duma did not bless the land, water and sky anywhere near as heavy as Mila did, he did not shower his faithful in external gifts to ease their weakness. Instead, he bestowed them with inner strength. On average, a person from Rigel who partook in Duma’s power during the Silver Age was physically stronger and faster, more resistant to disease and heat and chill and quicker to heal than any subject of Mila from Zofia. They were also slightly taller, and pregnancies lasted ~11 months instead of ~9 to accommodate the imbuing such power. With their bodies so blessed by Duma’s valor, the rugged environment and lack of resources Rigellians faced was less of a challenge for them to deal with than one might think, but it was still a challenge nonetheless. The vitality which Duma offered all of his people was fading by year 300, indicated too by a population decline. Whereas the decline Zofia was owed to a decrease in the food supply and fertile habitable lands, in Rigel, the decline was due to an increased death rate stemming from more deaths to injuries, disease, and the elements- a weakening of the bodies of Rigel was underway. Duma’s dreams of making humans who one day would possibly match or even exceed dragons in strength were dying. Yet, the more obvious and dangerous sign of Duma’s decline was the marshlands of Rigel, naturally perfectly fine for the most part, if not ideal for agriculture or much of anything, were becoming toxic. The Terrifying Reality Duma again was not big on blessing Rigel’s environment. Yet he and Mila alike agreed that Valentia needed their blessings to ward off Terrors. Terrors were creatures of purest darkness born in the earthly bowels of Valentia, and native to the continent. Rigel as it turned out, was home to more Terrors than Zofia, and thus Duma dedicated himself and many of his faithful to suppressing the Terrors and their vile impact on Rigel. Yet when Duma began to decline, his abilities at warding off these natural evils declined too, and thus gradually they began to surface more in Rigel. The increase in Terrors and their latent darkness contaminated the environment, thus making the marshes poisonous. Furthermore, Duma found the taint of Terrors continually reentering himself no matter how many times he purged himself of the poison. This served to greatly accelerate his decline vis a vis Mila’s, and it eventually got totally out of hand- resulting in the twisted shadow of his former self which Alm and Celica slew. The poison marshes at the bottom of Duma Temple were in fact generated by Duma himself, his rotting body now itself a source of the darkness he once tried to vanquish. The Political Ramifications of Dragon God Decline in Zofia The beginning of the Bronze Age of Valentia under the Dragon Gods was marked by political changes as well. Mila and Duma, feeling the loss of sanity and strength, increasingly sheltered themselves in their Temples and spent less and less time interacting with humans. Mila gradually ceased to pay attention to politics and weakened her admonishments doled out to the Zofian government for its excesses and wrongs. As Zofia Desert grew, bandits began to move in and claim the shrinking resources for themselves, and Mila paid it little heed, while Zofian monarchs either lacked the resources to subdue the banditry, or spent their time in hedonism. Mila became hypersensitive to the criticism she was spoiling people who did not deserve her blessings, and she continued to do so in defiance, believing her children to be innocent and that nothing was too good for them. This included Lima IV, who in her degeneration she never bothered to visit even once nor ever requested a visit from due to how withdrawn she had become at this point, but she still lovingly called him her sweet loyal son. Mila didn’t notice either that her blessings had weakened and that she was doing them less frequently while spending more time laying around in luxury. And her Mila Faithful did not tell her being devoted to her, not doubting her power nor able to live without it, nor did they doubt her sanity. Religio-Political Decline in Rigel Duma’s seclusion had comparable political fallout. Bandits did not overtake East Rigel the way they did the Zofia Desert, instead, the Duma Faithful began to grow corrupt. Warfare in Rigel was not unheard of in the Silver Age. In Zofia, a single line of a single royal family ruled Zofia since the kingdom’s founding to its unification with Rigel under Alm and Celica. This was not the case in Rigel, where Duma welcomed contests of strength to ensure only the strongest survived and led Rigel- the result being that Rigel had gone through a few royal families and within them a couple branches within the short 400 years of its history. When Duma’s mind reached a definitive point of weakening around year 300 and he shut himself in, he ceased to ensure that meritorious strength alone ruled Rigel. Instead, the current line of royalty, the Rudolf dynasty, which Rudolf, Alm and Berkut are all part of, took root after a long 40 year civil war when the last dynasty perished and Duma declared the throne open to all. Similarly the nobility, once a fragile institution where titles were awarded to individuals and were not to be inherited by countless generations to come, but rather earned, became hereditary under the Rudolf dynasty. Some aspects of old Rigelian meritocratic culture endured, but it had greatly receded nonetheless. More dangerously, the Duma Faithful grew corrupt and took advantage of Duma’s decline to turn the organization inside out. Fighting Terrors so much, Duma noticed some of his followers experimenting with the powers of darkness. Duma did not forbid his people from learning the dark arts- he knew darkness did not inherently have to be evil nor corrupt. Duma approved of all paths to developing one’s own strength, but he always warned against being consumed by power itself. One should not be a slave to power, the mastery of power- which is to say the obtaining of strength and the creation of the individual who could overcome whatever life throws at them- was Duma’s ideal. Discipline was essential to curtailing servitude to power, and just as he condoned random savagery on the battlefield, so he condoned extravagance at Rigelian court and in Rigelian culture- disciplining the power of wealth was the strength of austerity. He likewise preferred to be depicted aniconically and disliked lavish worship, though he did make exceptions within boundaries. Like any great religious organization that endures for hundreds of years and is backed by political authority, the Duma Faithful was not immune to corruption. Duma, when he was more active and sane, ruthlessly severed rotten limbs from his Faithful and forced the wicked to humble themselves before him, or else be destroyed. Yet, with his mind’s eye weakening, he failed to root out all of the corruption any longer, leading them to develop their own little niche in the Faithful. Jedah and Nuibaba were born into the Faithful and served as small time members, but despite whatever promising beginnings they had, they over their natural years fell under the temptation of darkness. This malfeasance operated cautiously and on the edge of the Faithful, but as they witnessed Duma’s failure to punish them sufficiently they expanded their operations with every passing year. East Rigel became their political domain, as Duma no longer kept his Faithful aloof spectators from politics, and the decline of Duma and that of royal authority in the eastern half of Rigel led to the Faithful itself filling in the vacuum of administration. The good Duma Faithful displayed a willingness to do this rather than attempt to sway their god out of his occultations and knowing royal support was not enough, but it was the wicked in the Faithful who capitalized on this. Expanding their influence within the organization, the terrible faction of the Duma eventually managed to attain the Pontificate around the year 350, thus becoming the only ones other than the Emperor of Rigel and his closest advisors who were permitted to see the dragon god. At this point, the Emperor of Rigel’s authority had greatly declined in the east, and it was solely through the Faithful’s willingness that he exerted any power in or obtained anything from the region at all. Jedah himself did not surface from his shadowy leadership and openly take his place as Pontifex until roughly 380. By then the Duma Faithful, now overwhelmingly controlled by the wicked with the good cast out from the central institutions of the Duma Faithful entirely (they continued to reside in the peripheries in towns and villages and shrines preaching to the masses, ignored unless they opposed the wicked in the slightest). And Jedah led rituals which poor degenerate Duma thought were strengthening his people, but which were in fact filling him with vile darkness. Jedah sought the rebirth of Duma into a god of chaos which he controlled, never once did he feel sympathy for the agony he was putting “his” god through, much less the people of Rigel. Conclusion to the Ages and a Postscript on Witches: Spoiler The Foreseen Postscript Before I conclude this account of the history, I would like to point out a particular practice which the wicked in the Duma Faithful had twisted. Geological activity in mountainous Rigel had led to the formation of geothermal vents along fault lines where various gasses surfaced. As it happens, these sites often became locations where religious services were carried out. Women in the Duma Faithful, who were generally not so well represented in the clerical institutions, though they weren’t shut out of it completely, frequented these sites, and breathed in many of the gasses. They did this seeking to annihilate their individualities through the altered state of mind and become thoroughly immersed in Duma whom they loved. Duma did not care for what these females were doing initially, but when convinced from seeing them firsthand that their surrender to him was wholly of their own choosing, and not a result of uncontrolled madness, he changed his mind. Duma appreciated his subjects’ devotion and acknowledged their desire for strength, which could take the form of wisdom, by yielding much of their selves to him, was a genuine form of self-discipline akin to that of military discipline and thus approved of what these women were doing. In addition, he felt he needed to reciprocate the extraordinary sacrifice of these women by bestowing them with greater blessings. He extended their lifespans, weaned them of the need for food and water and fresh air, and he gave them power which manifested itself in the form of clairvoyance and other magical abilities rare among normal individuals. Under his strengthening, these women became known as Oracles, and the sites they resided in became even more popular for pilgrimages. To become an Oracle, one had to undergo a ritual where one directly heard the voice of Duma, who looked into them and judged whether they were truly worthy of becoming an Oracle. Duma searched the initiates for their resolve- he would not accept any who were being forced to become Oracles or displayed hesitancy, nor did he take in those who lusted for his power. One had to know what they were getting into- to truly understand that in exchange for strength from him, they’d never be able to live a normal life ever again once the ritual was complete. The lust for power was dangerous because it was a sign of lacking self-discipline, and while Duma could control and kill or nearly kill anyone whom he had made into an Oracle if he sought it, he nonetheless did not want the irresponsible to foolishly sacrifice themselves and have power. Duma was merciful enough to tell such failed candidates for becoming Oracles to admonish themselves while they were normal and try again later at becoming one if they truly sought it, or that if they foolishly insisted still on becoming one, he would kill them outright. Duma was neither wholly egoist nor wholly selfless in the morality and lifestyles he stressed (nor was Mila). Sometimes he emphasized the needs of the community when he focused his words on discipline and strength seeking, other times the same words were directed at the individual and their need to compete within and against society. In case it isn’t obvious by now, the Oracle tradition of Rigel was turned by the corrupted Duma Faithful into Witches. Duma’s clarity fading, he no longer could ascertain true consent in the girls and women who presented themselves to him, he grew dull to anything but their wanting of power and their offering of themselves, which amounted to power for him. As Jedah had the candidates for Oracular status immersed in darkness beforehand, he used them as a way of accelerating the degeneration and tainting of Duma. And for Jedah controlled Duma, he controlled the Witches. His choice to conceive daughters and then sacrifice them was done as a way of strengthening his strong hand over Duma, as now his own blood flowed into Duma’s veins. As quality of life in Rigel declined and East Rigel fell into greater and greater control by the Duma Faithful, there was no shortage of potential Witches for Jedah to reap. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
akjshdfv Posted July 27, 2017 Share Posted July 27, 2017 Interesting! I like the details you put in. Great job so far! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Interdimensional Observer Posted August 7, 2017 Author Share Posted August 7, 2017 I didn't really flesh out the policies of the Rigelian rulers, I focused more or less on their succession. When I get around to discussion of economics and culture in Valentia, then you'll see a bit more of their actual policies being discussed. A Complete History of the Rigelian Kings and Emperors Spoiler The Silver Age lasted from year 1 on the Valentian calendar, until roughly year 300, when the Bronze Age began. With the borders clearly demarcated, Duma and Mila wasted no effort in naming their realms- Rigel and Zofia, the names derived from words of the ancient draconian language. And afterwards set out to appoint leaders from amongst their flocks of human devotees. In Rigel, Duma told his military commanders from the war to establish a new civil government, which emerged as monarchy with Duma himself as its head, while his former military commanders staffed the government. Yet they lacked experience in administration for the most part, and so Duma then guided them by setting them up a number of provisional offices across Rigel and assigned his commanders offices according to how he perceived their abilities. When some subordinates in this system complained to Duma that their bosses were inept compared to them, Duma told they were free to contest their superiors however they wished. In response to hearing what Duma said, the bosses who feared their subordinates would try to replace them snapped, some took to force of arms, while others remained more peaceable and simply fired their disobedient subordinates. Duma watched these battles between the two forces play out, waiting to see who would emerge supreme in battles of politics and combat. Duma then proclaimed in the midst of this he would work only to ensure that the strong governed Rigel- he cared not who they were. The country needed order, an order based on merit- he would bless whomever could bring this. This began an outright civil war within Rigel in the fifth year. However, this war did not last very long. One of the younger senior former generals managed to rise through the infighting and by the end of the 8th year of the Valentian calendar had decisively overcome opposition to the coalition he led. Presenting himself before Duma to have him acknowledge his success, Duma did so and bestowed the man the title of Dumason- the “Son of Duma”. Duma then granted this man the right to be the lone King of Rigel, but warned him establish his kingdom based on strength and merit, else he the ever watching god would forsake him. The new King of Rigel thanked Duma for this and then walked out and began to build his kingdom. Dumason bestowed upon himself a new regnal name Leonsys Rigel Dumason- the Lion of Rigel son of Duma- and began construction on a glorious new temple complex to please his god. However, when Duma visited the temple and Leonsys after it’s base had been laid, he grew furious and ordered the temple be destroyed. Leonsys asked whatever was wrong. Duma said that from everything he had seen so far, the temple that was being built would be far too magnificent, too decadent. Duma then snapped at Leonsys and told him just because he his god had given Leonsys a new name and title, did not mean he was to change his own name. Even if he was as strong as a lion, there was nothing wrong with his birth name, that he changed it reeked of pompousness and a liking for the superficial. In fear of his god, Leonsys fell to his knees and begged for forgiveness. Duma told Leonsys to stop his pathetic display, it had appeared it would take long to rid humanity of such tastes for the extravagant. Duma told him he could keep regnal name, and he could build him a temple, but, it was not to be decorated more than was necessary for proof of religious devotion to him and evoking religious awe. Duma then spoke to his Duma Faithful, those of his people who had chosen to serve Duma himself devotedly without care for earthly gain. Duma opposed the formation of a class of people removed from daily struggle and instead living a parasitic life of piety to him. Yet, he desired a group of servants of his own, thus the Duma Faithful formed. Duma made sure they engaged in useful labor, even if academic labor, and forbade lives of pure contemplation. When Leonsys got things going, he offered to have his own men replace the Duma Faithful whom he heard his god disliked. But Duma rejected the King’s offer, saying it would render him the god at the mercy of the king’s men. This occurred shortly after the temple controversy, and Duma decided that henceforth, his Faithful were to serve him and Rigel independently of the king. They were to serve as a countermeasure against royal and noble corruption into decadence, and that he expected the king and nobles to counterbalance the Duma Faithful the same. If the people found earthly authorities to be corrupt or denying them their proper place in society according to their merit and strength, the Faithful were to be a refuge and source for redress. On the matter of landholdings, Duma declared that the Faithful either needed land enough to sustain themselves in a given location, or that they given work with a salary enough to sustain themselves. He did not say Faithful land could be held in perpetuity, and that it was acceptable if their holdings were allowed to change or be transmuted into salaried employment- but what the government could not do is cut off the Faithful from all forms of livelihood independence. As further proof of his aloofness from the king, Duma had his Faithful and layfolk who desired to please their god build Duma Tower- a great temple of his design, atop of which he could look down on all of Rigel. Despite his chastisement by Duma, Leonsys Rigel Dumason ruled as King of Rigel from early year 9 when he was coronated at age 43, to his death by natural causes at age 89 in year 55. In Rigelian popular and scholarly history alike, Leonsys was fondly remembered as a great king, and his story of being humbled by Duma served as an endlessly retold story against decadence. Durning his lifetime, Leonsys had constructed the Duma Temple underneath his second great building project, Rigel Castle. The idea originated in the mind of one of Leonsys’s architects, saying it would not be an ostentatious temple hidden so in the earth, and by having it serve as the base of Rigel Castle, it showed the dependency of the king on the god’s favor. Duma was immediately consulted, and with a laugh added that it would prove him ruler of the earth deep below just as his own Tower would make him ruler of the skies high above- a hint of Duma’s own artistic understanding and at the same his distaste for the fanciful. When Leonsys died, he had appointed his grandson, age 31, his heir. Duma had been consulted with as to the question of who would rule once Leonsys had died for years by many people in and out of the king’s administration. Duma eased fears of civil war and chaos by saying he would grant Leonsys the right to choose an heir, however, if they proved inept and corrupt as a ruler, he would welcome their dethronement and a contest of strength and cunning to determine who he would appoint as the new king. For Leonsys’s eldest son was feared to be rather old, he was already in his sixties by time Leonsys died, he chose a son of his son, a younger one at that. The prince, Chu- or dog (a humble birth name), showed the most promise of his siblings and than his father as well, so his grandfather and father did everything they could to prepare him to be the heir. The brothers and cousins of Chu envied him, and complained that they were more worthy of the throne of Rigel. When several of these individuals plotted to kill him and struck out, Chu escaped injury and death, but just barely. Leonsys ordered the culprits be arrested immediately, but did not kill them until Duma told him what he could do. Duma responded he had no problems with their deaths, if Chu proved corrupt, there were many others who could replace him, it needn’t be one from within the family. And so, they were killed. Chu when his grandfather died thus ascended to the throne of Rigel as its second king without contest. He indeed proved to be a talented ruler, and never did Duma seriously waver in his support for the king. Like his grandfather before him, he has been remembered well in the history of Rigel, and was particularly noted for his vigor- he always lamented not having been around during the Mila-Duma War or his grandfather’s fight to the top. However, en route to Fear Mountain Shrine, which Chu had taken a liking to and had expanded beyond its small local scale, a landslide sent him tumbling to his death in year 76. His reign had been of but 21 years, and for hale and hearty he was, and it was not expected he would die so soon. His lone living son was but an infant at the time, the future of the Dumason lineage looked bleak. Word was immediately sent of Chu’s death to the Duma Faithful and to the royal family. Present with her mother the queen was Chu’s eldest daughter Parvat, who out of her deep concern rushed into Duma Temple and ignoring ritual practices went to the Eternal Pyre and called out to Duma, who was elsewhere in Rigel at the time. She yelled out and demanded to know what would befall her family now that her father was dead and her brother but an infant. For an infant cannot rule in the now, she expected he would welcome the expulsion of her family for that of her scheming cousins or even someone beyond the Dumason lineage, which she simply refused to accept. The Duma Faithful tried to restrain her, but Duma called out through the Pyre and spoke. If she cares so much about her family and the future of Rigel- then she herself should try for the throne. He cared not about the sex of the ruler, his kind the dragons had not- why do humans care as they do? With this, Parvat stormed out of the Temple to prepare for war, and as she walked out, the Duma Faithful asked if she thought she could win the throne, she said she did not think, only acted. Parvat then gathered all of her all of her father’s men present in and near Rigel Castle and came before them dressed for battle standing atop the castle gate. She informed them that her father was dead and that she would fight for the throne, not for her little brother, but for herself. She was asked what Duma thought of this, and replied Duma had no qualms with this idea, and went further to say she would fight without his approval even, for she knew she was most fit for the throne of Rigel. Some of the men laughed at her, and one let out a distinctive hearty chuckle as they continued on and on about the sad joke of the princess fighting, insulting her a thousand ways. He hardly noticed the sword swiftly landing in his heart, thrown with dead-on accuracy by the princess above. Stunned into silence by the sight, a significant number of the men gathered soon cried out in favor of their princess, and she raised her spear rallying them to her side. Although not all agreed to support her, Parvat nonetheless went to work establishing a powerful war machine and efficient administration, to fight the rival claimants which did indeed arise with knowledge of Chu’s death, and appease Duma’s future demands for meritocracy once she established herself as Rigel’s undisputed ruler. Parvat ordered the construction of the Last Bastion to defend Rigel Castle, and after vanquishing opposition in West Rigel, traveled eastwards to subdue opposition there. Learning from her great grandfather’s error, she advised Duma to keep himself safe from the chaos, and thus Duma had the Faithful build him the Duma Gate. By the year 82, at age 33, Parvat had vanquished all major opposition to her rule, and asked Duma to survey his kingdom and its functioning and determine if she was worthy of being called his heir. Duma replied she indeed deserved it, and thus she was declared by Duma Queen of Rigel. Her reign too was a glorious one for Rigel, and she earned the epithet “Daughter of Duma” by the end of her life. Parvat’s reign lasted until her death in year 118 at age 70. Her husband king consort outlived her, but weakened by her loss died two years later and was buried next to her. Parvat had bore five sons and a daughter of her own, each with grandchildren, she also had her little brother’s children as well as the lineages of her cousins who hadn’t fought against her to the end in her war for the throne. Parvat chose among all these choices, her second son Midos and his wife Messalina, and got Duma’s approval for the choice. Unfortunately, within three years of her death, Midos now King of Rigel had gone mad. The blessings of Duma were supposed to ward off illness to the humans of Rigel, and they generally did, but it was resistance and not immunity. Parvat knew of Midos’s tendency towards drink and the ladies, which she believed was more than counterbalanced by his robust work ethic in the daytime. But she was not aware, or perhaps chose not to believe the royal rumor mill, of his contraction of venereal disease. His immune system weakened by heavy drinking, he had contracted the disease years ago in a brothel, and now as king his blight blossomed into a painful insanity. To remedy this, he turned to the heavy drinking of lead-laced alcoholic beverages, and the combination led to a mental breakdown of Midos, which Messalina tried her best to conceal while suddenly having to select an heir. Noticing the king’s absence and the queen consort’s strange behaviors, it was soon discovered that the king was in terrible health, and Duma when he learned of this came to the capital to see for himself. Messalina had no choice but to show Duma her husband, where he verified he was mad and stated he would not let such a crippled person rule Rigel. Messalina pleaded to Duma to let her appoint an heir, but he would not have it- the throne was currently occupied by an enfeebled one- only when the ruler is in health can an heir be chosen in advance. Messalina tried to argue that Parvat had chosen Midos knowing that she as his wife would help him rule, but Duma responded that like with Parvat, she would have to fight for the throne if she wanted it. Parvat did not name her the heir, and even had she named co-rulers, once one became incapacitated, he would have declared the throne open regardless. Messalina then got to work trying to secure the capital before the Duma Faithful spread word to the provinces that the king had been declared insane and the throne was open to anyone. Rigelian, son of Parvat’s little brother Leonsys (what? Chu wanted to name his lone son after his glorious grandfather for good luck), allied himself to Messalina and volunteered to head to the Last Bastion to secure it for the defense of the capital. Rigelian arrived at the Last Bastion, and three days later Messalina visited at the urging of Rigelian. In the dead of night, Messalina was dragged from her bed and stabbed to death by Rigelian and soldiers of the Last Battalion (thanks SRW for the name idea). Rigelian had always hated how Parvat had “stolen” the throne from his father, not understanding that Duma would not have permitted a regency. Now was his chance to seize the throne for himself, his father, now in his later years an Earl in East Rigel (he was not talented enough to be a Duke or Baron), would be informed of his seizure of power and be welcomed back to the capital as Rigelian’s co-ruler. But before this could happen, Rigelian now had to seize the capital for himself, so with most of the Last Battalion he hurried in the night to Rigel Castle to make it his own. The next day, Rigelian having arrived in the capital, everyone was curious as what had happened to Messalina and why Rigelian was here. Rigelian took advantage of this curiosity having left everyone’s guards down and had the Last Battalion arrest them, some were then executed on the spot. Rigelian soon got to work pacifying the castle and earned the support of the Capital Guard and the next day declared himself King of Rigel as he sat on the throne adorned in the sparse but meaningful regalia of a King of Rigel. Later that night, discussing matters of concern with the head of the Capital Guards and the second-in-command of the Last Battalion, the throne room doors were opened despite the King’s order that no one be let in. In walked the Archbishop of the Capital, the highest official present for the Pontifex was elsewhere. The Archbishop harshly scolded Rigelian- he had not shown himself a capable administrator yet, nor had he secured himself anywhere beyond the capital, and even here his control was not truly incontestable, he had no right to call himself King, only Duma can bestow that honor. Rigelian shrugged off the scolding, he would easily subdue whatever threats arose in the boondocks, and then commanded the Archbishop acknowledge him his superior as King. The Archbishop replied he had no reason to, acknowledge him nor cede to him superiority, and then ordered him to let Sapha, the daughter of Parvat and a high ranking member of the Duma Faithful having worked her way to the position of Minister of the Oracular Sites, free from arrest. Rigelian declared that Sapha was a threat to his rule, and the Archbishop responded that she had forsaken the right to rule when she joined the Faithful, against her mother’s wishes even. Rigelian disagreed, and threatened to arrest the Archbishop on grounds of seeking to undermine his rule. The Archbishop told Rigelian Duma would not tolerate such insolence towards the rules he had set and began to walk away. Rigelian then ordered his men to arrest the Archbishop, offering the Archbishop one last chance, the Archbishop said he feared not this boastful pretender, and bluntly said he would never be king. Rigelian ordered his men kill the Archbishop now and they put their blades to him, but the defiant, unflinching stare of this man of faith did not disappear even as his blood flowed silently to the ground. Duma this, Duma that- to hell with that, he is King of Rigel like it or not! Rigelian ordered the Archbishop’s body be disposed of immediately, and that Sapha and all other suspected traitors be killed. As the throne room doors opened and the corpse of the Archbishop was dragged out, a several servants cleaning the hall saw the bloody body and looked on aghast at the site. Rigelian bade the servants to forget this site right now or end up the same way. Yet one servant in the distance approaching the area saw the scene and ran away crying out sacrilegious murder. Rigelian ordered that the servant be caught, and then said he needed to pay Duma down below a visit, and took with him several bodyguards. Descending into the Temple, Rigelian made a dash for Duma’s inner sanctum, but was met by quite the sight once he reached the decorated doors into Duma’s personal chamber. It was none other than Duma himself, accompanied by Sapha and several other members of the Duma Faithful. Rigelian asked how his aunt was here when he had her under close guard. Duma replied that when she heard the exclamation that the Archbishop was dead, she prayed and offered her soul to Duma, for it was better to make such a sacrifice than lose her life meaninglessly to the guards who would soon do that. Duma heard her prayer and saved her without need of taking her soul. Duma then let his anger be known and said such an act is unforgivable- he killed his loyal servant in cold blood and took a title that was not truly his for himself. Rigelian rebuked Duma, lambasting him for passing the throne onto that wench instead of his father, he only took the throne to right that awful wrong. Duma replied he made no such mistake, he would not let an infant rule Rigel and Parvat had proven herself talented for all her years. Duma went on to add that now it was Rigelian’s time to accept his wrong and pay the price for it like it or not. Rigelian was so annoyed by this that he drew his sword and charged at Duma, yelling at him. Catching the blade in the open palm of his left hand he let Rigelian put all his force against it, watch it slide a little and then see no blood at all come out of Duma’s hand. Duma then clenched his hand around the blade with his right knee jabbed Rigelian and sent him flying into a wall, opening the hand and dropping the sword, it’s blade now turned to dust right in the middle where it was held. Several of Rigelian’s bones had broken, but on his knees, he reached for his dagger and commanded his bodyguards do something, but they stood motionless. Duma then spoke, they recognize whom they stand before, not for all the gold in the world would they try their luck against him, but had he won them over with action instead of wealth, perhaps they’d be willing to join you in death. Suddenly, Rigelian’s dagger felt out of right hand and his knees gave out as he screamed about an increase in the pain. Duma then spoke, such insolence is proof enough he did not deserve his blessings in the slightest, thus he has undone them, including those of resilience. Had he undone them sooner, that blow would have killed him with his bones much more fragile, but he spared him, but not out of mercy, that as he said before is no longer something he is willing to give. It’s been a long time since he did battle in his true form against a human foe, and Terrors know not how to cower. Duma commanded his servants and the guards alike to never forget what they are about to see, their god manifested in all his power. Duma then took dragon form and furiously played with Rigelian’s still living body like a rag doll and brought it into his personal chamber, finally annihilating it with his breath. With Rigelian dead, the capital collapsed into chaos and for the Last Bastion was undermanned, it was soon invaded several times over. Duma withdrew to his Tower so sickened he was by this incident. He reminded his people that they could seek refuge in the Faithful for the time being. The civil war raged for eight years, but by 125, a new King of Rigel finally emerged in Marcion, descended from one of Leonsys’s grandchildren other than Chu. Marcion was already in his fifties when he took the throne, his sons had died in the fighting, and his alliances with other descendants of Leonsys were fairly weak. Marcion ruled for a mere nine years, his war scars included some deep gashes and he carried fragments of arrowheads in some of them, and when they acted up, healers were unable to treat the underlying problems in full. Marcion had yet to earn Duma’s approval for an heir, so when he died in 134, yet again, Rigel fell into civil war. This war came too soon after the last, this time it lasted for seventeen years, the longest yet. He who this time emerged the new King of Rigel was not at all from the Dumason lineage, his name was Orthros Patrus. He had been born in a town among the mountains between the western and eastern halves of Rigel, and was shortly thereafter abandoned by his parents. He was later discovered and taken in by the Duma Faithful when they saw his newborn self exposed to the elements and left without food or water had not become deathly sick (according to folklore, he survived for 30 days through rain, snow, heat, and beasts). Raised by the Faithful, Orthros decided to join the Faithful worked towards becoming a prestigious member of the Terror-fighting unit of the Faithful. Yet on the day he turned 20 in 137, when he was to officially begin his career, Orthros expressed that he saw Duma’s realm was in chaos once more, and believed he was destined help bring forth a new order in Rigel. The Faithful discharged him, and told him they could expect no help from them whatsoever for they were but onlookers to the struggle, and so he left with only the clothes on his back. Orthros spent three years as a lowly foot soldier passing amongst the armies of various petty pretenders, before finally landing himself in the forces of a powerful regional pretender in central East Rigel. Orthros quickly rose through the ranks and became a field commander noted for his cunning as well as his strength. This upstart within another three years strongly cautioned his commander against a particular course of action, but his commander was only angered by this and against his advice continued with his stratagem. When his liege returned in terrible defeat, he put the blame on Orthros for having failed to support his adequately, and threatened to demote him. Orthros, not above a little treachery in this time of chaos, gathered allies in his camp who were frustrated by the terrible defeat and imprisoned their liege. Forcing him to surrender power and admit his failure, Orthros then took command of the forces by consent of his equals and at last began his personal campaign to become King of Rigel. Ten years had now passed since the warring on Marcion’s death had begun, and moving swiftly Orthros took the new two years to unify East Rigel, the south was nearly won and wiping out resistance here was accomplished with little time and effort being necessary. Duma’s Peninsula took up most of his time, but he was successful in a risky simultaneous amphibious landing maneuver, and surrounding his enemies’ forces so, lunged into the heart of the opposition and crushed it. During this time, Orthros began seizing the coastal villages of West Rigel to prevent western pretenders from getting the better of him, and gradually expanded control into the south central mountains of his birth. Making full of use of Rigel’s mining output, he enriched his granaries with Zofian foodstuffs in exchange for minerals, which neither Duma nor Mila had qualms about. Southwest Rigel took the next three years to vanquish, and west central Rigel fell in the next year. However, the Last Bastion kept Orthrus’s last rival alive. So close to victory, he opted to bypass the Last Bastion altogether through his interest in naval warfare. Orthrus once again flanked his foe, feinting an attack on the Bastion, crossing the relatively low and traversable mountains to the west with a river fleet navigating through enemy blockades providing support, and as this was being carried out by his trusted and talented subordinates, Orthrus himself sailed to the coastlines north of Castle Rigel and landed there. His last rival, rather than fight to the end fled into Duma Temple as Orthrus approached. And when Orthrus at last entered the castle when all the fighting in northwest Rigel had ceased, he went into the temple, but rather than kill his last rival, Orthrus ignored the man and instead went and kneeled before the Pontifex and ask him if he brought forth the order of strength, merit, and efficacy which Duma had sought for the past seventeen years. The Pontifex then took Orthrus on the voyage through the underground tunnels to the Duma Peninsula and guided Orthrus up the Tower. In reverence of Duma, Orthrus walked the whole climb barefooted and shorn himself of all decoration, leaving himself the plain warrior he had been the day he had left the Faithful to fight for Rigel’s reunification. At the top of the Tower, Duma looked upon this man who had once dreamed of doing battle alongside his god against the Terrors. He was no weakling, he had done very well and would continue to Duma could see. He told Orthrus to take in the view, for now all that stretched before him was his to rule, King of Rigel and a true Son of Duma. Thus began in the year 151 at age 34 the official beginning of Orthrus Patros’s reign. Though he took the name and title Dumason from Duma, historians instead prefer to call his line of rulers the Patros dynasty, as Leonsys Rigel Dumason was all too associated with the name. Even so, Orthrus’s followers loved to use the name for their new king, as he was to them the second coming of Leonsys, and Orthrus, though using the name with a humbleness, let them use it reverently. Orthrus spent the next 31 years ruling Rigel, ushering in a new era of stability and prosperity for the kingdom and so he was well remembered. Yet Orthrus was celibate, a practice he abided by thanks to his days in the Duma Faithful where the self-restraint of celibacy could be considered a virtue. Orthrus wanted the strong to rule Rigel, but did not wish to see it fall into chaos once more. So, he decided just as Duma would name himself a son or daughter from among his follower, he would adopt one of his officials as his heir. He selected Asterius, a scholarly type who displayed significant talent at administration. Once Duma had approved of the choice, Orthrus at age 65 announced his intentions of abdicating the throne to his heir in the year 182. This was unexpected, but Orthrus did so out of concern that Asterius’s rule would be contested from rival claimants within the court, and to see how he would fare as a king himself. Duma found his son’s course of action most interesting, and allowed him to remain in Rigel Castle with the title “Ascended King”. The mere presence of Orthrus, even after having been stripped virtually of all his power, was enough to exert pressure over those who would contest his choice of heir and keep Asterius on the right track. Fears about Asterius’s merit as a king faded and the opposition died down and after six years he decided to remove himself from court life altogether and the Ascended King retired to a temple of the Duma Faithful on the west coast of central east Rigel. There, he enjoyed the later years of his life expounding Duma’s ways and virtues to the local inhabitants, living not as a royal, but as an ordinary citizen. He would sow the fields, chop down trees, and throw his wrinkled body into the cold sea with spear and net in hand, surfacing only when he had reaped the ocean of its worth. His cunningness too endured, as he learned the local trade network and made tidy profits, all of which he gave away to either the Faithful or deserving business associates of his. He was truly among Duma’s blessed, he maintained his vibrant and vigorous lifestyle until the year before his death in 204 at age 87. In the meanwhile, Asterius ruled Rigel quite well. Of 35 years when he took the throne in 182, Asterius worked hard to streamline the bureaucracy and encouraged migration eastwards in order to curtail the overpopulation issues he saw West Rigel as facing. Rigelian intellectual thought took a sophisticated turn during his reign, as non-Faithful individuals began writing tracts of their own which sometimes contradicted the orthodoxy which Asterius defended. The Duma Faithful protested these writings, but Duma intervened and declare them perfectly acceptable- the Faithful had become arrogant with the seventeen year chaos and the fact that Orthrus as a former member had so fondly looked upon them. Asterius was thus allowed within the limits Duma outlined to reform the Faithful’s worldly power and render it a more austere ministry. This did not stop some in the Faithful from hurling insults upon Asterius, but he brushed them off knowing Duma had his back. Asterius’s reforms were purposefully not undertaken until Orthrus had retired to the countryside, and when Orthrus asked to know exactly what his chosen heir was doing. Asterius politely told his “father” that Duma would be able to explain, and when Duma later visited Orthrus, the Ascended King acknowledged he had no power anymore to change things and though not quite convinced of the need for Asterius’s actions, abided by them nonetheless. Asterius was a deathly serious man and spurned all decor with exacting discipline. He was not the most likable of kings, but amongst intellectuals he did express a certain warmth in seeing knowledge be spread, though he tended to lecture a bit too much and for too long and with a certain know-it-all attitude. Besides being devoted to the Rigelian state and to Duma, Asterius had a profound love for his wife Aria, and sired a brood upon seven sons and just as many daughters upon her. He displayed just as harsh an ethos in parenting as he did with everyone else, and he overworked and underfed himself to the point of a stroke at age 53 in year 200- an accomplishment for a royal living a healthy life under Duma’s blessings. Asterius had not yet named an heir, but fortunately he mustered all his strength and recovered enough quick enough to avoid being deemed unfit to rule by Duma. Asterius then confided in his wife Aria that could see no individual who deserved the throne but her, and felt she had to take it while he yet lived. Keeping himself from falling into weakness long enough for Duma to approve of the choice in the year 202. The next year, Asterius suffered a severe second stroke while riding upon horseback in the countryside as a relaxing activity. He told his servants to fetch Aria immediately and as he laid down still sweating, he told her now was the time to be Queen in her own right. He then shut his eyes for the moment and lingered in his crippled state through the end of the year. For the coronation of Aria, in the throne room a raised bed was placed just for him, with attendants for his every need by his side and a palanquin for being moved from room to room. When he finally gave up the ghost that dreadful winter, it was with his newly regnant wife holding his hand, she was the very last he ever laid eyes on. He was only 56. So began the rule of Aria Queen of Rigel. She was actually 10 years year her husband’s senior and a widow from a previous marriage, but this meant nothing to him. He confided in her, asked for advice, and sought her comfort. She was everything to him, and he openly admitted her to be his superior in the arts of war. Aria had been the daughter of a man who ultimately became a Duke in Northwest Rigel, and he was the lone child of a Baroness from the Southwest whose husband had died not long before his birth. Her education had been thorough, into her late teenage years before being married for the first time, she wrestled- an art women were allowed to do in Rigel. She was married at age 19 to her first husband, an Earl. The two did not get along that well after a short while, she was too stubborn for him, and he died in a bloody dispute with a fellow noble four years later. She bore no children from him, and while her father wished for her to deny ever having consummated the marriage, she admitted to it, and refused to join the Duma Faithful. Thus she became single, childless, and not likely to be remarried due to her lack of virginity. She lived with her father and brothers, helping them in all their matters including business transactions, and then earned herself the title of Marchioness in East Rigel. Moving there, she continued doing well between managing her fiefdom and educating young boys and girls in everything they would have to know to be true children of Duma. She also continued her fondness for the martial arts, and formed a club for it. This later expanded to include branches across the region, and once Queen consort spread it across all of Rigel and even once Queen in her own right had the practice of women wrestling enter the realm of Zofia, where women were generally looked up much more delicately. Despite all this, when Aria went to King Orthrus’s court as a representative of her father one day at age 27, where Asterius encountered into her amid the court’s small talk. After this set of initial conversations got off to a good start, he continued to converse with her after they both left the court, him seeing a potential noble associate in her which could better his fortunes. What began as simple political banter without the slightest hint of romance grew into something more, she was skilled enough to be able to get under his skin and convince him he was wrong, but not in the slightest evoke from him a stern response. Furthermore he was in need of wife sooner or later, and his attitude rendered many females not wanting of his hand. After five years of conversation, he professed to her that he could confirm that in his heart was a deep love and appreciation for her, and asked for her hand in marriage. Aria, now 32, gladly accepted his proposal- she liked him and could bear with his overly strict nature very much anyhow. The wedding came three months later, and the night must have been fruitful, as eleven months to the day afterwards (eleven being the usual gestation period for a Duma-blessed pregnancy), she gave birth to the first of her many children with Asterius. Orthrus could tell from the get go that she was an essential pillar to her young husband, and after confirming firsthand that she would assist him in any endeavor, he felt more confident in appointing Asterius his heir. As Queen of Rigel at age 66, Aria got to work continuing her husband’s policies and taking on her own personal goals. When word came that pirates from Zofia were pestering the east and west coasts alike of Rigel, she demanded that Zofia take greater action against them. When Zofia seemed to fail in its promises, this 71 year old woman crossed the eastern border and from a distance stood before Mila’s Temple resolute. The audacity of this action caught Duma’s attention, and warned his bold daughter Aria not to break the ancient pact. Mila was put off by this, but when she stormed out of her temple and saw this aging woman before her, with her youngest children in front of her, a boy and a girl, twins, of 10 years of age, Mila relented. She agreed to allow limited Rigelian armed forces into Zofia for no longer than a year and a half total from four months hence for the sake of subduing the pirates. Zofia would provide provisions and a handful of additional troops. Rigel then vanquished the pirates, and Aria offered the Zofian forces combat lessons to avoid such a diplomatic crisis again, in exchange for payments in food, which Zofia accepted, and Mila and Duma approved. Queen Aria reigned for a short thirteen years before choosing to retire in 216 at age 79. Aria then lived another 21 years, spending her retirement in a myriad of occupations on Duma’s Peninsula, dying at age 100. Her chosen heir was her Chancellor- Perocles. Perocles was a nephew of Aria, and 54 years of age. She had chosen him knowing that within her large brood of children there were disputes over who deserved the throne. Not all of her children were involved, one of her daughters had opted to become an oracle, and another child married into the Zofian aristocracy as an act of diplomacy, and a few others were content with less than the throne, but bloodshed during her reign had already broken out amongst her children. Instead of choosing any one of her brood, she opted for Perocles, whom she entrusted with resolving this matter. Perocles selected an heir from among them, but unfortunately infighting saw them killed before Duma could give his approval, and Perocles after managing to coax from Duma his opinions on the others (Duma was not one to normally give such commentary unless it was the person being ritually presented as the heir), came to conclude that none of his cousins could take the throne. Instead, Perocles opted to select one of his cousins descended from a child of one of Aria’s brothers- Neran. Perocles’s reign lasted for seventeen years and was fairly stable and prosperous beyond the growing tumult of the inner circles of power. Perocles followed in the tradition of the Patros dynasty of early retirement in 233 at age 71. Unfortunately, Neran, age 29 at ascension- the youngest King/Queen of Rigel yet, though fairly promising in the beginning, once left in power, degenerated into a particularly nasty and corrupt ruler. Although Perocles had done all he could to curtail the scheming which the upper crust aristocracy and extended royal family was embroiling itself in, he had not destroyed it. In the ninth year of his reign, Neran declared open war on all royals, nobles, and non-noble officials who did not swear absolute loyalty to him out of fear there was a great conspiracy against him. Neran attempted to peacefully buy the allegiance of the Duma Faithful with endowments of land, riches, and even political power, but when such efforts were continually spurned for what they were, Neran turned to confiscating what the Faithful had. Duma threatened to dethrone Neran for his attacks on the Faithful, and what he saw as an inefficient kleptocratic regime. In retirement as an Ascended King, Perocles sought to avert a collapse of the Rigelian elite and the outbreak of a new civil war. He through words he attempted to calm and reform Neran and also get the elite groups now arrayed against him to being willing to compromise with Neran. Perocles wrote to Duma, pleading to him to not yet revoke Neran’s kingship, which the god agreed to, but gave no clear idea how long he’d restrain his temper for. Perocles then made a bold move, he would return to the capital and rise from retirement to sort out issues at hand, he even attempted to convince Aunt Aria to come with him, but at age 97, she lacked the strength for politics and could only send her words and her trusty spear. Perocles’s unexpected return to the capital was not welcomed by Neran, who did not want his predecessor trying to control him. Perocles became increasingly convinced that Neran, who had so well concealed his scarring from the elite intrigue during the years Perocles cultivated him as his heir, had to go. Although not exactly happy with the anti-Neran elite either, Perocles was sure he could find a new king who could ease the tensions and bring peace to Rigel’s upper crust. More than that- he had to, he did not want another terrible civil war breaking out across the country. But to be in the position to appoint an heir, he had to be King of Rigel himself. Thus, Perocles sent word to Duma his desire to reclaim the throne for the sake of Rigel’s future, Duma replied that he would not simply return the crown to Perocles so he could fix his heir mistake. Nevertheless, after Neran made an attempt on Perocles’s life which he narrowly escaped from, Perocles quickly and haphazardly stirred up elite support for himself and then launched his own plot to capture Neran- a coup. Yet things did not go quite according to plan, the men whom Perocles had entrusted capturing Neran to, found him dead of suicide when they arrived- but Perocles recognized from the corpse right away that it was vengeance and not suicide. So it was that Neran, age 39, died before his tenth year of rule was over in year 243. Perocles immediately informed Duma of what he had done, and asked his god once more for the title of King of Rigel. Duma was moved by the gutsy actions which Perocles had taken, and thus stripped this king of his “Ascended” status, warning him he may have been personally better off in retirement in bliss, rather than trying once more to fix a problem he failed to not solve in better times. Nonetheless, his willingness to try against all odds, and even defy his own god’s words, was in line with the virtues he Duma extolled. Perocles was now 81, he knew he didn’t have much longer until his death, but he spent every day of his remaining years trying to keep the chaos in the upper ranks of Rigelian society from affecting the rest of it. He attempted to broker a compromise heir, much as he had done with Neran, but this time the heir he selected, a man of 37 years named Cierkos, would be less an active leader in Rigelian government, as the meditator of the opposing policies presented by the various factions, each filled with talent. Someone basically much like Perocles himself at this point. Perocles was awoken one day to the news of Cierkos having drowned while bathing, which reeked of traitorous foul play given Cierkos had been surrounded by bodyguards to protect him. Asked to see the body of Cierkos immediately, in defiance of Duma’s teachings, Perocles wept as he placed his head to the cold, motionless chest. This occurred three years into his second reign. But soon, Perocles wiped away the tears and kept the agony inside himself. Perocles realized with Cierkos’s death, there were no hopes anymore of finding anyone able to appease all the factions of the political elite and also Duma- who balked at the idea of putting a child on the throne to maintain at least a King of Rigel in theory, if not at all in practice. Theory and practice should be one, Duma emphasized, for else the King is weak, his authority a lie, and his being unnecessary. Perocles nonetheless spent what was left of his life keeping together the elite factions with all the strength he could muster and using what resources he had left after this straining effort to patronize the provinces and localities apart from their aristocratic and bureaucratic elites in the capital. Perocles increasingly spent more time in Duma’s Temple, seeking word from the Oracles as to what would become of Rigel and attempting to compile a coherent set of prophecies and then determining what they all really meant. As an act of mercy, Duma allowed Perocles to spend the last six months of his reign entirely in the Temple, and Duma himself ensured that Perocles’s words and written statements were delivered. When Perocles finally died after five exhausting years back in power in 248, Duma was watching over him and had Perocles’s body interred within the temple- rather than have it see the world he now knew would fall into chaos. When Duma stood before his people the day after Perocles’s death, he chastised them for their unrestrained lust for power, but nonetheless knew that now that Perocles was dead and the throne was once more open, that this new era of struggle would breed the truly strong, stronger perhaps than even Lionsys Dumason and Orthrus Partros. It may take years before it happens, but this lust for power and the womb of chaos it creates is bound to breed the merit which would then commit most brutal and most just matricide. What followed war the longest civil war in Rigel’s history yet, lasting an agonizing fifty years- nearly triple the last. The Bronze Age was clearly underway in Rigel by the time the war ended. Duma was declining, and his blessing on the Rigelians were becoming weaker, while Terrors began to increase. The ultimate victor from the struggle was a man named Alexander Rudolf, from southwest Rigel. Alexander was said to be the child of a Zofian pirate-bandit and the Rigelian woman who the pirate had raped. Alexander first began fighting in the year 257 at the age of 16, and over the next thirty one years gradually worked his way up the ladder to becoming King of Rigel. By the age of 36, Alexander had subdued West Rigel in full, and now needed to conquer East Rigel, which remained in hopelessly chaotic warfare. In the next eleven years, despite several attempted invasions, Alexander failed to conquer West Rigel by force, and endured heavy losses on a number of those attempts to seize it. Instead, the local nobles and governors of the East agreed to acknowledge Alexander as King of Rigel so as long as he conceded special privileges to them. This was facilitated by the corruption within the Duma Faithful liking the decrease in royal authority, and by the recognition of the East Rigelian elite that they better strike a deal now- before their population, on the decline, hit such a low as to enable a successful invasion from the West possible and thus all attempts at bargaining lost. Duma agreed to the agreement made by Alexander and East Rigel- yet this was odd because it contradicted his strong distaste for such paper promises of autonomy for recognition in the past. This was a sign that something was wrong with Duma, his cognitive abilities were weakening. Another oddity was Alexander’s reliance on large numbers of freelance mercenaries bought from Zofia to supplement his Rigelian forces. Alexander was not alone in this practice, and it had happened before in the prior civil wars and internal disputes even when a king was in power. But the practice had grown significantly, which was odd given the Rigelians by Duma’s power were supposed to outmatch the Zofians in physical capabilities by a clear margin. The great strength of the Rigelians bestowed by Duma was declining. Alexander Rudolf officially became King of Rigel in the year 288, at age 47. His reign lasted for seventeen years, dying at age 64. Alexander Rudolf had been a good king at heart, albeit one who oversaw what had been a clear decline in Rigel. When he died in 303, his chosen heir was his one of his sons Philip, of 40 years. The elite in the east sought new privileges when Alexander nominated Philip as his heir, and threw together a package of concessions to them. Nonetheless Philip took the throne after his father’s death in 303, he found himself suddenly faced with a rebellion in the east- the elite wanted more. Five years into a deadlocked military standoff, the Duma Faithful offered an answer- name among the eastern elite a King of East Rigel, while Philip maintained the title King of West Rigel, but Philip disliked this and was convinced Duma would not approve. The Faithful said however that Duma would bestow Philip with a new title- Emperor of all Rigel. Philip then went before Duma to ask about this, and Duma did as the Faithful predicted, thus making Philip the first Emperor of Rigel. That Duma did not declare Philip’s kingship invalid within a year of the rebellion was due to the corrupted Duma Faithful manipulating him, as was the concession of the title Emperor. As Emperor, Philip reigned for another ten years before dying at age 55, in a plague that broke out across Rigel killed him, as well as eldest son. Thus in 318, the sole grandson of Philip by his lone son, the 11 year old Rudolf I, became the 2nd Emperor of Rigel. If this seems totally wrong by Rigelian standards, it’s because it is. Yet this isn’t by Zofian standards very odd at all, and Zofian culture had been seeping into Rigelian society since the days when Alexander warred and hired Zofian mercenaries in large quantities. The seep had become an outright river during Philip’s reign, and under Rudolf I’s it’d be a flooding river. And, Duma’s decline and the increasingly corrupt Duma Faithful made the god susceptible to a minority and regency- on the grounds the Emperor would grow up to be talented and that the regents were- something he decried years ago leading to Parvat’s reign. In the decline of Rigel, which was always until the very end ahead of Zofia’s, Zofia gained cultural influence over Rigel. Under the regency of Rudolf I, the Rigelian state gave way to decentralization and stagnation. This process could find some roots going back to Perocles in his efforts to address court factionalism, and Alexander had made some small concessions in the west to reunify Rigel, on top of his eastern concessions, but he managed to curtail the former at least once he was firmly king. Under Philip however, the eastern concessions grew and in the west more were demanded as this happened. With Rudolf I now Emperor, the Regent, a Duke named Biron, doled out concessions upon concessions, including the unconditional hereditary inheritance of noble titles, which Duma in his declining state did not come to protest. Even when Rudolf I took the throne when he became of age, he remained a weak Emperor at the mercy of his advisors. Furthermore, the average life expectancy of Rigel was on the decline, and so were state revenues, worker productivity, and the total population- all of which made the fight over the remaining resources fiercer. He did make minor efforts to assert himself, but in the long history of Rigelian rulers he was complete and utter mediocrity. He died at the age 43 after an incident where he harshly fell off his horse, broke several bones, and as a result of his obesity (something no Rigelian ruler prior suffered from), he suffered an internal rupture of some sort, and the poisoning resulting from this killed him in a couple weeks. Thus, in the year 350, Rudolf I was succeeded by his son Adolphe, who was mentally enfeebled and of 20 years. The power struggle among the elite turned royally violent, and Adolphe was killed in a faction coup after seven years in 357 and was replaced by the lone son he managed to begat- Rudolf Rigel Rudolf, Rudolf II. The realization that the royal family was liable to being murdered made certain elite fear each other more than they would a strong monarch. These elite managed to seize the regency with the favor of the Empress Mother and inculcated into the little Emperor a want for centralized power and to be a strong Emperor. Rudolf II took these lessons to heart, and he matured into a healthy young, bold king. Once he came of age, he immediately got to work subduing the elite and restoring good old Rigelian efficiency to the Empire. The traditions of old were revitalized, and the Zofian influence receded, though it could not be destroyed entirely. Rudolf could only achieve this in the western half of his realm, the east remained practically independent and under the Duma Faithful’s control- it's "King" and other nobles but the pawns of the Faithful and in many cases was the Faithful itself. One realization of Emperor Rudolf II was that the Duma Faithful’s elite and many of the local branches too had become corrupted and that Duma was no longer sane. How did the Emperor come to these conclusions? Well his reverence for Rigelian tradition made him keenly aware that the Duma Faithful were not adhering to what they preached, if they preached it at all. He also read through Rigelian history and noticed all of the changes from the past- the decline of strength and life expectancy, the increase in Terrors, Duma’s seclusion and how the god’s providence had changed. None of Rigel’s emperors had ever intimately met with Duma- the Faithful had interceded on Duma’s behalf to grant the emperorships and issue divine decrees. No emperor had ever ventured past the entry rooms of Duma’s Temple, and none had gone to the Tower. Rudolf II asked Pontifex Jedah if he would be allowed to see the god, and Jedah, initially refusing, ultimately condescendingly allowed the emperor the right to see Duma. And so, Rudolf Rigel Rudolf at age 28, descended into the depths of Duma Temple with a handful of loyal allies while under close watch by the Duma Faithful. Entering Duma’s personal chamber, the room was cloaked in darkest shadow, and Duma’s actual body could not be seen, only his voice could be heard and his eye aglow. From the stench, the trip down into the temple, Duma’s voice, and this staged showing of the god, Rudolf knew something was seriously wrong. Turning aboard to Archanea, Rudolf II was aware of the degeneration of dragons over there, and that there too existed a blade called a Falchion, made to slay the dragons. For centuries, Valentia rejected all ideas that their gods were of the same ilk as the dragons of distant Archanea. But Rudolf was no longer convinced of this, was it possible he wondered, that Duma and Mila were the same? Rudolf then analyzed Zofian history and noticed Mila too was acting strangely and that there had been decline, not to the same degree as in Rigel, but he could clearly see something was amiss. Rudolf knew he had to do something, but could not quite gather was it was supposed to be. Rudolf could not consult the Duma Faithful, and there were few Oracles left due to the conversion to Witches. What he did end up doing was turning to old prophecies which had been gathered over the centuries, and which were thought to have never been or possibly never been fulfilled. It was from these that he finally conceived of his plan. Trusting in the prophecies, Rudolf II would do his part in reunifying Valentia and restoring prosperity to the continent. Rudolf II had his newborn son, born most auspiciously with a brand, sent away and raised in Zofia through his trusted retainer Mycen, so as to inculcate in this child of Duma the ways of Mila. Through his son, he hoped to create a king greater than Alexander Rudolf, Orthrus Patros, and even Leonsys Dumason, one with the strength of Rigel, and the compassion of Zofia. They would be the superhuman human who would cast away the rotting husks of the gods. Rudolf was unabashedly enthralled by the epic moments in Rigelian history, as many had been for centuries, and believed that this was to be another. Mycen was passing by Zofia Castle with Alm when he heard of the birth of Zofia’s new princess. Noticing the brand she bore, he knew she was auspicious. Shortly after the princess’s birth, the overthrow of King Lima IV happened, and he brought the girl now known as Celica to Ram Village with the infant Alm wholly on a gut instinct. Rudolf II did not expect Celica nor knew what to do with her. Had the prophecies included such a daughter of Mila? Nonetheless he knew she was destined to be important somehow, and bade Mycen to insure her safety. Originally, he intended to have her brought to Rigel and raised as his adopted daughter, a reverse Alm, but Rudolf feared that the Duma Faithful and that they would kill her. So rather than risk being unable to protect her, Rudolf told Mycen to send her wherever he thought the safest, fate would work out the rest. As the years passed Rudolf II realized that there was an elephant in the room in his plans for overthrowing the gods and instituting a human order on Valentia- Mila. Duma had greatly declined and the corrupted Duma Faithful had split from his control, but he could bring Rigel’s might against Duma, it would be complete blasphemy to them to overthrow their god, and he doubted they’d understand that Duma had gone insane. Thus, Zofia would have to overthrow Duma. But why would they when even under the wicked Desaix’s rule Mila continued to provide some blessings yet? To render the reign of Desaix more reproachable and create within Zofia a desire to destroy Duma, he would violate the ancient pact and invade Zofia. Jedah, thinking it the perfect opportunity to conquer the entire continent, was more than willing to go along with this. Leaving most of his generals in the west, Emperor Rudolf II of Rigel went east and visited Mila’s Temple. He then drew the Falchion and with all his valor slew the goddess, imprisoning her soul in the sword thinking her power added to the blade would make it easier to sunder Duma with it. Now liked by the Duma Faithful, Rudolf was allowed to enter Duma Temple once more, where he had the Falchion stored away so as to keep the blade secure and Mila from having the slightest chance of breaking free. If Alm or another arose to defeat Duma, then they would surely be able to claim the blade. If no one were to emerge or had the potential of emerging before his death who would defeat Duma, Rudolf himself as a last resort would reclaim the Falchion and attempt to slay Duma himself- better a world disunited without the gods’ tyranny, than a world united where the gods yet held sway. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Interdimensional Observer Posted August 27, 2017 Author Share Posted August 27, 2017 I've been writing up a lot of economics and society notes, but I keep wanting to add more, so rather than present one complete post with all of it tackled, I'll just add in new bits and pieces when I feel like it. Agriculture Spoiler Wheat is the primary grain consumed in Valentia, with limited rice cultivation in the warmest regions of Zofia, and barley and rye supplement the Rigelian cereal diet. Citrus, namely oranges, but also limes and lemons, is plentiful in Zofia, with Rigel able to support a few hardier varieties of citrus in its warmer regions. Zofia with its plenty can also turn to a number of herbs and spices which Rigel cannot produce. A variety of vegetables, fruits, and nuts are grown as well in accordance with regional climatic differences. Crop rotation, fallows, and irrigation are practiced in both Zofia and Rigel. Wooden agricultural tools are commonly used in the soft soils of Zofia, while iron is the mainstay in iron-rich and rocky soiled Rigel. Alcoholic Beverages: Spoiler In terms of alcoholic beverages, wine is enjoyed throughout the continent, with the Rigelian side of the border with Zofia being source of the finest wine due to its soil being “stressed” without being overstressed- ideal for sugar production in the grapes. Fortified wines are commonly produced on Novis and in coastal eastern Zofia overall- ideal for shipment aboard to Archanea. Ram Wine is produced from non-grape fruits (namely oranges), and was a local delicacy until recent agriculture declines made production too small to be profitable and production thus ceased. Beer is found in northern Zofia and throughout Rigel, with the former imbibing almost exclusively ale (warm fermentation, often without hops), and Rigel having a preference for lager (cold fermentation, often with hops). Mead, barley beer, rye whiskey and a few other spirits complete the compendium of alcohol in Valentia. Livestock and Other Animals: Spoiler On normal livestock, all the usual species exist in Valentia. Goats are more common than on other continents, but cows, oxen, chickens, pigs, and horses are all present too. As is expectable, hardier breeds are preferred in Rigel, while Zofia’s breeds grow fat and healthy on Mila’s bounty. Wild game is likewise abundant in Zofia, enough that commoners do not complain of the vast reserves of forests the nobles claim for themselves alone. Rigel on the other hand has far less frequent hunting due to less game and is much harsher on punishing common poachers. Pegasus are not native to Valentia, and instead must be imported from Macedon. They are expensive to bring over the seas, and as a result are quite rare given the long-distance voyage necessary. Likewise Pegasi mare’s milk and the various forms it takes is very expensive given the steeds don’t produce that much and are bred first and foremost for riding. Rigel’s environment has been ill-suited for Pegasi since the decline of Duma, and with Rigel’s lack of a great natural port must rely on Zofian trade to acquire Pegasi, at exorbitant prices. Zofia’s northern and central climes, as well as those of Rigel not too naturally inhospitable or corrupted, are conducive enough to Pegasi breeding. But unfortunately, in the lone century that has passed since Macedon’s founding and in which the first trade in Pegasi began with Zofia, Valentians have proven incapable so far of establishing their own Pegasi breeding programs. Lesser Dragons, related to the kinds which became Manaketes, but not as intelligent. They once populated Valentia in significant numbers, but have declined to all but extinction (95% lost) with few hopes of ever recovering due to the Mila-Duma War fighting for the dragon gods. They could have potentially been used as mounts like the wyverns of Macedon, but Mila and Duma forbade humans from interfering with the Lesser Dragons. Macedon, while willing to export some Pegasi, is not at all willing to export it’s crown military jewel. Nor does Valentia have any experience in breeding the wyverns even if they could get their hands on any. Griffons exist in Valentia and are regarded as legendary creatures, but are few in number, and reside isolated deep in the Rigelian (and Zofian) mountains, with a few more living in the heart of Valentia’s ancestral forests- which remain untouched by virtue of Mila’s bountiful blessings making clearing them unneeded. Raw Materials, Aquaculture, and Finances: Spoiler Timber is plentiful in Zofia, but mountains are fewer and generally not so blessed by Mila, so the most common building material is wood, though stone is fireproof and hence preferred. Rigel is home to geological activity and is filled with mountains, on top of bog iron, so its mineral deposits are great. While Rigel’s large forests of evergreens and hardier deciduous trees are fewer and often in remote and hard to harvest from areas, hence the greater number of stone structures. Swidden (slash and burn) agriculture has also bitten into a number of Rigel’s forests. Pigments for decoration likewise vary- natural dyes from plants and crushed insects are used in Zofia, while crushed minerals including such things as the rare lapis lazuli are used in Rigel. Aquaculture is well developed in Rigel, but not Zofia. Freshwater fisheries are blessed by Mila in Zofia and don’t deplete very easily at all, and the ocean is a boundless source of fish as well (particular since some of Mila’s blessings on Novis and the other islands spill into the nearby waters). On the other hand along the softer river and oceanic coastlines of Rigel (the majority of which are found in the eastern half), humans have developed fairly sophisticated aquaculture to compensate for their lack of agricultural output. On minerals and metals, Rigel is superior, but Zofia is not totally devoid of resources either. Rigel’s mountains, even when one doesn’t strike a vein of ore or minerals, are so numerous that even a low yield per square measurement unit can be productive if found across a large enough area. Rigel’s marshes also contain a great deal of bog iron, which can be extracted and used locally. Zofia’s great mountains are far fewer, but those that are present can contain mineral and ore deposits comparable to some of Rigel’s finest, though the gross production is less than of Rigel’s, and fears have existed through Zofian history of overusing the mines and running them dry. Mines that dig into the earth itself away from the great mountains are fairly common in Zofia. But in Rigel, the marshiness of the East means that it’s not long into the dig before the water table is hit and mines must take precautions to avoid mine flooding or poisoning the local water table. In the West, much of Rigel rests on some tough bedrock, which makes penetrating the earth a grueling task, rendered nearly impossible once Duma’s blessings had faded. In monetary policy, the standards of the premodern real world hold. Among those who produce products for a living, their produce consists in itself as form of money- crops and livestock, and artisanal crafts to generally name the basics. Copper coinage forms the backbone of the Zofian economy, while Rigel uses silver as it’s standard. The difference is owing to the general metallic wealth of the two countries. Lacking as extensive a silver output as Rigel (for most of its history), copper is the standard currency so that silver and gold are not subject to too heavy a demand. Rigel on the other hand has so much copper, that it’s value is quite low (though the lowly transactions of day to day existence still use it), so silver, which is still plentiful but not so crazy abundant, is the primary coinage. In terms of the ratio of silver to gold, in Rigel gold is typically valued more than silver, but in Zofia, silver is frequently of greater value than gold, owing to Zofian gold deposits exceeding its silver deposits. In the system thus established, Rigel exports large quantities of copper and a more controlled flow of silver to Zofia, in return, Zofia sends foodstuffs and other agricultural products to Rigel, as well as a regulated flow of gold from time to time. Fiscal policy on both sides of the Great Sluice has had its ups and its downs. Neither Duma nor Mila care about the devilish details of macro and microeconomics and finances. Both countries have had rulers who let the currency be debased for the sake of expanding their own money supply and profligate spending, even if it hurts the overall economy. Both have had men who let themselves be devoured by loans, and fraudsters who tried to pull the wool over the eyes of kings, nobles, clergy, merchants, and peasants all alike. Yet each has had those who truly worked to build solid fiscal standards for their realms and their lives, and at different times each country’s financiers have been the creditors and the debtors to the other one. Regional Population Distribution: Spoiler Central Zofia is the most densely populated regions, with the land producing much of Zofia’s boundless food, and the coasts hauling in loads of fish. The Northwest was once more populated than the Central region overall, but the onset of the Bronze Age saw the population decline there and the depopulation led to the forests reclaiming land which had once been taken from them. The southwest tip is backwater by Zofian standards, and the mountainous northeast is as populated as it is solely by virtue of Mila’s presence. Rigel’s population center was originally in the west, hence the construction of Rigel Castle. But by the year 250, the population was clearly shifting eastwards due to its less mountainous (but more marshy) geography. The beginning of the Bronze Age impeded this shift, as the weakening of kingly and godly authority in the eastern lands increased instability in the region, and the corrupted Duma Faithful exploited this. The result was a serious population decline in the east, with some lucky souls able to flee west, thus leading to a temporary increase in West Rigel’s population. East Zofia underwent a similar decline and migration west on a smaller scale when the desert-savannah (Sahel-ish) began to turn to pure desert. On The Four "Traveler" Classes: Spoiler On bandits, certain artisans, sailors, and merchants- these are the social groups which constantly cross the border. Bandits find their origins either amongst the disaffected Zofian peasantry, or the unemployed laboring masses of Rigel. Together, the form an undying threat to Rigelian and Zofian societies. In times of chaos, bandits flourish in Rigel, and some carve out their own domains or choose to fight for the Kingship or a grand noble position- only a small handful have won the latter, and none the former. Yet when a strong monarch rules Rigel, the bandits are ferociously subdued- partly to keep the army active. In Zofia, monarchal and or noble disregard for the peripheries, ends up allowing bandits to flourish there, and the savannah-desert too was subject too to many thieves. The archipelago of the southeast, filled with little islands suited to piracy. Sailors were like bandits largely from poor backgrounds, and were the freest of the classes, skirting the land border and being able to travel the entire world by sea instead. Yet the fortunes of the sea are fickle, and thus the sailor’s fates were fickle too. Although Rigel has some natural ports, the more rugged coastlines to the east, combined with its lower population density, have rendered it much less suited for shipping and trade than Zofia. On the other two groups that are transient, merchants have the greatest quality of life easily- provided a common bandit or wicked elite doesn’t kill them. The “certain artisans” which flourish are those that produce luxury goods, and who prove to be the weakness of many a Zofian wealthy person. In an effort to maintain their supply of quality luxury goods, the Zofian aristocracy tried to entail particular families or schools of artisans into their service- which such artisans always feared for the impoverishment it’d bring. While Rigel was much less of a market for luxury goods, at least its nobles generally could always be relied on to pay (it is not unheard of that a Zofian aristocrat falls into debt for love of luxury and dislike for the work of estate management) and never threatened to bind the artisans to their estates for all perpetuity. Artisans of more useful trades never grew as fat as the merchants or luxury artisans, but found a good living particularly in Rigel. As the income from the land was poor (on top of having a slow rate of return on investment- something which Zofian nobles didn’t mind so much due to the fruitfulness of the soil), Rigelian nobles did not develop the societal loathing for the trades and business which the Zofian ones did. Instead, to supplement their agrarian incomes, Rigelian nobles would patronize useful artisans and also merchants and try to establish links with them which would hopefully further the material gain of the both of them. It helped that some Rigelian nobles were themselves former merchants moving up in the world. That was a practice the Zofian monarchy and aristocrats undertook, but with greater discretion- very rarely granting sons to merchants, and much more often daughters, who would not pass their noble status onto their husbands nor children, but who nonetheless gave the family a rarefied genealogy- a societal boon. In exchange, the Zofian aristocrat who gave away his daughter would receive an influx of wealth from the merchant- and without wealth, one cannot live the lifestyle demanded of by aristocratic society. To give a daughter to a non-noble was a less of a stigma in most Zofian noble circles than not having the money to live according to your status. 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Interdimensional Observer Posted August 30, 2017 Author Share Posted August 30, 2017 Some more pieces: Roads, Transportation, Communication: Spoiler On communication and transportation, Zofia and Rigel are alike premodern in their systems. The horse and the ox are the primary beasts of burden and transportation. Rare Pegasi are kept as pets or used as emergency/elite transporters and thus don’t help the general society. Pegasi can bear less weigh than Wyverns (though they fly faster which makes them superior messengers), which Macedon reserves for itself, thus denying Valentia the superior winged creature for moving cargo. Carriages (no shock-absorbing springs- so expect a bumpy ride), and wagons do exist. The postal system is fairly primitive, with private messenger businesses doing the work for the masses most of the time, and the Faithfuls, nobles, militaries, and royals using their own systems and personal couriers. In both kingdoms, the main roads are focused on connecting royal estates, major religious sites, military installations, and the major towns and capital to each other. Some nobles expend significant cuts of their personal fortunes to build and renovate roads in their fiefs for the same connections as those above. Roads connecting places to villages (those not build around the roads), particularly villages to other villages, are arterial and sclerotic. The most common surface material is no surface at all- the earth itself pounded down by human traffic. Actual constructed roads commonly used gravel, logs, or even tar, but the greatest road projects used a somewhat inferior version of ancient Rome’s fabled roads- sand, then gravel, and then a layer of solid rock on top. Canals to connect the rivers are beyond the level of technology currently had by Zofia and Rigel, but East Rigel and Central Zofia make much use of rivers regardless. As for the two countries and their differences in the road systems, much of this can be explained in terms of geography. Zofia has terrain which makes road construction a breeze, though in practice the road quality is often less than expected. If a lack of proper roads leads to food spoilage before it could get to market, Zofia has enough food that some waste is generally tolerable. The generally de The Zofia Desert and mountainous regions in the Northeast alone served as major hindrances to road construction. So the former had no roads that lasted for long, but the latter was en route to Mila’s Temple and thus the roads were constantly being maintained at the expense of the Mila Faithful or by donations from the wealthy and the monarch. Rigel’s road network is better developed due to stricter standards and greater governmental support as per Duma’s demands for an efficient Rigel. But it is not necessarily superior due to the fact that the geography it runs over is often worse. Duma’s blessings of strength grant the road workers the power they need to make Rigel traversable (and makes the foot messengers very capable). But once the roads are done, one must still put up with steep inclines, precipitous drops, and little can be done to keep the roads and bridges built over and near the marshlands from sinking in. Some military notes focused on the aristocratic-common divide: Spoiler In the military structures, both Rigel and Zofia underwent several periods of military changes through the Ages of the Dragon Gods. While I could discuss a variety of topics such as equipment, tactics, the average level of training for soldiers, etc. I will focus on one topic- the role of the mass army vs. the elite forces in contributing to warfare and its relation to society as a whole. The Mila-Duma War resulted in a heavy depopulation of Valentia, the records indicating upwards of 50%-75% of the prewar population perished. While not as severe as the virtual extinction and near extinction of the Lesser Dragons and Griffons, this was obviously civilization collapsing in its effects. With the populations so devastated by war, by the end of the ~50 year conflict, it became impossible to form a true mass army due to the fear of humanity itself being eradicated. The focus instead shifted onto elite vs. elite battles, with the untrained/poorly trained mass in the armies being small and limited. So it was that in the early Silver Age of Valentia under the Dragon Gods it was the royalty and nobilities who came to be the sole possessors of the rights to war and the essential military units. The smallness of battle at this time helped contribute to Leonsys Rigel Dumason so quickly becoming the first King of Rigel. Yet over time, the population of Valentia rebounded from collapse, and the growth of the masses began to erode the importance of nobles as a fighting force in actual warfare. They clung to their political power and their prominence in the military high command however, not wishing to cede it to the lower ranks of society (more so in Zofia than Rigel- where titles of nobility were more freely distributed and non-noble service was acceptable, especially in the periods between the dynasties where old titles meant nothing). This was the stage which Rigel was in during the civil war following the end of the Dumason dynasty. The onset of the Bronze Age saw a reversal of the changes the prosperity of the Silver Age had brought. The westward population shifts of the Bronze Age brought initially the decline of the nobility’s military value to its highest point, and efforts were made by those deemed radicals in both countries to break the military power of the nobility once and for all. But once the population adjusted to this migration and then began to decline, the nobility experienced a resurgence and the mass army waned again. The population never sunk to anywhere near the late and early post Mila-Duma War lows, and the decline was never as sharply felt overall, so the nobility never reclaimed quite the central importance it had at then. But in the struggle for military importance vs. the mass, the nobility had regained a firm logistical upper hand on the battlefield, which even if not surpassing the value of the mass (that is arguable), was close enough that the nobility could quench any remote hopes of the mass that it would cede power to them. In Rigel, this shift occurred in the later years of the civil war after the Patros dynasty had collapsed, and was furthered once Alexander Rudolf came to power and the era of Zofian cultural hegemony blossomed. Sorcery and Witchcraft Spoiler Sorcery and witchcraft were real crimes in Valentia- as one would expect in a world with magic. One needn’t be in a Faithful or serve a kingdom to use magic, but one always needed to maintain an appearance of repute. Given magic’s power, petty and serious crimes alike involving it were punished as severely, if not more so, than ones of the same sort (theft, assault, murder) of which were done without it. Rural peripheral communities tended to fear magic more and were the center of great sorcerer hunts. Towns, cities and temples where mages got their training and were thus much more prevalent and resulted in the people were used to them there. Hexes, curses, possessions, interacting with Terrors, harming Lesser Dragons and other wild animals, creating alchemical life, and the dark arts as a whole were all forbidden. Blasphemy was its own crime in Valentia, but relatively few social bohemians were ever tried for blasphemy, most of the time it was tried alongside another crime such as those magical ones above- when a blasphemer had the real potential to wreck havoc on society. Magic required no access to conventional weaponry- all one needed to do significant harm was the life force and knowledge to do so. And it’s much harder to deprive a professional mage of their arsenal than it is a professional knight. A mage could also inflict more harm and from a greater distance than a mercenary ever could. Hence the strong laws against the misuse of magic were necessary. Magic was more dangerous in Valentia too, for unlike on other continents, the use of tomes and staffs as batteries/catalysts for magic was less developed, with the focus instead being on channeling magic in all its power directly through one’s body. The danger of this practice was that it was easier to kill oneself with magic or go insane by it, and both instances could involve others getting hurt Why did Valentia take this path? That is not certain, but perhaps it’s related to the gods themselves not using mediums for channeling their power. Eventually, after the Age of the Dragon Gods had ended, Valentia did switch over to using tomes and staffs, and the unique arts of old Valentia faded away and ultimately became extinct. Some notes on gender relations: Spoiler On gender relations at the elite (royal, religious, noble and non-noble wealthy) level, Zofian women tended to have less freedom than their male counterparts, seen as little more than tools to forge elite marriage alliances. Some widows exercised independent power, and females could exert great influence on their male counterparts, but it was not the same as Rigel. Rigel, to be fair to Zofia, began as patriarchal, and it never became truly matriarchal, but during and after the reign of the great Queen Parvat of the Dumason lineage, women began to move towards equality on the elite and lower levels. It became possible for women to serve in the regular army and hold noble titles on in their own right without the slightest need of a man. Queen Aria marked a second incredible female on the throne of Rigel, and with her women received a second era of great societal advancement. Unfortunately, the Bronze Age saw the institution of Zofian values in Rigelian society, and the independence and freedom of females faded, which Rudolf II did not bring back. Divorce was possible in both countries and by both sexes, but it could be done much more freely in Rigel. Yet in most cases of fault with want for material compensation, which often meant the man was at fault, the woman could expect less in Rigel than in Zofia due to her presumed ability to support herself. Women in Rigel could hold property in their own right in the Silver Age, though the Bronze Age saw this right curtailed. Zofian women generally could not hold property in their right, unless as part of a dowry, or bequeathed unto them on the death of a male relative, but clever women and loving wives could and did advise their husbands as the popular tales told. In the Faithfuls, outside of the Oracles (there weren’t any in Zofia due to Mila’s disapproval of the sacrifice it involved), women were less numerous and prominent than men in the Duma Faithful, and it was the secular government which proved to be the better realm for women elite. It was just the opposite in Zofia, where Mila, herself a woman, had far more female clergy than men, even if the men occupied more of the highest offices. Nunneries and convents greatly outnumbered monasteries, and when a man had too many daughters, he would offer them to the Mila Faithful. While elite men with daughter too few for their ambitions would do everything to keep them from joining the Mila Faithful, unless they hoped to ingratiate themselves with the Faithful and earn its favor. On the commoner side of the equation, there was too much work to be done to shut the female out of the workforce. Though their exact tasks may have differed, both male and female alike among the peasantry in Zofia and Rigel did essential farm work. The scarcity of arable land in Rigel meant that the woman could not always stay home with the children if they lacked land, and could spend long days away from their husbands, bringing with them only those children able to work with them or who they needed to nurse. The man would care for their sons and bring them to work once they passed out of infancy if the work their mother was undertaking was consider specifically women’s work. Communal childcare services took took form, and it became a job among some women to spend their days caring for other people’s children, like them poor and unable to earn much of a living. The sliver lining was that because the man laborer and female laborer did not necessarily work together, if the man was down on his luck for work, or if the woman was, the other could support them if they still had a job. The plentitude of fertile land in Zofia meant man and woman worked together at home with the children, the overall family situation actually being better than in Rigel, for the poor that is. Divorce, while accessible at the commoner level, was not so important, particularly in Rigel among the unskilled “surplus” mass, for the commoners had fewer assets to divvy up. If a married couple no longer sought to be together, one of them would get up and leave when they felt like it (such abandonment could be terrible for the other and dependents though). Common law marriage, that of cohabitation and sexual relations without the formal ceremony of marriage (an institution that was civil in Rigel, religious in Zofia), was then common after this informal separation. The classes between unskilled laborer and peasant on the one hand, and the elite on the other, tended to be a hybrid of the two groups. They wished to be like the upper classes, but lived with the reality of not being able to do exactly that. There were a few voices among them stressed their gender roles as being superior to the other groups. On Noble Estates: Spoiler Noble estates in Zofia place populace at a premium- land quality being factors of less importance (but still having some) due to Mila’s blessings. With the land so fertile, it’s a matter of having enough hands to clear the field, harvest the abundant crops before they rot, and manage the livestock. Quantity of land is between quantity and populace in terms of value. Serfdom was enacted at times in Zofian history by the nobility to weaken the power of labor and secure a guaranteed base of workers. However, a number of monarchs attempted land reform of varying scales and successes, intended if not so much to help the Zofian peasant, as to break the power of the nobility. Private land ownership when serfdom wanes is thus common in Zofia (some common lands do exist though), but the classic issue of partible inheritance (more common in the north and west) means it has its problems. And primogeniture (more common to the south and east) forces the second sons to seek land on their own or leave home and take up non-agrarian labor; and the first son is not guaranteed to be a good farmer. Rigellian estates however are focused first and foremost on quality, with much of Rigel mountainous or marshy. A scarcity of arable land means that there is a large “surplus” population that can be cheaply hired as labor. During the Silver Age, Duma’s blessings made the Rigelians very physically strong, so while you still needed help, it wasn’t as in demand as it was during the Bronze Age, reducing labor’s bargaining power further. Quantity of land is again the middle factor, as only nothing but infertile soil is bad, but owning a lot of low quality soil is better than nothing. Nobles had to be efficient enough with their estates to keep in line with the ideals put forth by Duma. Yet since inheritance from one person to a relative was uncertain due to meritocracy, this bred some selfishness and encouraged nobles to overwork their laborers to maximize their gains in the certain present, as opposed to emphasizing what would be best for the less certain future. Much of Rigel’s finest land can be found along the border with Zofia, where the Great Sluice provides a constant supply of freshwater to irrigate crops as it does to Zofia as well. Private land ownership is weak, with what land not belonging to noble estates being instead shared and worked on communally. East Rigel does have a stronger tradition of private ownership than West Rigel due to a history of a lower population density and relatively higher soil quality- but of course West Rigel was dominant. What land is held privately by peasants, is inherited based on what the head of household- male or female- decides. If there is a dispute for some reason over inheritance, it is brought to local officials, or the Duma Faithful or an oracle to arbitrate. On Immigration: Spoiler The result of these differences in estates and the value of labor is that Rigel has frequently seen a population leak into Zofia when the Great Sluice is traversable, and is particularly heavy in times of Rigelian chaos. These Rigelian migrants, unskilled laborers for the most part, but sometimes skilled as well, are commonly looked down upon by the local populace. The discrimination these migrants face include confinement to separate village quarters and the outlawing of intermarriage between them and native Zofians- policies enforced by local laws. Yet many nobles hire Rigelian migrants without much distaste because it lets them undercut the bargaining power of the Zofian peasantry. The border region in the west is particularly discriminatory, since it rests right against Rigel- the further south one goes, the more Rigelians are portrayed as crude beings of fiction and fantasy in folk perceptions, but the sharp hatred the northern Zofians feel towards real Rigelians fade. Efforts have been made by Zofian and Rigelian rulers alike to stem the flow of migrants at times, but the success has varied (drowned bodies have been found in the Great Sluice once in a while). The Mila Faithful too has tried at points to exclude anyone who was suspected of being Rigelian, or worse, an illegitimate chimaera.The Rigelian population leak south has also made the development of East Rigel difficult, as more often than not rather than go east as some Rigelian monarchs have encouraged, the masses go south. Amid the frequent mass migration of Rigelians to Zofia, there is something of a smaller but significant reverse flow as well. In times of Rigelian chaos, some Zofians migrate north to seek their fortunes serving in the Rigelian factions, hoping to gamble on a good race horse who’ll win the Kingship, or a swell noble position. Of course, most end up as fodder on Rigelian lances or choose bad bets. And to compete in Rigel, many Zofians in the Silver Age, now deprived of their lush bounty of food across the Sluice, must apostatize and replace foremost reverence for Mila with that of Duma- his blessings necessary to rival native Rigelians who were baptized in his strength. The Zofian bureaucrats on the other hand have a better chance in Zofia. When the Zofian aristocracy is arrogant, stagnant, and refuses to yield offices to lesser aristocrats or those base creatures from the lower classes (not so much the peasants as merchants, intellectuals, local elite, and the wealthier trades), they turn to Rigel. These individuals though not free from discrimination in Rigel completely, know Duma will accept talent regardless of origin. It is rare that a Zofian migrant would ever arise to the status of a the highest military posts, or to the finest dukedoms and baronies, and none ever became King. But there were real successes by Zofians who joined Rigel, enough that while always a minority in the overall elite (yet the provincial elite structures have sometimes seen near or even actual Zofian majorities in rare cases), continued to be enough that a non-negligible number of “middle” class Zofians all the way into Rudolf II’s era continued to seek employment in Rigel’s service. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
akjshdfv Posted September 9, 2017 Share Posted September 9, 2017 As someone who enjoys and is interested in history I must ask: are you a historian or plan to be one? You put much detail that I've noticed textbooks have so I was just curious. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Interdimensional Observer Posted September 14, 2017 Author Share Posted September 14, 2017 On 9/8/2017 at 9:05 PM, Ehesister said: As someone who enjoys and is interested in history I must ask: are you a historian or plan to be one? You put much detail that I've noticed textbooks have so I was just curious. I already have a History BA. I'm working on an MA in World History at the moment. My future from there is uncertain, but I surely hope to find some job in the history profession. I need to read more I think to improve my level of detail here, but what can I say? Video games too are addictive. As for my sources of inspiration for the details- I reach across the world and try to include whatever I find interesting. As history is blurry, I use a lot of exceptions and less than absolute language like "generally". Now for today's contribution- a metric ton of religion! A quick word on pre-Dragon God Valentian religions: Spoiler Coexisting with the Mila and Duma Faithfuls, were ancestral religions that had existed in Valentia prior to the coming of the dragon gods. These religions had lost much of their integrity with the rise of the Mila and Duma Faithfuls, but they endured in the local folk traditions, and colored regional variations of the Faiths. Rigel’s Oracular tradition had its origins in pre-Faithful religion, the stonework of the Lost Treescape is another part of this ancient religious past, and numerous caves later convert to Faithful use, contain archaeological evidence of use (backed by the nearby folklore) by these early religions. Origins of the Mila and Duma Faithfuls: Spoiler The origins of the Mila and Duma Faithfuls go back to the Golden Age, when the first humans were awed by the dragon gods and dedicated their lives to them. Initially, this proto-Faithful involved the worship of both Mila and Duma. But over time, as the gods spent less time together and began preaching increasingly separate doctrines, and the Faithful of Valentia too began to tear itself apart. The Faithful of Valentia contained members who wanted to keep unity, but also others who adamantly stood by the words of their favored deity and egged them not to yield to reconciliation with their wrong sibling. The Mila-Duma War shattered the Faithful of Valentia, and the dragon gods made the Irreconcilables their religious elite in what became the Mila and Duma Faithfuls. Yet some of the ecumenical voices endured over the ~50 years of war, and they continued operating in a defunct shell of the Faithful of Valentia trying to bring peace, despite outright rejection by Duma, and nothing but talk of sympathy from Mila. When the gods, their generals, their masses, and even their religious elite grew weary of war, this Faithful of Valentia was granted one last duty. It was through the meditation of the FoV that the peace treaty between Mila and Duma was made. When the war ended and the treaty split Valentia in two. The Mila and Duma Faithfuls were officially recognized, and the Faithful of Valentia was declared officially dead. Mila and Duma appointed some of the FoV’s voices onto their respective Faithfuls, to counterbalance the Irreconcilables, who by this point had been discredited in interfaith matters due to the costly war they had helped cause. Mila and Duma forbade their peoples from persecuting and forcing the conversion of those of the opposite faith. When issues first arose concerning foreign religions, such as those of Archanea, Mila and Duma agreed that tolerance should be extended to them and that they be permitted to worship as they wish and even build small houses of worship, provided they observed general Zofian/Rigelian customs and did not persecute Valentians. Yet as the division of Valentia suggests, there was not total religious harmony. The Irreconcilables (which by this point comprised about 90% of all in both Faithfuls) might have lost any control over interfaith diplomacy, but, as sanctioned by their gods, they held power over most of the rest of the Mila and Duma Faithfuls. Mila and Duma each concluded a concordat with their respective kingdom, declaring the Faithful of Mila was the state religion of Zofia, and the Faithful of Duma the state religion of Rigel. The monarchs were considered to be the leading children of Mila and Duma respectively, and they were the secular representatives of the gods above them. The two institutions, religious and secular, were kept officially separate and independent of each other, but were nonetheless intertwined. The monarch and secular officials had little say over religious appointments, just as religious officials had little say over secular ones, but when there was dispute and no one could rely on the monarch or Pontifex/Patriarch or more ideally the god intervening in their favor, compromise could be reached. When a dispute occurred wholly within one form of institution, sometimes the other institution would be asked to mediate, provided the higher ups approved of this and the other institution was willing. On Holy Scripture Spoiler Overflowing with zeal and purpose, the Faithfuls began to construct official religious texts for their new kingdoms. The Teachings of the Divine Mother Mila, and the Decrees of the Divine Father Duma became the basis of the Faithfuls. These consisted of words, writings, and actions of Mila and Duma going back into the Golden Age, and had an addendum of rituals and prayers the deity approved. Accompanying these texts were hagiographies, religious writings by all of Aquinas-like intellectuals, Rumi-like mystics, Kabbalah-like esoterica, and commentaries on practically any text by learned religious scholars. Mila and Duma permitted some embellishment in these texts, allowing edges to be dulled, allegory and symbolism to be added, certain connotations being favored, but did not like the wholesale concealment of truths. One embellishment which would prove to be important, is that they did not hide their mortal nature, but did allow for their Archanean origins to be wiped out. Mila and Duma let themselves become known as gods for the sake of Zofia and Rigel, and because they themselves desired to be gods- to create and nurture on a grand scale. And because Mila and Duma lived through to the Twlight of the Dragon Gods, they continually performed more acts and spoke divine words. In short, three major categories of religious literature emerged in the Mila and Duma Faithfuls. First, the Teachings/Decrees of Mila/Duma, which attained finished canonical forms by ~25 VC, and contained the acts, words, and lives of Mila from the Golden Age to the end of the Mila-Duma War. Then there were the Clerical Writings- the ever-expanding mass of texts by and about humans. And lastly, there were the Living Words of Mila/Duma- the ever growing record of things Mila/Duma had said and done since the end of the War. When Mila or Duma could be consulted, their words said on the spot would outweigh the authority of any of these three literatures. Although there were instances where Mila and Duma had humans challenge their words as contradicting that of the literature, and Mila/Duma sometimes conceded to the critique and let the literature overrule them. When Mila/Duma’s word was unobtainable, which was the vast majority of the time- the gods could only be in one place at once, and spent much time of each day in prayer- the texts were then turned to. Priority fell on the Teachings/Decrees, followed by the Living Words, and then the Clerical Writings. Though alternative views did elevate the Living Words and even some of the Clerical Writings above the Teachings/Decrees. Hierarchical structure of the Faithfuls: Spoiler The actual structure of the Faithfuls placed the dragon gods themselves at the top, unrestrained by anyone else and the center of the faith. Below them was a lone human leader- a Pontifex in Rigel, and a Patriarch (sometimes Matriarch) in Zofia. Below these were Sages (also called Saints), Archbishops, Bishops, Abbots and Abbesses, Priests and Clerics. And parallel to this whole structure not really a part of it were the Oracles of Rigel, and mystics and non-standard clerical members of the Faithful. Accompanying each official barring the lowest of the positioned clergy- the Priests and Clerics- was a council. These councils consisted of the aggregate mass of individuals directly below them- so Archbishops (and Sages) for the Pontifex/Patriarch, Bishops for Archbishops, Priests/Clerics and Abbots and Abbesses for the Bishops, and the mass of monks and nuns for Abbots and Abbesses. In the Duma Faithful, the councils played a mostly advisory role to their superiors, whereas in the Mila Faithful they held greater power and could override their superiors. There were bureaucracies on top of all this, consisting of appointed officials serving in a second capacity, and non-appointed officials selected freely by whom they served. The councils provided women a strong position in the Mila Faithful, for clerics and nuns always outnumbered priests and monks and their combined weight could check the men who dominated the Bishoprics, Archbishoprics, and the Patriarchy/Matriarchy. The bureaucracy was almost as good for women, the sexes were more equal there, but women still held enough power that if they threatened to step aside from their duties, the bureaucracy would be terribly understaffed. The Sages/Saints of Zofia featured many women, for the largely honorific nature of the position spared it from the contest of the sexes. The Sages/(or Living Saints as they were also called) were a small handful of individuals who attained notoriety in some form and then received the title from the Faithful. They had few real responsibilities, being mostly an honorific title and were free to do as they wished, including holding a second title. Being on the Council of Sages did come with the perk of rather easy access to Mila/Duma, and having the right to advise the Patriarch/Pontifex and other officials. The Archbishops were assigned to the various religious provinces of the kingdom, and bishops were assigned to the subdivisions within them. Abbots and abbesses tended to the monasteries and convents while priests and clerics worked the lowly shrines and did much of the day to day worship with the lay folk. The gods in their health toured their some of their realms at least every few years, and while on tour, were quite accessible to the masses. At Duma Tower/Temple and Mila’s Temple, the gods were less accessible and more rarefied, but nonetheless made time for public appearances. The individuals who catered to the gods on a personal basis consisted of ranking officials like the Patriarch/Matriarch/Pontifex, and low servants who had shown themselves to be not delinquents. Mila expressed a preference for females in her personal retinue and staffed her Temple predominantly with them, while Duma was less vocally slanted the opposite way, but did treat his Oracles well. As they degenerated, the gods began to feel their weight and started touring and appearing publicly less and less. Reluctantly, the Faithfuls ended up having to pick up the burden the gods left for them. There were structures and means in place to mediate disputes, and to appoint officials without the god’s direct approval, but it was a bit worrisome that the gods weren’t so available. Yet everyone blissfully assumed the gods were well and had simply changed their form of guidance with some good reason behind it. The end of the second reign of Perocles in Rigel, when Duma let the king spend his final year inside Duma Temple, was most certainly influenced by his own growing weariness. But as the god of strength, dedicated to making Rigel the land of strength, Duma refused to speak of his weakness. Unlike the Patros dynasty, he hadn’t the ability to retire while alive, without him, Rigel would lose its vitality. He never pursued a way of preserving it following his death, because he never liked thinking about it. When the 50 year civil war began, Duma issued a critique of why this was happening, and then followed it with a decree identical to those he had launched at the start of the prior Rigel civil wars declaring what he sought in a new order and the neutrality of the Duma Faithful. Duma then relocated to Duma Tower and remained there before undertaking a tour of his realms. The tour however was cut short by Duma, and subsequent tours were also cut short, with Duma providing few words as to why he was doing this. He also seemed to be forgetful at times, asking to visit places he had just passed through on the tours. 33 years into the civil war, Duma could see no end to it despite it nearing double the length of the last civil war. It was at this time he stopped his tours completely, restricting himself to the Duma Peninsula and Northwest Rigel near and at the capital. And by the time the civil war had finally ceased, Duma had become totally removed from the outside world, living inside his Temple and Tower alone. On differing views within the Faithfuls (and some discussion on Faithful composition and Centralization and Decentralization): Spoiler When multiple schools of textual interpretation emerged in Zofia and Rigel, the gods permitted this and deviations on worship within boundaries. Duma was not afraid of verbally chastising those who went too far out of line, even sending in his anti-Terror/heretics military unit to put them down if need be. Mila, though more tolerant, was willing to take soft action when necessary, which included revoking official recognition or support until the objectionable branch withered away or conceded, and also the sending of a metaphorical army of orthodox Faithful to argue and preach the good message to the people of the wrongful one. The Mila Faithful was formally more decentralized than the Duma Faithful, but given Zofia’s easy terrain, it was not hard for influence from the center to spill out into the rest of the country. The Duma Faithful favored centralized authority, particularly when secular civil war demanded the Faithful stay above it all and maintain some order in the kingdom, but geography restricted the actual power of the Faithful in many cases and particularly in peacetime. Besides highest office being restricted to aesthetics, seniority was the primary indicator of authority in the Mila Faithful, followed by their merit. In the Duma Faithful, merit held the greatest clout besides aestheticism, seniority was secondary, but given older people had more experience, they often occupied the higher offices. The Mila Faithful had a mixed history of favoring the nobility for high ecclesiastical office, Mila did not approve of impure sons and daughters of aristocrats stealing from pure peasant descendants the offices they deserved. But Mila couldn’t oversee everything, and saw nothing once she closed herself off in her temple in her degeneracy. The argument, so nobles spun it, was that they were of a purer stock whose secular duty best aligned with what was required of high religious ones. Though noblesse oblige and the Medieval idea that each group in society had a particular function to perform was widespread in Zofia, it contradicted the egalitarian side of Mila’s teachings that all were equally her children and equally blessed. Adding that secular standards for office held no water in her Faithful, it was on these grounds which Mila rejected the aristocratic argument, and rejected it the same when someone invoked a different background when they argued for an office Mila did not see them worthy of. Rigelians and those of mixed parentage, on top the rare Archanean convert, also endured sometimes discrimination in the Mila Faithful which she disapproved of. The Duma Faithful’s centralization emphasis would haunt it in the Bronze Age, when the corruption of the Faithful by the heretics Jedah ended up leading took over. Though at the middle and lowest levels of the Duma Faithful many good souls endured in the West, the East Rigel branch was wholly rotted out and the elite of the west were firmly in Jedah’s hands. It is saying something that Nuibaba effectively splintered away from Jedah, but Jedah pragmatically just opted not to crush her right away- he would just keep her from attaining ultimate victory. It is also worth adding that the Bronze Age saw infection of Zofian culture into the Duma Faithful just as it had the rest of Rigelian society. Hence, the healthy western half of the Duma Faithful adapted its dress, rituals, and even its teachings somewhat. Jedah welcomed this- he felt it neutered opposition to his authority. On Faithful property and landholdings: Spoiler On property and physical living conditions, the Faithfuls were both promised by their respective kingdoms the right to adequate land. Both Faithfuls had holy sites, which expanded little by little as new miraculous acts or saints arose and were officially recognized. Land tended to be held in perpetuity, as one would expect from a religious organization that thought itself eternal. Monasteries and Convents were expected to be self-sufficient- able to feed and clothe themselves without the need for outside help. Temples, shrines and the like were encouraged to move towards independence, but being staffed by far fewer and busier people they naturally required assistance from the surrounding communities. Donations from the rich few and poor many were rarely lacking to preserve the institutions, since they were an integral part of the community. On top of religion and ceremony, they: educated, took care of orphans and sheltered all, provided medical and hospice care, gave food to the community if they could, served a public meeting place, and the Duma Faithful maintained anti-Terror military units to combat the stray monsters that roamed across Rigel before even the Golden Age; and of course there were other occasional jobs too. Outside of the buildings of greatest and great importance and Oracular sites, the property of the Duma Faithful was malleable- the monarch and other political elite could buy them from the Faithful according to its true value. If this was done, then the buyer could demolish whatever was there once it had been cleared out. Duma was against being too obsessed with holy places- a place itself is not innately holy, it is made holy by other means. The cost of such a purchase was that the buyer had to in advance have solid plans for what was to be done with the displace community and its goods, if not, the Duma Faithful could reject the purchase. The Duma Faithful lived anywhere they could- they weren’t selective about their sites, beyond trying to avoid corridors of conflict when the civil wars broke out. Owing to the flexibility in the Rigelian elite, the Duma Faithful didn’t work to built strong relationships with particular individuals, knowing their families would not necessarily endure in power. This turnover denied the elite the authority and security to defy the Duma Faithful all too much. The Mila Faithful liked the Sahel/Savannah of the Mila desert for aesthetic contemplation, but in the rest of the lush country they owned plenty of rich and fertile land. Some monasteries and nunneries (yes the women farmed the land) were net exporters of food, and were actually among the best ran of Zofian estates. During the time of serfdom, the Mila Faithful accepted the practice and bought or received as a donation their own serfs- or they were allowed to borrow them. The Mila Faithful rarely conceded its rich and plentiful landholdings, which enraged the nobility and actually led to a number of episodes where enraged nobles forcefully seized land with no compensation at all. Yet these episodes were not the norm, the Mila Faithful instead developed a (controversial) cozy relationship with the local elite. With the Faithful and the nobility doing each other favors, competition over land and workers was avoidable, buttressed by Mila’s bountiful blessings. On Faithful attitudes towards Art: Spoiler On art, Mila was quite accepting of an array of opinions and styles. She praised modesty and humbleness, but also found rich aesthetics acceptable as a form of devotion. Mila’s personal preference was an idealized blend of nature and architectural form with function. Gaudy and garish displays of gems and gold everywhere were not in her tastes, though she liked more subtle integration of precious metals, stones and jewels that didn’t overpower things. Palatial estates that loomed over their natural landscapes and reeked of hedonism were condemned by her, and true Mila devotees among the elite instead invested their wealth into temples, shrines and the like, while abiding by Mila’s guidelines for their estates. The use of rare materials in the items of Mila Faithful ritual were approved of by Mila as a way of drawing in the masses and elite alike towards the faith, once allured with earthly wealth, they would hopefully come to learn of spiritual wealth. She accepted donations of wealth as sign of devotion. In her degeneration, Mila, and Duma too, became unable to enforce their guidelines, and things began to tilt towards increasing decadence. As has been said, Duma was iconoclastic originally. He spurned all decor in his religious sites and demanded no statues be made of him. Yet over time, and not due to degeneration, Duma did yield and allow humans to depict him and decorate his shrines and temples. However, Duma remained strict- no extravagance, keep things simple, fairly practical, realistic. For the sake of enforcing this, a group in the Faithful complied some guidelines for Duma art, which the god reviewed and amended appropriately before declaring it valid. Gold, silver, gems, rare woods, and stone that was too colorful (such as certain strains of granite) were banned from use with judicious exceptions- common metals and minerals like copper and ocher were preferred. Geometric designs were permitted, as were sparse and realistic human figures and scenery- but no frilly flowers or human figures with too much work put into their clothing. For emotional portrayals, keep it raw and honest. No concealing a beheading, no adding falsehoods to a grieving scene for drama- life doesn’t hide the bad nor add embellishment to it. He accepted donations of wealth, but warned that bribery won’t get you everywhere, action and personal development mattered more. On Pilgrimage, Relics, Ritual, and Saint worship: Spoiler Pilgrimages to the holy sites- Duma Tower, Mila’s Temple, great religious buildings elsewhere, and sites of miracles and religious history national and local alike were prevalent. Mila had no qualms with pilgrimages at all, she encouraged it as way towards understanding good, and asked the rich to be generous to all they passed by en route to their holy destination. Duma advised against extravagance in pilgrimages and thought the practice could not replace true good action and good faith. He also found extreme penitence like kneeling in prayer every step of the way while on pilgrimage a bit stupid, but approved of a more restrained measure of it. Duma disliked an obsession with ritual, relics, saints, holy places- the rituals themselves weren’t holy, nor were the relics, people or places. Holiness was innate to none of them, things became holy and became holy for a reason- they were in line with his ideals, and if they were truly magically holy and not just symbolically, it was because he blessed them. If he wished, he could strip away their power at will. One should not be obsessed with material things and persons, ideas and ideas, which would have physical form as its fruit, were what mattered, and the development of strength was the greatest of all. Mila was of the same opinion (well not on the strength part), but gentler in her critique and more tolerant of people who became so fascinated with relics, saints, places, and ritual. In the end, the people across Valentia were the same here, though Rigel generally had fewer purely clerical or charitable saints, and more warrior saints (the civil wars were great for this) reflecting a difference in values. Likewise, fewer mystics (outside of the Oracles) and local priests were heavily admired in Rigel than Zofia, where daily, weekly, and monthly religious service participation was higher. Yet Rigelians compensated for this somewhat by becoming utterly fixated though it were a religion on their favorite athletes in the array of sports- they were symbolic warriors in peacetime. Thorough descriptions of the standard post-birth rituals bringing newborn into the Faiths: Spoiler Now I turn to describing a specific event in a child’s life: that of post-birth ceremonies and rituals. In Rigel and Zofia alike, a healthy child after birth would be left with their mother immediately after birth so that nursing would begin. When possible in the days or month thereafter, the child would be brought to the nearest Faithful cleric or priest or monk or nun to receive their first blessings from the gods. In Zofia, the child would be bathed and purified in holy water, and then dried and wrapped in a blessed blanket. They would then be fed mashed up consecrated fruit, or vegetables if fruit wasn’t present, or grain or whatever one had on hand barring that. And at the same time the mother of the child, or a wet nurse if the mother had perished or could not provide milk, would be blessed and the infant would then suck again on them. This ritual, accompanied by continual prayers, represented the blessings of Mila which the child would partake in throughout their life, and the mother/wet nurse stood in for a physical Mila herself, while the priest/cleric served as the Mother’s divine eyes and mouth. The ceremony was officially over when the child’s chosen name was uttered and they were declared a son/daughter of Mila. To die without having received this ceremony was looked on as a horrifying thing, and parents were permitted to perform this ritual themselves if they thought their newborn was on death’s doorstep. As Mila’s blessings were bestowed on all, even those who spurned them, Zofians saw all as humans, even if there was a category called “evil humans” and another called “outsider humans”. From this, abortion and the neglect/killing of newborns was strongly condemned in Zofia. Converts to the Mila Faithful of adult or post-infancy underwent the same ritual, except: If beyond childhood they would be clothed for modesty when being blessed by water. The breastfeeding would be replaced by a cup of consecrated goat’s milk, or that of another animal, or a fruit alcohol or juice, or water. The mashed food would be replaced by solid fruit, vegetables or bread. The blanket in which a child would be wrapped would be placed by a robe or shawl. And a cleric would always have to be present as a symbol of the Divine Mother. Rigel’s newborn rituals were different. The newborn after being taken from their mother would be placed on the cold hard ground naked, ideally in the middle of a Duma Symbol etched into the dirt or decoratively carved into the floor. There, the child would be left there to lay for several minutes with all but the leading Faithful member turning their gaze, and ideally their backs, away from the newborn. All this time the leading priest or cleric would continue to utter prayers, but everyone else would be silent. While the minutes passed, if it was cold or windy outside, the child would then be grabbed by the priest or cleric and brought outdoors to experience it, otherwise the child would have selected attendees, generally of the Faithful, blow on them to replicate such conditions. After this, everyone would look back on the child, and the lead priest would place consecrated ashes or dirt over the newborn, sprinkling it and smearing it alike over their body. Next, the child would be held before a ceremonial fire (often but not always accompanied by a Duma statue) and exposed to heat for a minute or two. Taken away from the heat, the priest or cleric would then fairly quickly ritually move their two pointed fingers over the child’s body once more, from forehead to ears (always starting with the left one of a pair), to eyes, nose, mouth, throat, chest, arms, hands, stomach, genitals, knees, and feet. The child would then be held up standing on their two feet before the ceremonial fire (if they could stand on their own, it was a miraculous good omen), albeit not close enough to feel the heat. At this moment the child’s name would be recited and they would be declared a son/daughter of Duma. This done, the child would be turned around towards the crowd, and then placed on their knees and allowed to crawl back to their parents, who would be permitted to grab their child after a few moments of them crawling. If an Oracle was present, a messenger of their’s would while the child was standing recite prophetic lines about the child’s coming life, or the Oracle would be consulted once the ritual was over. The Duma newborn ritual symbolized the harshness of Rigel and that one would have to bear with it, to expect no help from others. The dirt and or ash served as symbols of a life of filth and toil, but they also combined with the fire represented the creation of a new kind of human being. Pottery is made from the soft earth, and blasted in a hot kiln it becomes strong, and so the ritual represented going from being a soft weakling, into human blessed by Duma and thus much stronger stuff. It was with this ritual and all the prayers which accompanied it that Duma in the Silver Age blessed that individual human and thus made them superhuman. Without undergoing this newborn ritual, an infant was not seen as really being human at all in Rigel. This rendered views towards abortions and newborn abandonment/killing as less than anti-life, only anti-potential life. Zofians and Archaneans were human Rigelians admitted, but they were foreigners too, so their strangeness was part of their character. Grown Zofians who converted to Duma worship (which was commonly necessary to advance in Rigelian society) had to undergo an adult version of the newborn ritual, which was more intense as to prove their conversion was real. An adult would have to spend hours in intense cold, or days in more temperate or hot conditions, outside, naked, through rain and snow, without food, water or help of any sort. If they survived long enough in without yielding, the priest or cleric would then cover them in mud or dirt, and in a new step, given they were grown and could handle being hurt, would be pummeled with paddles or even whips a few times- as though they were clay being forcefully shaped. They would be brought into a small room surrounded by intense flames for hours or a full day again, perhaps with a little food or drink to nourish them if they had spent days outside (for adult conversions, the cost involved in making the intense flames and watching over the initiates meant it was often done en masse rather than on an individual basis). After this the initiate would then be told to stand strongly before a ceremonial flame, being blessed again by the leading priest or cleric with their pointed fingers. Able to speak on their own, they would then have to utter as strongly and resolutely as they could their name, and then the priest/cleric would declare them a son/daughter of Duma. Given these were adults and thus in need of modesty, the Duma Faithful would bestow the freshly minted convert with new clothing, always something coarse as a warning against luxury. Consulting an Oracle would follow if on hand. For someone older than infant or young child, but not yet able to handle the full rigors adulthood can, they would undergo a middle ground conversion, it would proceed along the lines of the adult one albeit with shorter durations according to the child’s age and overall condition (Rigel did acknowledge that not everyone was a physical juggernaut), but a few paddle hits and or whip strikes would be included. On other ceremonies, particularly death: Spoiler Other religious/life ceremonies included a vast number of coming of age rituals, many of which greatly varied from region to region. Marriage and death served as other important occasions in one’s lifespan. Marriage in Zofia was attended to with much religious pomp and flair, and it was an openly joyous occasional. In Rigel, marriage ceremonies were less joyous because Duma was against pageantry and not enthusiastic over marriage, but in practice most Rigelians celebrated marriage with joy, meat and good drink, even if the manner was more subdued, secular, and often rowdier than in Zofia. Zofia much preferred burial to cremation, a return to the Earth Mother’s blessed embrace. Rigel did have some body burial practices (including some bog bodies), but immolation and cremation were most common. The Mila Faithful had a period of mandatory mourning following the death of a close one and was quite solemn on the matter of the ultimate end, but overall the religion preferred to focus on life over death. The Duma Faithful celebrated life just as well and very much disliked death, but it was more earthy on the topic and faced it head on and accepted it rather than be overly ceremonial or metaphorical with it. Concepts of what preceded birth and came after death were thin, Mila and Duma refused to make too much of these knowing they were mortal and had nothing to do with the souls of humans. But there was acknowledgement of a spiritual world alongside and intermixed with the living one, as Fear Mountain made clear. On Holidays: Spoiler Zofians made a great deal out of their religious calendars, and all villages eagerly awaited the next big day and when they could snuck in smaller celebrations too. Nobles hated holidays insofar as they forced them to give the peasants days off, but fortunately for them the Mila Faithful limited the number of great holidays where resting was permitted, lest the year pass without absolutely no work done (the number grew in Mila’s decline). Zofians had on the whole more celebratory holidays than Rigel did, and the clergy tended to be more involved in the eager festivities. There was sobriety and seriousness among the Mila Faithful, but nonetheless they welcomed the public overflow of joyous emotion. It was never too heavy a drain on Zofia’s resources having numerous holidays- Mila’s blessings allowed for the loss in worker productivity. Food, drink, sports, and other activities abounded during holidays, and religious emotion was strongly stirred up. Zofia had a environment absolutely divine for outdoor recreation, so sports were quite popular. Some things were Rigelian imports, others were native Zofian creations (a few of which migrated to Rigel). Given the scarcity of game in Rigel and the greater difficulties raising sufficient horses, hunting and equestrian were sports that, even if nobody invented them, Zofia had a natural superiority in, and jousting was a certainly a Zofian invention- Rigel knew war too well to develop such a staged practice (Zofian sports were on the whole cleaner than Rigel’s). Bazaars where merchants and artisans would try to outsell each other and eating and drinking competitions were abundant too. Holidays in Rigel were boring and somber among the clergy, yet the masses, paradoxically very much aware that Duma wouldn’t tolerate pleasure, found the days a way to let off steam and escape the struggle of daily life. (Duma for his part accepted humans had a lazy and stupid side he couldn’t quite stamp out- but he kept trying nonetheless. And once in a blue moon, Duma himself would relax in a way that was more than just water, food, sleep and a bath, such as a hunting exercise or even participation in a human sport, but he never drank nor gambled- he hated alcohol and luck.) The Duma Faithful wasn’t totally devoid of the celebratory mood, their intensity in performing rituals and egging on of competitors in holiday contests was well remembered, but on the whole they were aloof from the common man’s (and even the less-than-totally-disciplined aristocrat’s) traditions. The days of particular joy were the “secular” holidays- dedicated to good dead monarchs, battles, events, or contemporary royal birthdays. Ritualized combat, often few-holds-barred wrestling in the buff (loincloths were permitted in some male schools, and on top of this women could be allowed to bound their cleavage to get it out of the way), but also clothed and armed fighting, and more casual pugilism, were particularly popular on holidays. In addition, non-fighting sports like weightlifting, running, hunting, archery, equestrian, field games, and ball games were played too. All of these plus the fighting, though practiced and played throughout the year, came out in full unrestrained splendor only on holidays. Drinking and eating competitions happened sometimes in the heat of things, but these were activities not endorsed by the Duma Faithful nor Rigelian society at large because it was seen as a waste of precious food. Contests by artisans never happened, not even on the basis of quality, because that could reek of luxury (even though the crafts were acknowledged as a path to strength). No, when it came to competition, it was all centered around fighting. Rigel couldn’t waste water or wheat, but it did have a surplus of human flesh and bone to put to the test. So obsessed were Rigelians, that spectators cheering on their favorites would not infrequently break into their own physical spats. Although these were struggles, it was an idealized form of struggle, one that was apart of the bleak day to day grind most Rigelians endured with no end in sight. Rigelians liked struggle, they wanted to struggle as their god proclaimed, they just wanted it to be something exciting, meaningful, something they found lacking in ordinary existence. To break a bone hauling quarried boulders was pitiful, a sign of mediocrity and a serious pain and burden, and to break someone’s bone on purpose a crime. Yet to have a bone break during a wrestling competition was almost a blessed thing, very much so if you managed to pull off a victory in spite of your injury. There was a certain fetish for injury among Rigelians, scars were lauded (but to be a helpless cripple was just sad and a sign of physical and moral weakness), and multiple times in Rigelian history rural communities got crazy over rumors of someone who could sweat blood- a gross but cherished anatomically fictional symbol of extreme struggle (the Duma Faithful denounced such rumors). A few frauds even inflicted self-injury to garner public fame- at least one of whom was publicly stoned to death when the truth came to light because of how despicable their action was- true struggle should not and cannot be faked. On the relation of the Faithfuls to the masses: Spoiler Why was the Duma Faithful’s clergy on terms inferior to laity Rigelians compared to the Mila Faithful to its laity? While devotional or faith-based movements existed on both sides of the Great Sluice, and so did esoteric and “hard struggle” forms of religious devotion, each deity and their clergy had its preferences. Duma preferred the “hard struggle”, he liked religion which required serious effort on the part of the believer to earn salvation and praise. Duma feelings on esotericism were mixed, and he loathed pietistic devotional worship as lazy. Mila on the other hand adored passionate selfless devotion, and found the “hard struggle” approach revolting. The heterodox mainstream clergies naturally adopted what their gods said they liked. But what the clergy liked didn’t have to be what the people liked, and a majority of people across Valentia preferred devotional worship, even in Rigel. Since the Mila Faithful leaned towards pietistic worship, and the Duma Faithful did not, it is clear how the differences in popularity came to be. The picture is of course more complicated than this. Mila promised her highest blessing to the pacifist who sacrificed all including their life for preservation of peace and justice for all- friend and foe alike. She adored the individual who lived modestly and worked to the bone helping others and sought it of her people- if never speaking such in the harsh language of her brother. To better make use of esotericism, Mila asked the mystics to write down everything that came to them and to travel spreading her word- it worked and played well with devotional worship. Duma could sympathize with his people too, he knew the world they lived in and which he was very much responsible for was tough, and so he gave them his blessings of strength regardless of whether they did as he wished for them to do or not. Though he told his clergy to keep up on the doctrine to keep the people in line, he silently accepted that people needed a reprieve from struggling every so often. When he saw them playing sports, or even just spectating over the competitions, seeing the fire in their eyes signified to him they truly appreciated struggle, even if they could not bear it all all the time. To control devotional movements, Duma attempted to direct them towards the Oracles, whom he trusted would not get out of line with his message. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Interdimensional Observer Posted October 8, 2017 Author Share Posted October 8, 2017 First, I'm including a timeline of the reigns of the various kings of Rigel and Zofia. This will make putting things into perspective easier. Spoiler Monarchal Timeline: Rigel: Pre-Kingdom: 1 VC - 9 VC The Generals State: 1 VC - 5 VC The Feud (or War) of the Generals: 5 VC - 9 VC Dumason Dynasty: 9 VC - 138 VC Leonsys Rigel Dumason: 9 - 55 Chu: 55 - 76 The First Dumason Interlude: 76 - 82 Queen Parvat: 82 - 118 Midos: 118 - 121 The Second Dumason Interlude: 121 - 129 Marcion: 129 - 138 The First Great Civil War/Time of Chaos: 138 VC - 155 VC Patros Dynasty: 155 VC - 252 VC Orthrus Patros: 155 - 186 Asterius: 186 - 207 Queen Aria: 207 - 223 Peroceles: 223 - 237 Neran: 237 - 247 The Second Reign of Peroceles: 247 - 252 The Second Great Civil War/Time of Chaos: 252 - 302 The Rudolf Dynasty: 302 VC - 402 VC Alexander Rudolf: 302 - 309 VC Philip: King of Rigel 309 - 314 ; Emperor of Rigel 314 - 324 Rudolf I: 324 - 356 Adolphe: 356 - 360 Rudolf II 360 - 402 Twilight of the Gods and the Unification of Rigel and Zofia: 402 Note- due to a miscalculation originating in forgetting to count King Midos reign when setting the date for the Second Dumason Interlude, I had to add four years to everything thereafter. For Aria, I stole three years from Peroceles just because (I could give them back without problem). To fix the issues that somehow emerged (I miscounted the end of the Second Great Civil War by ten years) I removed ten years off Alexander’s reign and then made Adophe’s overthrow come much quicker- in a four’s year’s time instead of seven (I can justify it, Rudolf II has to get a regency). Zofia: Pre-Kingdom Period: 1 VC - 8 VC Lima I: 8 - 52 Lima II: 52 - 65 Lima III: 65 - 106 Sarion I: 106 - 138 Cyrano: 138 - 147 Interlude of the Zofian Succession: early 147 - late 148 Alorc: 148 - 159 Milo I: 159 - 221 Vasil: 221 - 239 Valenti: 239 - 283 Vasil II: 283 - 283 Milo II: 283 - 321 Sarion II: 321 - 352 Corden: 352 - 380 Lima IV: 380 - Overthrow by Desaix As you'll notice, I made some revisions to the timeline. Since I didn't come to this history with every idea perfectly formulated, there is going to be some contradictions and revisions. Serfdom is one of those things which I'm thinking of dropping, since it's such a loaded word and I lack the familiarity with it that I should have if I am to use it. Peasantry is a much more vague word that can describe a wider array of conditions, including serf-like ones. This said for now, at least some of the Zofian peasantry is staying serfs for much of Zofian history, though not all. A blend of serf-slaves and free peasants might be awkward, but it offers the most flexibility. And here at last is the Zofian Monarchy's History, which I've broken down into sections for ease of reading. Pre-Kingdom - Lima II: Spoiler The Silver Age of Zofia During the Mila Duma Conflict, the severe population loss on both sides of humanity had led to the need to militarize society in full. Among both Mila’s and Duma’s humans, they organized themselves into hierarchies. In the Milan system, one was fixed to their assigned group, while in Duman system, collective meritocratic work could warrant talented individuals in a bloc to be allowed into others. While the Rigelian division of society was eased once the war was over, it was in these conditions that what became serfdom in Zofia began. The highest class Zofia inherited, was the nobility. It was the class of generals and bureaucrats who in many cases had fathers and sons and even grandsons in some cases fight and die for Mila. It was to these individuals whom Mila entrusted the secular management of the new kingdom of Zofia. These generals and bureaucrats now turned into nobles began the task of dividing up their vast realm and deciding how it would be governed. That it would be a monarchy was something everyone could agree on, after plans to have Mila directly rule Zofia were quashed when she turned down the offer after realizing how great a task it would be for her to bless the kingdom and run her Faithful. The nobles did also consider a rule by a council of their best subject to change, and to an elective monarchy (the electors being select nobles), but this turned down just the same as too unstable and favoring the highest of the nobility. All of this discussion was being carried out in a single large assembly in the center of Zofia where all the nobles had gathered and all had a voice. The Assembly of Nobles was led by a President (as in one who presides over something, not as in a democratic leader), but they lacked much in the way of power to affect the discussions. Due to the fact that these talks kept the nobles from their estates, the Assembly of Nobles decided to adjourn in the mid-Summer of VC 1, so that the harvests could be watched over. Meeting again in the late Winter of VC 1 and into VC 2, the nobles then learned of Mila’s turning down of their request. They continued to meet into early Spring, and then adjourned to return to their estates. When they met again in mid-Summer, the Assembly of Nobles decided they were incapable of coming to a solution, so they appointed a council led by of five of the most prestigious nobles accompanied by representatives of the middle and lower ranks to dedicate all their time to the issue of choosing a government. When out of town for the seasons, the nobles gathered in regional Assemblies and continued to talk. The Council of Ranks formally endorsed a monarchy, one that was hereditary so as to ensure it would have a stable line of succession. This was announced to the Assembly of Nobles when it reconvened it in the Winter of VC 2, and the Council of Ranks also presented it with a draft of what the king’s duties and responsibilities would be like. The details took time and debate to iron out, but by late VC 3, the general framework for the Zofian monarchy had been agreed upon. The monarch would be very much primus inter pares, the leader of the nobility and not their dominator. This was distinct from what would come to be in Rigel, where the monarch, though not a dictator, was by virtue of their Duma-approved merit, able to exert greater authority over the nobility, who were servants of the state and not so much a class with an independent existence. Getting back to Zofia, the monarch would be it was realized, more than just the leader of the nobility. A monarch needed greater authority than this, something they could use to crush the uppityness of certain nobles, who every noble feared would be everyone else who would work to their personal detriment. Thus it was necessary to ask Mila if she would sanctify the man and his lineage chosen as king (the nobles were a little too misogynist to consider a woman- but the radical idea was tossed around in an attempt to get some monarch chosen). Mila agreed to this, and eagerly awaited the choosing of Zofia’s first king. What Mila eagerly awaited, every noble seemed to dread. Besides a few egotistical fools who vouched for themselves as king, everyone had a favorite, or favorites, backups just in case the hopes of their first pick failed. The sheer mass of the nobility was unruly, they couldn’t agree on anyone, and even though they believed in theory Mila would keep the monarch in line, they were all afraid that certain individuals if chosen as king would ruin them regardless, particularly since they had Mila’s approval backing them up. The Assembly of Nobles grew increasingly anxious as VC 4 passed into VC 5 without a monarch chosen. Everyone vocally expressed their veto, and wars of words and minor physical confrontation the Assembly Hall were waged. Fears of a real civil war in Zofia began once word came that Rigel had descended into one. Mila was upset by these rumors, and asked the Council of Ranks if it had chosen a monarch. The Council too was too divided, and even if it could agree, contrarians in the Assembly simply wouldn’t have it and yell out its collective veto. What was it that could be done? The Council of Ranks broke down and admitted it was impossible to choose a monarch to Mila. They then begged her in all her divine wisdom to choose one for them, anyone, just someone to fill the void. Mila decided that if this was truly what her children believed was the case, she would do it and find them a monarch. The Assembly was informed, and Mila then began her search with the help of the Mila Faithful. She was looking for a king who would represent not just the nobility, but all of Zofian society. Day after day, she rummaged the country interviewing nobles, ideally at their estates, getting an idea of their character and moving on to the next. At night, she would read detailed reports her Faithful had written about various candidates and add them to her decision making process. Her choice, finalized by mid VC 7, was a man named Lima, who she bestowed the new last name of Amagaea (like Amadeus, except instead of loved by God, it’s loved by the Earth Mother). Who was Lima I? He was a noble of the middle rank, which appeased the nobility of the higher and lower ones as well. His father and two elder half brothers had died in the Mila-Duma Conflict, and had several half-sisters and two younger full brothers. His mother was still alive, a old gentle woman whom he treated very well. He was in a happy marriage with two young and energetic boys, a girl between them, and by the time of his coronation there was another bundle in the oven. He had fought for Mila, albeit only at the insignificant end of the war due to his youth having restricted him to non-combatant roles until those before him had died and he became the head of his noble family’s line. During the long period of discussions among the nobles, he had served as President of a local Assembly of Nobles on several occasions and had vigorously argued for compromise during the meetings of the great Assembly. He was rather benevolent towards his serfs, allowing them to go on pilgrimages at his expense in the off times of the year. He was not overly obsessed with luxury, preferring instead to invest his wealth into public works, the Mila Faithful, and a simple, elegant manor. He had many of the qualities befitting a king, and his name had been nominated several times, but he admittedly had his mild but existent partisan leanings and that shot him down time and again. When Mila announced she had made a decision, the Assembly of Nobles quickly gathered and in session alongside the Council of Ranks saw whom she had chosen. Everyone was in awe of her choice and acknowledged she had chosen well- she was their beloved all-knowing goddess after all, she could do no wrong. Anyone who opposed the nomination of Lima kept their objections silenced, and for all but the most rigid of opposition, everyone else was relieved they had a good king at last. When Mila finished speaking and the aristocratic cheering had died down, Lima stood forth and addressed his fellow nobles, swearing that he would do Mila’s will and what was best for Zofia and its people. To do this he said, he needed the help of the irreplaceable nobility to govern Zofia, and in return promised his equals that he would not infringe on their essential inviolable rights and remain impartial to all of them. He said he had read the written framework for the monarchy’s powers many times, and he believed it was the greatest achievement that the Assembly and Council had done. He would accept the framework as the final draft, barring whatever slight revisions would be necessary practice would show and which he hoped to have the nobility’s support for when the time came. He then pleaded to Mila and to all the nobles to accept him as their King. The nobles agreed as a group with cheering, and then it was decided that one by one, they would approach Lima with Mila besides him and each swear their loyalty and their family’s to Lima and his lineage into the great and long future of Zofia. The official coronation of Lima I was held the next year in Spring VC 8, about a year before Rigel would inaugurate its own king. The pageantry of the ceremony was magnificent despite being arranged on relatively short notice (it had been in the Fall that Mila had announced her decision). Efforts were made to adorn the ceremony with as much symbolism as they could, and to make this coronation a coronation of eternal prosperity for Zofia, its monarchy, and its aristocracy. It was held in the fledgling capital, which had a prior history in the Golden Age and during the MIla-Duma Conflict as a town at the crossroads. Mila arrived five days in advance of the coronation, and when she was presented with the plans, she asked where were the commoners allowed in all of this. The nobles were perplexed by this question, and Mila then explained that all the people of Zofia were the king’s subjects, and deserved a chance to see him. Mila then revised the coronation ceremony on short notice, modifying the route Lima would take to the coronation site (the site of the future Castle Zofia), and on this route everyone across Zofian society would be allowed to get a glimpse at their king. Mila also trimmed back the nobility’s share of the viewing area at the coronation site, giving a section to merchants, artisans, bankers, apothecaries, mages, and other “middle” class occupations, and another section for the lowly groundlings, and she asked her Faithful to include in their section a few notably pitiable individuals. Mila made a few other adjustments to the plans, including moving her seat from besides Lima to behind him, and had the Queen Dowager (Lima’s mother) placed besides her. The ceremony went without a problem, and Lima was crowned King Lima of Zofia at the age of 29. The crown he wore having been presented to Mila by one of the highest of the nobles, and which she then placed upon Lima’s head with all in attendance including Lima bowing until she placed the crown on his head, once she had finished speaking after taking vows from him, he then rose, thanked Mila and greeted his people as their king. The ceremonies continued through the day, and a great feast was held to honor this day, with the king not retiring into his new royal bedchambers in his temporary living quarters until the moon’s journey was over halfway done. The next day, Lima began his reign as king. And he indeed was a good king. Lima began building the foundations of his kingdom. He swore to the nobles the right to their estates and property- including serfs, easing their worries about an arbitrary king who would confiscate it all. He never forgot that he himself was a noble at heart, by Mila’s graces alone was he distinguished from his colleagues. Lima issued a census for his new realm to understand how best to manage it, something that was also being done in Rigel. He set up charities for all Zofians, donated to the Mila Faithful, and built a system of roads. He also began work on Zofia Castle, with design matching his and Mila’s desire for simple elegance, with rich accent notes of gemstones, gold, silver, coral and other treasures punctuating it. Three months into his reign, his wife now Queen gave birth to a daughter. The baby girl was quite lucky, Lima had his wife sent to Mila in her last month to safeguard the birth, and Mila herself had been the princess’s midwife. She was appropriately named Milla, the extra “l” was done to avoid sacrilege, not that Mila herself minded the girl having the exact same name as her, but everyone else did. Lima was very close to his goddess, the two were dear friends, seeing each other mother and son, whom he could freely write to and visit. Despite her insistence to the contrary, Mila allowed the equally insistent Lima to channel state funds and labor into the construction of the new Mila Temple. When Queen Maia became pregnant once more, Lima asked Mila if it were okay that his wife be allowed to come to her again. Mila had no issues with this and welcomed the Queen, the two got along nicely. Lima then went back to the drawing boards of the Temple and added a new segment which he intended to dedicate as a maternity ward for all Zofian mothers to be. Mila was delighted by her adopted son’s generosity and approved of it. It was in the incomplete Mila Temple that Maia gave birth once more, this time to the first Zofian royal who had been royal since their time in the womb, their name was Prince Milo. Once again, Mila was there in the role of midwife, and this officially established a royal tradition of the children being born in Mila Temple, often but not always in the company of the Earth Mother herself. For their health, the child and mother would be allowed to remain in the Temple for up to years at a time, until fears of childhood death by illness or birth condition (something not even Mila could always remedy) had passed. This made sure that the heirs to the Zofian throne would frequently make it to adulthood. Returning to serious matters, Lima governed Zofia alongside the nobility. He was a consensus builder, listening patiently to arguments and then working out a solution from there. He knew how to build bipartisan support, and even when he had to take sides, he did so while showing empathy to the opposition. Although he did take the initiative on the great construction projects and donations to the Mila Faithful, he was rarely responsible for doing so on political matters, waiting instead for nobles to address themselves to him, present the problems, and then provide their answers to him, which he then reviewed in the process mentioned above. In the court, Lima took care to include among his advisors nobles across from the various ranks, families, and factions, and to this added his younger brothers, who upon his becoming King had been elevated to royal status with the title of Prince. They were given formal responsibilities in managing the Crown Lands, which included the former family estate and much else. To secure their futures, Lima promised for their eldest sons estates to call their own carved from Crown Lands. In his personal life, Lima was a bit dull, mild and lacking in vibrancy. Lima died in VC 52, at the age of 81, having lived a long life in the healthy climate of Zofia. On Lima’s death, there was little debate as to who would follow him, it would be his eldest son, Lima II. There were some musings of Prince Milo inheriting the throne, given he was the only one born a prince, but these were but musings. There had been multiple forms of inheritance in the Golden Age of Valentia under the Dragon Gods, and Zofia had inherited both partible inheritance and primogeniture. During the Mila-Duma Conflict, much of the future Zofian nobility had adopted primogeniture given it made for easy redistribution of property when the current head of a family died. Lima’s family had actually been of the partible inheritance kind, but he forsook it, expecting primogeniture would be better for the Zofian monarchy. He did desire to give his second and third sons property, and found for them the daughters of sonless nobles, trying his best through this method to limit noble complaints about favoritism (rather than carve their own estates out of Crown Lands or keep them at their elder brother’s mercy). His elder daughter was married to a carefully chosen noble son on the same balance sheet as his second sons. His younger daughter made the voluntary choice of entering the Mila Faithful instead of marriage, and thus helping to establish it as an option for royalty and nobility alike. The same year as Lima I’s death, VC 52, his eldest son was formally coronated as Lima II following a mourning period at the age of 61. Lima II received on the day of his coronation a letter from King Leonsys Rigel Dumason through a Rigelian representative present, it was congratulating the Son of Mila on becoming king, and it had followed the letter received earlier that year lamenting the death of Lima I from Dumason. Both of these epistolaries had been part of a formal diplomacy which had begun with Lima I and would continue through the entwined histories of Zofia and Rigel. Duma took notice of when Lima I became King of Zofia, but did nothing for he was too busy watching his men struggle for their monarchy. When Dumason became Rigel’s King, Lima I decided it was worth trying to establish some sort of diplomacy with Rigel. So he wrote a letter, congratulating Dumason on becoming King of Rigel, addressing him in terms equals. Dumason was significantly older than Lima, but he was crowned a year later, so the kings were asymmetrical equals, with each attempting to have the extra inch of height. Dumason responded to Lima I’s letter in kind, and Mila and Duma upon hearing of this correspondence approved it. Lima I had begun the correspondence, but since he died before Dumason, it was Dumason who established the other end of the missives. Through this exchange of letters, always written in highly formal language, which would be reused time and again in history, Zofia and Rigel reaffirmed their neutrality towards each other, neither kingdom seeking to control the other and violate the gods’ pact. During Rigel’s periods of chaos, Duma decided this correspondence would stop until a new king emerged, asking for one formal letter from the Zofian king be sent to him on the outbreak of the chaos, and any serious complaints during that period be addressed directly to him. As for regencies in Zofia, the choice was made that the first formal letter be addressed to Mila, and that a second formal letter and all letters of Rigelian grievances be written to the regent. With this monarchal diplomacy taken care of, the discussion now returns to Lima II. He was already entering the last quarter or third of life when he took the throne after his father’s long reign. Lima II had not been born destined to be a monarch, he had vague thin memories of the Mila-Duma Conflict, but once his father became king his life had changed. His upbringing remained not wholly adapted to being monarch, at its heart it was that of a future noble head of family, and the changes made to it were without a long history of Zofian monarchy to guide it in what was necessary. Nonetheless, Lima II had spent long enough as his father’s right hand that he knew how to govern. He wasn’t as brilliant as his father, but he did continue in his father’s ways of governing alongside the nobility. Lima II was bolder than his father, his personal life was more vibrant, his aesthetic sense a bit less simple and richer, with a fondness for gemstones. His edge had dulled somewhat by the time he finally took the throne, but he did take the initiative more and step on a few more toes, though the nobility had over the near half-century of monarchal rule grow a bit more pliable to it, so tensions remained low. His great building projects included the catacombs you see used as the Deliverance Hideout in SoV. Lima III - Sarion I Spoiler Lima II died at the age of 74 in VC 65. His reign had been a good if not as great one as his father’s. Lima’s eldest son had died of pneumonia contracted during a stormy voyage in his forties to survey the islands off Zofia’s coast years earlier. Fortunately he had a son of his own, who became king Lima III the same year at the age of 32. Lima III would be the last of the Limas pre-Celica’s father, by luck and for reasons that will be seen later. Lima III was the first Zofian king to be born a royal, and had received a thoroughly royal education. He was a sage king first and foremost, a studious, charming, cunning, and if average looking 30-some year old more creative than his great grandfather. He wrote poetry, learned to play musical instruments, and though he did not care much for the peasants, (but as per Mila’s demands, all classes were allowed to attend the coronation and other major public ceremonies), he did display a fascination with agriculture. He was Zofia’s first philanderer king, but he had the personal and external restraints to keep it from becoming more than an adultery of flirtations. Lima III’s governing style was a bit different from his predecessors. He maintained the building of noble coalitions, but tried not so subtly at the beginning to elevate the kingship above the nobility more. He attempted to use the Mila Faithful as leverage against noble dominance, which was a novel thing since his grandfather had leaned more on certain noble groups against others with no real use of the Mila Faithful in his politics, and his great grandfather who had donated much to the Faithful, but kept them above noble-dominated politics. Mila did not approve of such a policy, and out of her own sense of political wit appointed the first Matriarch of the Mila Faithful in this period, finding the menfolk a little too willing to go with Lima III’s ways. Mila for a long as her mind remained sound would work to stifle all too political behaviors in her Faithful, and found females more aloof from them given they had less to gain. Deprived of this attempt to make the Faithful a fourth column in Zofian politics, Lima III did not try to bring in the lower classes. He instead resigned himself to working within the established system, while subtly trying to increase royal prestige. In the beginnings of Zofian history, the population was largely centered around the capital, with the population radiating out from it. Mila’s Temple soon became another population center, as it brought an end to the early mobility of the Mila Faithful before they had settled on a permanent abode. Thanks to Mila’s fruitful blessings, the population halving brought on by the Mila Duma Conflict was being quickly undone, and by the end of Lima III’s reign, the population of Zofia would surpass that of its pre-Conflict total (Rigel’s would take a little longer). As the population grew, it pushed out from the core into the rest of Zofia. This was a boon for Lima III, he took advantage of the fact that the old nobility could not totally fill in the void and created fresh titles for second sons to do so. While his father had leaned on the central Zofia nobles to those farther away from the capital, Lima III liked the distant ones more. Since he often invented their titles, they owed him big time, and formed a solid core of his loyal noble allies. A related issue of this expansion of the Zofian population was that the monarch now needed to deal with the issues of the Novis Isles and the Mila Desert. The two were not like the easy terrain of the rest of Zofia, and were treated differently. Lima I had not needed to establish much if anything of a policy in these regions. Lima II had in his short tenure been faced with banditry coming out of these regions and had begun scouting out on a policy for the region, but had died before he could do more than build some fortresses on the coast and desert’s edge. Lima III was the first Zofian king to truly address the issue of the peripheral regions. Lima III died in VC 106 at the age 73. His forty-one years on the throne were quite eventful for Zofia, and his reign was considered a period of great prosperity for the kingdom, much like his great grandfather. Unfortunately, it did not end very well. Lima III was not a terrible father, but he did have significant issues with the one child of his that did matter- his firstborn son, also named Lima. The two disagreed with each other on a frequent basis, particularly once the son reached adulthood, and to spite his father, the younger Lima refused to name his firstborn son that. Lima III took charge of his grandson’s upbringing and tried to establish a bond with him, but the Crown Prince insisted on interfering on a frequent basis. The two remained at odds with each other and never reconciled during their lifetimes. And then, the unspeakable happened in 95. Someone murdered the 40 year old Crown Prince Lima, and attempted to take out his 13 year old son (the Crown Prince had several daughters before finally getting a son) at the same time, but he managed to escape with his life untouched. The news was immediately rushed to Mila without Lima III’s approval, and she was horrified and angered by this. Mila demanded answers immediately and that the culprit be brought to justice. One of the most obvious suspects in this murder was none other than King Lima III himself, knowing that he disliked the Crown Prince. Lima III protested the accusations thrown by nobles and Faithful alike that he had a hand in the murder. Lima said he disliked his son it was true, but he’d never try to murder him, and certainly not his grandson. Lima launched his own investigation into the murder, but as a suspected party, Mila forbade the king from doing this, instead asking his resources be handed over to the nobility and Mila Faithful. The culprit was discovered to be Lima III’s second and only other son, accompanied by a whole tangle of co-conspirators. Apparently the prince had arranged his brother’s murder and attempted his lone son’s to clear the way for his access to the throne. The second prince thought, being his father’s preferred son, would approve of the murder, Lima III provided protest to the contrary on hearing this and said he would execute his son and all his allies. Mila said that would not be necessary, for she disagreed with the death penalty and instead declared she would sentence them all to life in prison and penitence in the northern mountains. Although he was cleared of guilt, suspicions remained over Lima III for the rest of his reign. Lima lost some of his power as nobles turned against him, and some constant members of his noble coalitions and appointed bureaucracy had been found in the conspiracy. However, the King still found it possible govern, he had just had to compromise more than he was used to. Lima continually repented for his failures as a parent, attempted to solve this by making sure his grandson by Lima, Prince Sarion, was loved and raised well. In VC 106, Sarion became king on his grandfather’s death at the age of 24. Sarion was reluctant to be King of Zofia, and the issues can be traced to the day he saw his father’s throat slit. Sarion escaped with his body unhurt thanks to the help of servants present, but his mind took a grave hit. Immediately after the murder, Sarion was placed under close watch and highly guarded in the estate where he was living at the moment. When Mila came to visit the Prince, he ran into the Earth Mother’s arms and cried for her protection. Mila permitted the Prince to hide in a nearby monastery, and later moved directly to Mila Temple. Even with such safety, the Prince remained convinced his life was always in danger, and he refused to leave when the day of his father’s funeral came for fear he would join him. It was only with Mila standing directly beside him that he walked out, the casket had been open for a time so all could see the murdered prince, but it was closed when the Prince came so he wouldn’t have to see the gruesome sight again. It was at this time his grandfather came formally before him, the first time since the murder. The king was somber for the day, but showing a slight smile that said he was happy to see his grandson again. Sarion was nervous around his grandfather, shaking and having a hard time looking at him. Sarion had been torn between his feuding father and grandfather, so to be there mourning for his father but happily greeting his granddad forced him into an uneasy state. Since normally he just acted however the one around him wanted him to, he couldn’t handle a situation where he had to choose between one or the other. After the funeral, Sarion was to return to the capital, but he didn’t want to, and refused to go even after all the criminals had been thrown in prison. Instead, Sarion lived in Mila Temple, and to compensate for the Prince’s issues, Lima III had his education for a King of Zofia carried out there. As his grandfather entered what were clearly his last years of life, Sarion was told he should be ready to become king any day. But Sarion was hesitant to be king, he feared for his life still, he exclaimed on a number of occasions that he wanted to change his name and be a monk instead. This was unsettling that so many years after his father’s death, the heir to Zofia still refused to get over it and accept his position. There were other claimants for the throne- the second son who had been imprisoned had had two sons of his own, and because they were innocent of guilt, as Mila insisted they remained full royals. These princes however had their father’s ill name over their heads, and that plus the fact it would violate the until now direct line of firstborns to firstborns, they were less than desirable as kings. Fortunately, in the last two years of Lima III’s life, Sarion did return to the capital and reluctantly accepted his position as heir. Once King, Sarion remained a weakling. He was pitied by all, and for that reason was a much beloved royal in popular Zofian history. He was rather handsome with nice features, and displayed some potential, but these could never blossom because he was so traumatized by his father’s death combined with the two paternal poles in his childhood (yet his mental faculties were not inherently impaired). Sarion had no talents nor interests when it came to romance, and a wife had to be chosen for him, whom he married, a tad late by Zofian royal standards, in his 26th year. He disliked sex, his prior desire to be a monk holding him back from his royal bedtime duty, and he supposedly had to be made drunk (something else he didn’t like) sometimes to get him to yield his seed. Sarion was kind to his wife, he simply refused to lay with her. He disliked the sight of blood, and spurned hunting and meat for a vegetarian diet, making him seem less like a king and more an ascetic. He enjoyed the feel of fine textiles for they soothed his anxious nerves at night, but was otherwise not aesthetically inclined. In his free time, Sarion would pray or visit the Mila Faithful and see if he could be of use to them. He was very sympathetic to even the lowest of commoners and tried to aid and comfort them. His staff did have to make sure he didn’t stay amongst the Faithful too long, they worried he’d tried escaping his royal duties, and once in a while the sites of the truly pitiable would drive him to tears and abject sadness, resulting in him needing to be consoled. You’d think that given such a profile, Sarion would be an awful king. However, he did not succumb to the point of being the worst. Despite all his eccentricities, Sarion was able to hold himself together in public. He was able to listen to deliberations on policy, and appear to display impartiality and exert some appearance of strength and knowledge. In truth, Sarion did not make policy, that was passed on to others, but Sarion could at least feign like they were his own. Sarion kept the respectability of the Zofian monarchy alive, which had been brought into question towards the end of his grandather’s reign. Who then governed Zofia during Sarion’s rule? That Sarion would be a weak king was expected years in advance, and to counter this, Lima III had assembled the best team he could to work around him. Of importance was a cousin of Sarion’s, descended from one of Lima I’s other sons, named Masar. Masar was in his fifties when Sarion took the throne, had long served in Lima III’s administration and was entrusted by Lima with guiding his grandson. Masar served until his retirement in his late sixties as the Chancellor of Zofia, and filled the ministries with royals, nobles of royal descent, and appointees in the vein of Lima III’s. Masar came to develop good relations with Lima III’s grandsons by his second son, and carefully to avoid wrongful accusations of working against Sarion, weaved them into the administration. Sarion’s advisers continued to operate according to noble coalition, but found it more difficult. The peripheral nobles that Lima III had appointed were growing a sense of independence, particularly among the sons who felt they owed the Crown little loyalty. The administration did as much as it could without invoking the nobility, which was necessary for raising revenues and allocating resources to larger projects. Taxing the towns and cities, which were governed by a non-noble burgher elite, was one method of overcoming the revenues problem, but the towns and cities were underdeveloped since it was still possible to migrate easily to the fertile countryside. Cyrano - Alorc: Spoiler Sarion’s death came at the age of 56 in 138 VC. Rumor has it he didn’t die, but instead that Mila finally granted his request and let him become a monk and then he faked his death. Mila never admitted to this if it was really the case. Sarion’s rule had been dominated by Masar for two decades, but he had retired and passed on his duties to others. Masar was still barely alive when his king had passed on, and knew that the future of the Zofian monarchy had issues ahead. Sarion had begat a lone son, he refused to have any more and threatened to castrate himself. This son was named Cyrano, and became King of Zofia at the age of 19. Cyrano’s reign and his father’s death occurred in the same year as the collapse of the Dumason Dynasty in Rigel. The First Great Civil War, or Time of Chaos to invoke a more terrible name, was devastating to Rigel, and it had spillover effects in Zofia. Already, the Second Dumason Interlude had sent people scurrying out of Rigel into Zofia, and Marcion had only done so much to try to stop and reverse this flow. Rigelians remained in Zofia even with the restoration of order, and despite a decline in their overall numbers, some locations continued to see influxes of new Rigelians. Rigelian refugees, if one were to use this word to describe them, were not well treated by the Zofians who were forced to host them. In the land of plenty, they found access to food and water limited. Sarion’s administrators had not provided them adequate basic needs out of budgetary concerns, and nobles took advantage of these strangers’ absence of rights or ways to appeal to the monarchy. That they worshipped Duma meant they didn’t appeal to Mila either and Duma didn’t care about their suffering. This wasn’t the first time Rigelian migrant labor had appeared in Zofia, no, that had been present since all the way back in Lima I’s reign, but the numbers, originally quite small and publicly unnoticeable, grew as the Dumason Dynasty declined and collapsed. No clean water? Lack of adequate food? Mal-nu-trit-ion! This is no laughing matter, the Rigelian migrants were denied basic necessities and found themselves crowded into designated locations, with their numbers growing as conditions in Rigel worsened. These ramshackle refugee camps soon became filled with human waste, and since Rigelians were shot with arrows in some cases if they were seen anywhere near a good river, they rarely bathed. Disease and then death worked its ways into the ill-nourished bodies of the Rigelians, and it was at first ignored by Zofians. Ignorance was bliss only for so long, Rigelian laborers who went to work in aristocratic fields and curious, charitable, and opportunist Zofians who went to visit the Rigelian shantytowns were points of contact which provided for the silent transfer of viruses and bacteria from Rigelians to Zofians. The first outbreaks in Zofia started on the northern peripheries, since that was where most Rigelians were, but disease creeped its way closer and closer to the Zofian capital, and eventually it got there, far from the Rigelians on whom it had first become virulent. King Cyrano, just a youth, was faced with an internal pandemic. The royal administrators began to take measures to combat the disease. It took them too long before they reasoned the disease originated with the Rigelian ghettos. By that point, several of these slums had been burnt to the ground by angry and conspiratorial Zofians seeking to eradicate the vile Rigelians. These were generally commoners, but the aristocrats, despite their love of more laborers, participated in the persecution too, at least out of a partial need to stay on the good side of their masses. Rigelians were accused of spreading poison in the air via the smoke resulting from cremation, and anyone who was suspected of being a Rigelian could be arrested, tortured, and killed. Outbreaks of disease had occurred in Zofia before, and it wasn’t just the fault of the mistreated Rigelians, natural conditions had coincidentally aligned themselves at the time for widespread viral and bacterial virulence and transmission. The Mila Faithful was awash in the ill as the pandemic spread, and it did their best to treat the sick and placate the dying. Mila took an active hand in stemming the plague, and then she learned of the Rigelian migrant situation in full detail. Mila had known for years of the Rigelians on Zofian soil and their plight, she had issued statements demanding that the Rigelians be treated fairly. The Mila Faithful, despite the hesitance of some of its members and the refusal of the Rigelians themselves to accept Mila’s charity, had done their part to help. Mila toured a few locations and read some reports, and through the reign of Marcion was convinced the problem would be solved. By the time pandemic struck Zofia, it was clear her orders had not been followed nor were being followed presently. She politely chastised the nobility, the burghers, and the royal administrators, and withdrew the Mila Faithful from their services until either they did as she asked or their charitable demands to the Faithful were sufficiently increased. Mila ordered that the Faithful intervene to stop all Rigelian persecutions as well. Mila received some help when the Duma Faithful, who had been visiting the Rigelian shanties for years and making reports about them, informed Duma that Rigelians were now being slaughtered and accused of maliciously spreading disease. He responded by sending an open letter to Zofia: if his Rigelian followers were denied the right to basic human needs, they had the right to steal them by force from Zofia. If Zofians tried to kill them, then let Rigelians everywhere be allowed to fight back just as brutally and avenge themselves. This sounded like Rigel was threatening war within Zofia! A violation of the ancient pact and a resumption of the deadly conflict of old! Not necessary agreeing with the tone of her brother’s letter, Mila nonetheless appreciated how it shocked the nobility out of its stupor, since they knew by their ancestral duty they’d die in the war, and they had no intentions of undergoing what Rigel currently was in but much worse. A few zealots/fatalists said let it come to that and pushed to continue eradicating Rigelians in Zofian borders, but the aristocratic mass in tandem with the monarchy, Mila Faithful, and burghers cooly reigned things in and actually got to cleaning up the situation. Mila herself only had so much freedom during the pandemic, for she still needed to keep up on her blessings, and spent time visiting and treating the sick. One victim she never made it to was King Cyrano himself. King Cyrano had begun to cough it was noted on a day in VC 141, he too had been infected. How? That is difficult to say, but Cyrano, a young man who liked hunting as many elite did, may have picked it up during one expedition. It was hoped to be nothing, but as things gradually worsened, the King became cloistered in the palace, and spent his days in bed or a bath of medical herbs intended to combat off disease. He was daily visited by apothecaries and clerics intent on using their medical and magical knowhow to keep the King healthy. Mila’s Temple had become a great hospital, and for fears it was too crowded, the king opted to stay away from it. Eventually, by 142’s end, King Cyrano had recovered, but he was permanently affected by the disease. In spite of his weakened condition, King Cyrano tried to hunt again in 143 out of a royal prerogative to display vitality. Cyrano hunted away but his body had not yet fully recovered, and efforts to hunt strained his immune system, as did an attempt to return to hearty living as befits a king. In 146, a tic bite caused Cyrano to become ill with a totally unrelated disease to those prevalent in the now episodic and increasingly controlled pandemic. The king thought once more he needed not to visit Mila, but the disease worsened and his advisors decided to send him to the Temple for her healing. Cyrano fell into a coma on the way to the temple, and soon he died at the age of 28 in 147. He had potential to be a good king, equal to or superior to Lima III or I? That is uncertain, but Cyrano had come into the kingship as a crisis broke out, and plagued by illness himself, this youthful king never had the chance to truly prove his worth. A side effect of the first disease that Cyrano had contracted was sterility. No matter how often Cyrano tried to muster himself upon his wife, he could never make her, or even a common maid in violation of Zofian morality when his close advisors became worried, pregnant. Cyrano’s failure to sire not even a daughter meant an end to the direct line of father to 1st son/grandson primogeniture which had lasted in Zofia up to this point. This threw a little chaos into the Zofian monarchy. Nobles in wake of Cyrano’s death assembled and began discussing the future of Zofia. The royal family and its trusted allies coalesced too, and the two sides plus the Mila Faithful on the sideline and the burghers in a secondary position began to talk amongst each other as to what to do. The answer arrived at doused any musings of replacing the royal family or making the monarchy elective or any other radical change. The point of adopting primogeniture had been to create an fixed line of succession for Zofia, one which would provide the kingdom with stability and a monarch not particularly biased to any noble group. Now as a real test of its worth, and so the crown it was recognized, should pass to the next in line. Who was that? Since Cyrano had no sons, one had to go back to his father Sarion, but Sarion had but one son, so one had to go back to Lima III. Lima III had two sons, and although the second had been imprisoned for life for killing the first, his sons had not been removed from the succession. Since the first son had died here with only daughters surviving, the line now passed to the second son, who was still alive. The chain of succession resulted in the coronation of King Alorc in late 148 VC at the age of 64, after a year and a half of disputes. Alorc had been cultivated as a royal administrator back in the reign of his two years younger cousin Sarion under the loving eye of Mazar. Alorc was an old man, but he took the throne knowing it was the right thing for his family. Alorc’s reign lasted for eleven years, his administrative skills were still keen enough in old age. He was handicapped by being tainted by his murderous father, and by the fact he was a rather distant heir. Alorc’s death in 159 VC was to be followed by his fourth son’s reign. Why not his first? His first had been tonsured and thus removed from the line for the throne, an act of modesty to show he had no desire to usurp his cousin Sarion’s line. Alorc’s second son had perished during the pandemic, and his third too had died of disease, this time in infancy since like many secondary ones who were never expected to take the throne, he had not received so intensive care. Alorc did not want another primogeniture dispute to unfold once he took the throne, and so he had taken the unprecedented step of divorcing his old wife of many years for a young bride named Padime. The marriage was simple and quick, and the bride from a rather low noble house, although she did have royal ancestry. The important thing is Padime was willing to agree to the strange proposal and careful inspection foretold she would be fruitful. Padime and the aging Alorc consummated the marriage, but at first it appeared nothing would come of it. But Padime and Alorc visited Mila and pleaded for her help, offering the best blessings she could. By the end of the third year of Alorc’s rule, Padime was pregnant, Mila had worked a miracle. Now, would the child be a boy? The child that emerged was a girl, an ill omen, and Alorc considered finding a way to make her the heir. But Mila told them not to give up, and renewing her blessings on them, Padime and Alorc tried again to conceive once her body had recovered. By the end of the sixth year of Alorc’s reign, Padime was pregnant again. This time, the child that emerged in 154 VC was a boy, Alorc and Padime had done their duty. In honor of the Goddess who made this miracle possible, he was named Milo, the name having been ever popular in Zofia. He was given extreme attention, even more than had been given to past assumed heirs. He had no shortage of wet nurses, ate only the gentlest of food, was bathed with daily frequency, given herbs at the slightest sign of potential illness, wrapped only in the softest and cleanest of fabrics, was prayed to by a revolving contingent of full time priests and clerics with talismans woven into his garb, and kept away from the harsh sun and any physical activity which could hurt him. Alorc knew he didn’t have long on the throne, and wanted to be absolutely sure the nobility and burghers would accept Milo as King of Zofia once he was gone. Hence he arranged a ceremony occurring over months, the elite would travel to Mila’s Temple, and after receiving a ritual washing as a precaution, would go into a long room at the end of which would be the infant Milo resting behind a sheer screen. Each noble would when called would approach the screen, getting within a few yards or meters of it, and then swear an oath to the prince before being allowed to return back to their estates with their name marked off by a scribe as having testified to the succession of Milo. Was this necessary? Probably not, as the nobility didn’t want to jeopardize the legitimacy of the Lima dynasty by getting involved in an heir dispute, they largely liked how things were for them, why rock the boat? But for Alorc and other royalists, this was necessary to shore up the public appearance of legitimacy. Milo I and a discussion of Rigelian Cultural Hegemony: Spoiler In 159 VC, Alorc died at last, having been a decently effective king, if having taken the throne late in his life. The throne as hoped for then passed to his not yet five years old son Milo. Milo did have the crown ritually placed on his head, but he was obviously in need of a regent. Who would be his Regent? Perhaps another royal? It couldn’t be his mother since she had no experience in politics. No, the person who emerged as the de facto regent who emerged was the Chancellor, a position which the king of Zofia staffed by appointing a member of the aristocracy or royalty whom the Assembly of Nobles consented to. Since the king was but a child, there was an unofficial reversal of roles here, the nobility chose their Chancellor, and then had the royal guardian of the king, a distant uncle, the official Regent consent to it. The Chancellor chosen, from a powerful noble family which had managed to work its way up over the decades, was named Stephan. It was with his naming as Chancellor, that Zofia entered its aristocratic golden age, where the monarchy had fallen into a nadir. Milo never became a remotely strong king, nor did Zofia require him to be one, and the line of good royal advisors which had kept the weak Sarion’s reign afloat, had dried up early into Milo’s reign. What was Milo himself like. Milo did not have any major neurological, mental, or physical disabilities insofar the records suggest, but it nonetheless appears he never totally matured in mind. In fairness, the youth of his mother, a mere 15 when wedded to Alorc and 21 when Milo entered her womb, was more than counterbalanced for by the age of his father, 70 when Milo was conceived. Sperm quality does decline with a man’s age, and Milo may have suffered from being made with aged seed. Another factor to consider is that the nobility wanted Milo to stay weak, they encouraged the King to enjoy life and not tend to kingly duties. Royalists might have wanted him to become strong, but they were brushed aside in his upbringing due to pesky noble intervention. If there was royal strength during Milo’s reign, it was his sister Cardia who exercised it. She was not the tool of the nobility like her brother was since she was not the king. She was sought for her maidenhead, but under the care of the remaining royalists who did have control over her, she kept out of wedlock for years, flirting with entry into the Mila Faithful until she found a man she felt would not use her and rather be her equal. She wasn’t able to reestablish royal power for her brother nor teach him to like it, but within she developed her own personal sphere within the noble-centric world and used it sometimes to the betterment of the Zofian monarchy. Milo’s reign was long, having come to the throne so very young. When he died, there was no succession dispute to be had. Milo managed to make five sons and two daughters with his wife, and all survived to adulthood with children of their own, he was quite lucky. He was also lucky that Mila, who did criticize him for his excess and encourage him from time to time to take up royal duty, never discovered his paramours. Even if the nobility exploited the king’s passions, presenting him with a choice of mistresses wherever he went, his love for the bedroom ran deep. He was a dashing king, with a very pale complexion from his sheltered life, he was a little above average in height, with a build that had a thin layer of fat over over the average musculature, hair a light auburn, and his sweet and naive (if spoiled and bitter when pressed) personality was angelic. How many illegitimates he sired, that we won’t know. Rumor had it he could even charm the men, and accepted them, lacking an understanding of and unwilling to understand the common taboo since he found it fun. He held his good looks for a long time, but he did degenerate into obesity in his latter years (not that it curtailed his want of women). He ate well and played well, at a monarchal scale with monarchal resources, reigned in only by Mila’s critiques, his pesky (to him) royal advisors, and what the nobility would be willing to provide their puppet with. How was he compared to the future Lima IV? Not as tyrannical (he couldn’t be) or outrageously excessive, nor ever faced with such a crisis, but he was a hedonist fool just the same. Milo’s reign of weakness coincided with the beginning of the reign of Orthrus Patros in Rigel. Orthrus was the polar opposite of Milo. He was vigorous, mature, devoted, he was a righteous and overall great king. Holding a low opinion of their own monarchy with all it had been going through, the Zofian nobility, who had originally dismissed Orthrus as as a brute who’d last for three weeks before Rigel fell back into its savage chaos again, gradually changed their tune about him. Orthrus’s talent did not fail to impress the Zofians aristocrats as the first decade passed into the second and then the third. They hated his move to curtail Zofian food imports by increasing Rigelian production and to raise the exchange rate on Zofian food to Rigelian minerals, that his good years led to migrant Rigelians actually returning home and thus cutting into the aristocrats labor pool, and they absolutely did not want him as a king or to live in Rigel at all. The period of Rigelian cultural hegemony had begun. After the culture and logic to embrace such a shift from disdain to adoration of Rigel had developed through most of Orthrus’s reign, Asterius’s saw it explode. The Zofian aristocrats never met Asterius, so they never encountered the personality that won no hearts in Rigel, they saw him only from a distance. Queen Aria’s reign continued this summer of Rigelian love, and it lasted into Peroceles’s first rule, but began to die down as serious issues appeared in Rigel when Neran took the throne and Peroceles then took it back. Rigel virtually overnight went from praiseworthy to condemnable when the Second Great Civil War/Time of Chaos broke out, those who couldn’t read the fashion trends well, suddenly found themselves beached and had to scramble to tear everything down. How did the cultural hegemony of Rigel manifest itself? Aristocrats fancied themselves as Zofian generals and bureaucrats in visual and written imagery. They justified their rule over Zofia as being the reign of the meritocratic, which of course, it really wasn’t. The clothes they wore and manors they constructed were based on Rigelian designs, but almost always were given a stamp of Zofian artistic excess not available or condoned in Rigel. Distinctly Rigelian food, literature, sports, traditions, dialect, the culture of nudity, all came to Zofia more warmly embraced than before. A few noble families forsook their devotion to Mila and embraced Duma, these were among the most sincere Rigelophiles, and many others maintained Mila worship, but made a little spot in the family shrine for Duma. It wasn’t just the aristocrats who got into things, burghers and the whole of the middle classes made a conscious shift toward appreciating Rigel, and instituted similar changes in their lives. Even the King of Zofia himself wanted to get in on the Rigel craze, but the nobles and royalists told him- no! The King of Zofia was supposed to be the Son of Mila, this one was even named after her! They let him have some Rigelian trappings, but kept them on the low, since Mila would not be happy otherwise and could issue a denouncement of this Rigelian love affair they didn’t want to end. Even so, the royal family did get well involved in it. Princess Cardia heard of Queen Aria’s talents when she was but a consort, and exchanged letters with her starting then. When Aria took the throne and then boldly marched onto Mila’s Temple, others in Zofia were scared it meant the kingdom’s peaceful days were numbered, but Cardia boldly welcomed her coming. She went to visit Aria at the Temple and these two friends of the letter instantly became real friends. Cardia then oversaw the Rigelian dispatching of the bandits in Zofia Aria had threatened war over. She paid back her friend by making a rare royal visit to Rigel, and brought loads of Zofian food and other valuable resources. She didn’t offer them to Aria as gifts, but rather as payment and asked for them to be used most efficiently- understanding how Rigelian society operated. Was there pushback against the Rigelian cultural hegemony before the Neran controversy and the outbreak of chaos? There was. The Mila Faithful up to the goddess herself was wary of it and issued cautions and polite rebuttals to the change. They appreciated efforts to bring harmony to Valentia, but were worried that Rigelian influence would lead to a loss a kindness in Zofian society. Private charity and donations to the Mila Faithful did decline at this time, but less than five percent of Zofians converted to pure Duma worship. Much of this was because the peasantry remained overwhelmingly unswayed. They soaked up Mila’s word, and didn’t see much reason to worship Duma, since he only wanted them to labor more and would strip away the land’s blessings. The nobles they knew wouldn’t let them advance in society, so Duma’s promise of rewarding strength rang hollow, Duma worship became synonymous with their oppressors, even if the majority stayed in Mila’s camp. A few (for peasant hate and Duma worship were compatible) of the sincere converts to Duma worship in the aristocracy made some efforts to reeducate their peasants, and even instituted meritocratic and efficiency measures to better their lives, but the peasants displayed a coldness towards it. Anti-Rigelianism was the trend in peasant society, and the handfuls who did convert to Duma worship joined the quiet minority in Zofia which always had. Stalwarts from the other ranks in society existed too, refusing to bend to popular trends on the grounds it being heresy. The migrant workers from Rigel found their existences in Zofia better off, with the converted nobility willing to improve their living standards as a reward for their hard work. The Rigelian settlements maintained their legal insulation from Zofian society at large, a curse and a blessing, but economically and socially the barriers wore down and they interacted more with the local communities. Laws against intermarriage of Zofians and Rigelians if not repealed were no longer so stringently enforced by the government. The military opened it’s doors to Rigelian soldiers, but certainly not the officer corp, the domain of nobles only to the very end. The Zofian officer corp and certain burgher groups were the most open to converting to Duma worship. Vasil I - Valenti: Spoiler Milo died at the age of 67 in 221 VC, having reigned for an unprecedented 62 years, something not even Alm would break as ruler of the One Kingdom. It must be qualified though that those years hadn’t been the best for Zofia, unless one were an aristocrat that is. The status of the peasantry reached its bottoming out under Milo, with the aristocracy given free reign over their laborers. His heir was his first son, prince Vasil, age 48, making clear primogeniture with no fusses was back. Vasil had been raised in the same atmosphere was his father, but he was less of a lightweight and was able reassert a measure of royal power. Milo didn’t take much interest in raising children, he was too self-centered, and left the duty to others. Princess Cardia displayed sympathy towards her overwhelmed sister-in-law, who did have to manage the royal family, and chose to help out. It was Cardia who fostered the regrowth of royal power in Zofia through her maternal duties. She raised her own children and her nephews and nieces (who her children complained at times she regarded more as her own than them) and tried to restrengthen bonds between various royal descendants, by creating this shared family sphere backed by loyal bureaucrats. There was a little… incest involved in this (Vasil married a first cousin in a more extreme case- call it an episode Cardia’s favoritism towards her own children), but nothing resulted from it right away. The gene pool of the Zofian upper crust was small-ish, and two hundred years of exclusive intermarriage was starting to have effects, but the family tree of Zofia’s monarchy wasn’t a narrow self-replicating pole. Vasil was a quiet Rigelophile, and his attire more than his father’s reflected this. He sought to use the language of Rigelian state and politics adjusted for his personal situation, to inch out and gain power over the nobility. It wasn’t easy, the nobility had grown so used to Milo’s weak hand and wanted to swat Vasil’s away. Vasil had a crappy starting position, but he did over the years of his rule rebuild a base for royal rule. A tension emerged between him and the nobility, and he found his own hand limited by his resources and personal abilities, but he kept fighting for as long as he lived. He could have been a great king, but it took time to undo the damages to monarchal power his father had brought, and which had been amassing since Sarion, or even the later years of Lima III arguably. Vasil, living a healthier lifestyle than his father did, died a thin man at the age of 66 in 239 VC. His reign had largely aligned with Peroceles’s, but the two historically were in kingdoms on opposite tracks. Valenti, the first son of Vasil, took the throne at the age of 41. Valenti would be the last long lived of the Rigelophile monarchs, for it events in Rigel would undermine its cultural popularity. Valenti continued in the beginning to push for royal power as his father had, adjusting Rigelian methods and language for couching in Zofian contexts. He took the step of bringing the sincere converts to Duma worship into his close fold, which alarmed Zofian conservatives. And he considered taking a more radical step of instituting Rigel-inspired reforms throughout the country. Valenti wasn’t doing bad things, but he overplayed his hand, a little too assured of the power his father had accrued and wanted to take it further than he should have. When Neran’s reign took a turn for the worse, Valenti brushed it off as a short-term problem, things would improve, and when Peroceles retook the throne, he assumed his father’s friend (the two had a good correspondence) would take care of things. But Peroceles didn’t, Rigel fell into chaos again. Despite Rigel having a history of this, it was this history which convinced Valenti the kingdom would recover stronger than ever before when this phase passed. Valenti was being tone deaf, his continued Rigelophile behaviors as everyone else were dropping it isolated him politically. Gradually, he did reduce the open Rigelophilism in his manners and adjust the language and looks if not the spirit of his policies, yet the nobility remained on edge knowing what he had been before. His years devolved into gridlock, he refused to bend, and had the tenacity to resist noble attempts to undermine him- his cause was just he believed. While he lived, Valenti was able to enforce his decrees to the best of his power, but found himself continually frustrated by noble blockage, with Mila coming down against his efforts to abolish it, radically overhaul it, or destroy it by force. He was the man Rigel needed, but Zofia sadly got, a king in the wrong kingdom, he actually mused once or twice of abdicating and fighting in out in Rigel. But just the same, he bitterly cursed Rigel and Duma for not giving him the means to rule he egotistically thought they had promised him. Vasil II - Milo II: Spoiler Valenti died at the age of 75 in 283 VC, making him the oldest Zofian monarch ever to rule. His eldest son was to take the throne, but with the coming of Rigelian chaos, the conditions for more episodic pandemics broke out. Before Vasil II could take the throne, he caught ill, but he was coronated anyhow in full Zofia tradition. His reign lasted less than a year, and he died at age 49 in 283 VC. Why hadn’t he gotten proper treatment? It must be admitted that the Mila Faithful “failed” to inform Mila, who although disliking Vasil II, for he was a stubborn cold fish like his father who liked Rigel in his heart (not as much as he used to since he was being changed by the years of gridlock), would not have spurned him in sickness. Had Vasil II received Mila’s care, it was very possible he might not have died. Why didn’t Vasil II have his people inform Mila? He was against the idea and would rather fight it out instead instead of seek her cozy treatment, and he was possibly a closet Duma worshipper rumor had it. Quickly and without much fanfare, his first son of two, Valenti, was coronated, but as Milo II. Why did Valenti change his name to Milo II at the age of 27 in 283 VC? It relates to the victory of Zofian conservatism. The monarchy had been slow to embrace Rigelophilism, and slow it had been to shed it. Valenti son of Vasil II had disliked his father, grandfather, and great grandfather for their love of Rigel. He had for years privately adopted Milo as his name, and now that he was king, he had the power to make it real. Infighting had wracked the royal family Cardia had cultivated over Rigelian cultural influence, with the pro-Rigel party assuming it would only be through Rigelian methods that the royal family could strengthen its hand vis a vis the nobles. The anti-Rigel groups either wanted to rule with the nobles out of custom, or believed it was possible to amass power within the limits of Zofian customs. Milo II allied with the former group, and since he was heir, he got his way. The pro-Rigel group was forced to recant their beliefs or face expulsion from the royal family. A select few members did leave and abandoned Zofia for Rigel, as did a few Rigelophile nobles, but everyone else silently accepted their cause was lost and moved on the best they could. Milo II’s reign did see the nobility regain some power, but not as much as they were expecting. For all his disdain of Rigelian practices, Milo II reminded the nobility he was first among them his equals, and did try to guide the nobility along a proper course. He was nobody’s puppet, and when he found the nobility wasn’t always providing him with the revenue he wanted, he took small measures to improve the lot of the peasantry or exact more wealth from the burghers. Contrary to his dejection to become a super powerful monarch, Milo II did in the end strengthen the Zofian monarchy. The case should not be overstated in this direct either, for Milo II’s chief goal besides his own and Zofia’s interests, were the nobility’s. He used them heavily in his government services, and actually increased military restrictions on who could serve for their benefit and to root out Rigelian influence via the institution. He increased the difficulties of noble to non-noble lands sales too, so that noble families would keep it in the class even if non-nobles were willing to pay more. Sarion II - Lima IV: Spoiler Milo II died at the age of 65 in 321 VC. His heir was his son, whom he had named Sarion, since for how pathetic he was, Sarion was pious, unlike Milo II’s immediate predecessors. Sarion II, age 35, was not actually the eldest son of Milo II, who for all his religiousness, had in his wild youth had sired an illegitimate on a third cousin raised in the Rigelian style (as in she was freer and more empowered). Once married, Milo II had been monogamous, but he felt it was his responsibility to care for his fling’s creation, named Ander, and had him raised as a monk to avoid an heir dispute. Nonetheless, Milo II did keep an eye on Ander’s wellbeing and encouraged his appointment to the upper echelons of the Mila Faithful. It wasn’t readily known that Ander was an illegitimate, but Milo II confessed it personally to Mila, who readily forgave him for his wrong. The information was disseminated among the Faithful elite, and when rumors of the Ander’s appearance began making waves, the king publicly confessed his crime. Sarion II found his half-brother an oddity, but together they were able to work together on a shared idea of Zofian society. The nobility thought that just maybe, Ander (age 48 at Sarion II’s coronation) was intended from the start to reign them in from two directions. Sarion II wanted what his father did not, a strong, conservative Zofian monarchy, and Ander agreed to mobilize the Mila Faithful for this cause. Wasn’t the Mila Faithful apolitical? Sarion II’s reign had begun in 321 VC, Mila’s brain was on the degeneration track by this point, she was becoming increasingly sedentary, making fewer trips across her country, and she was become increasingly willing to spoil. Her tact for stopping political behavior in her Faithful wasn’t so sharp, and her blessings had already been weakening. And Mila liked what message Ander was spreading. Ander railed against noble indulgence, and in favor of the peasant and common laborer. He preached charity, egalitarianism, large families, and celibacy too. He sponsored missionaries to Rigel, which at this time was now on the receiving end of cultural hegemony. Sarion II overrode noble opposition, backed by popular favor and his dedicated wooing of the burghers. He enacted laws to improve the lot of the common man, improve agricultural output, and made tapping into noble coffers for revenues easier. Sarion threw the idea of first among equals out the window, the King of Zofia was superior to the nobility- who hadn’t done a thing since the kingdom’s founding. The gradual and slight decline of Mila’s blessings had caused the population to slightly decline in the past two decades after five of stagnation, which combined with a westward migration of those living in and near the Mila Desert had created issues under Milo II and had continued into Sarion II’s reign. Through his reforms, Sarion II hoped to get the population of Zofia growing again and to make it more prosperous, to continue the unending growth of the Kingdom of Mila. Sarion II did improve the living standards of many, but the death rate rose too and the population dropped the a bit over the course of his reign, if stagnating in the last two years (which it remained in for the rest of the century more or less). Banditry began to grow in the Mila Desert, and Sarion II tried to fight it, but Mila held him back. His reforms did increase peasant and burgher tax burdens, but their incomes grew larger than the burdens generally amounted to. Sarion II died at the age of 71 in 352 VC. He was a great monarch for Zofia, certainly a far better ruler than what Rigel had at the time. Ander the firebrand was lived even longer, retiring from his place as Patriarch (occupied starting in 333) only with convincing at age 94, and not dying until the miraculous age of 113. Sarion II’s eldest living son… well the small gene pool with selective inbreeding finally took effect, it had killed off the first two sons of Sarion II. His third son, named Corden, took the throne at the age of 34. Corden was average in intellect, like Sarion I, was free of mental scarring, but found himself short of breath quite frequently. Corden knew what was expected of him and what he wanted, which was to continue in his father’s footsteps. He had his half-uncle willing to help from the Faithful, and royal advisors were still of good quality. He had the means to succeed, and he did, ruling Zofia much as his father had, albeit without as much personal gusto. He was inferior to his father, and reform and the conditions of the masses leveled off but kept his father’s prosperity afloat. Corden died in 380 VC, at the age of 62. His eldest son who took the throne was Lima IV, the father of Celica, and the ruin of Zofia. Nothing was genetically wrong with Lima IV, mostly, probably, we don’t know for sure, but Celica was by destiny problem-free! Lima IV was named so after so long an abandonment of the name in the royal family out of optimism for the future of Zofia and the dynasty. That was misplaced. Lima IV was not the best nor the brightest mind out there, he just wasn’t, he was rather athletic, but not the best looking guy around. He was taken with luxury and had little reverence for Mila, whom he never visited once, and was neither visited by Mila or attended his coronation, not even a correspondence. He was a terrible lot, but Corden had to abide by tradition, and had advisors arrayed prepared him and did his best to make Lima IV a good king. Lima IV just didn’t want it though, he spurned the royal advisors using his monarchal right, and spurned the duties of kingship, which he claimed were not really necessary since the nobility had taken care of things in the past. He openly praised the lavishness of Milo I and sought to bring it back. Singlehandedly, he undid everything Vasil I, Valenti, Vasil II, Milo II, Sarion II, and Corden had worked for! The nobles celebrated, but everyone else screamed before accepting the bad king’s yolk. Misrule became the norm, and Lima IV befriended a noble just as lavish as he, whom he then gave away the Chancellorship to like a party favor, his name was Desaix, and the rest is known. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Interdimensional Observer Posted February 14, 2018 Author Share Posted February 14, 2018 Here is a question, why does Zofia have a desert? Shouldn't Mila prevent this from existing? Well I already said the desert wasn't always desert, but what was the desert like pre-desertification? That Jesse-Dean Desert Kingdom, turns out it wouldn't be the first. Introducing my latest invention (from months ago, I just never posted it), the Saelian Civilization. An independent kingdom inside Zofia that was sanctioned by Mila, until the kingdom collapsed with Mila's decline. Saelian Civilization up to and including the reign of Sarion I of Zofia: Spoiler he Mila Desert had been grasslands when Mila and Duma first arrived on the continent, but climatic changes saw it turn to desert. Mila’s blessings were by the founding of Zofia having a meaningful effect on greening the desert, and it was becoming more livable once again. A certain ethnic group called the Saelians (as in Sahel) had occupied the Mila Desert since before the Mila-Duma Conflict, this ancestral group had the strongest attachment to the sands, and a distinct culture from the Zofian catchall majority ethnicity’s. Saelians were subdivided into Ber Saelians and Nu Saelians (Berber and Nubia), the former nomadic, the latter settled. Since the formation of Zofia, “Desert Zofians”, those of non-Saelian ethnicity, had begun moving in on the greening desert, accompanied by Mila Faithful ascetics who wanted to escape from society or preach more mainstream Mila worship (the Saelians had adopted Mila worship, but it was quite distinct). The Saelians formed states in the desert built around individual towns and oases, which could confederate or form a relatively decentralized kingdom, whose boundaries were limited only the edges of the desert and sea and the skills and ambitions of a given ruler. The Saelians Ber and Nu alike did not care for what they believed was the intrusion of Zofians on their lands. There had been peace between the Desert Zofians and the Saelians initially, but the Saelians found the Desert Zofians did not respect their land and water rights, and overcharged them for the wheat and other agricultural products that were cheap elsewhere in Zofia. The Saelians first appealed to King Lima II, who was supposed to be their liege, and asked him to do something about the problem. Lima II did not see the Saelians as really being his subjects, but nonetheless agreed to curtail the Desert Zofians out of his own unrelated interests. Lima III’s reign paid no attention to the Desert Zofians initially, and this led the Desert Zofians to encroach too much on the Saelians. The Nu had more to worry about, since they weren’t migratory, but the Ber were quicker to react. The Ber began to attack the Desert Zofians, and some Nu motivated by these attacks began rioting against the Desert Zofians. Violence came into full swing by the early 80s, and brought the Saelian-Desert Zofians issue to Lima III’s attention. He never fought a battle of course, and he wasn’t physically vigorous in lifestyle, but he did study the Mila-Duma War and found it interesting. Zofia’s military instinct was weak, since there had been up to this point little need for it, and the founding generation who had warred against Duma’s men had died off. Lima III took it upon himself to become an armchair general, and if not building a truly strong desert defense, Rigel could crush it in five nanoseconds, at least looked impressive. Lima III’s forces were arrayed only in the western edge of the Mila Desert, where most Desert Zofians lived, but he was not adverse to considering expanding it, because the Mila Desert was noble-free (which had been its appeal to runaway peasants and second sons willing to taking the risk of forsaking the ease of aristocracy for an independent life) and it was the king’s men appointed to non-hereditary positions who were put in charge of it. The Saelians, if they were his subjects, were of little use to Lima III since they were totally outside the political system and had little unique wealth as he saw it to offer him. With “their” king against them, the Saelians fought on, and they had the advantage of superior knowledge of the local environment on their side. Their military tradition had also been maintained through the occasional inter-group fighting the Ber Saelians engaged in. They still controlled the majority of the Mila Desert too, only the westernmost portion of the desert was in danger, the Zofians had not penetrated much deeper, but the Saelians didn’t want to take their chances. The greening of the desert, which they were so thankful to Mila for, was both a blessing and a curse they could foresee. It made their ability to sustain themselves easier, but it also made it easier for Desert Zofians to intrude on them. On several occasions, the paper tiger of Lima III’s defense force was proven to be just that, much to his infuriation. This only caused Lima III to grow less conciliatory to them, and to philosophize about them in what he cast as objective terms (which were highly racist). The then reigning Queen Parvat of Rigel asked if King Lima III would like some help when she heard of the issues he was having. Seeing her offer an infringement on Zofian majesty and an effort to aggrandize Rigel (he wasn’t wrong), he snubbed her in polite formal language, while also attempting to woo this dashing warrior queen he had heard of. Mila saved the day, for now at least. Missionaries of the Faithful had complained of being attacked by the Saelians, and who suspected efforts to build monasteries and convents in the Mila Desert, and to convert Saelians deep into the desert to the orthodoxy, to be the covert scouting efforts of the King. Lima offered his own portrayal of the Saelians, but he was on relatively weak terms with the Earth Mother, unlike his grandfather’s benign relationship and great grandfather’s close ties. Mila then went herself, unaccompanied by anyone else to prove she had no ill will, into the Mila Desert in 91 VC. Meeting alone with the Saelians, she heard their grievances directly from them. She was not turned off by their distinct culture and ways of worshipping and depicting her, she rather liked them and told them to preserve them. She played with the local children of everywhere she visited, healed the old and sick, rode upon a trusty desert horse and camel (yes, they exist- no matter how much FE denies that they exist), and blessed the oases and coastal villages and all the other settlements she came to. It was a remarkable moment in history for the Sahelians, for the first time since the Mila-Duma Conflict had ended, a Dragon God came to them lovingly. When Mila’s unexpectedly long tour, her Faithful and the King feared the worse, had come to an end in 92 VC. Mila declared the Mila Desert was ultimately her’s. For the King of Zofia chose force and subjugation over peace for his subjects in the region, she forsook it as part of their patrimony. Mila permitted that monasteries and nunneries be built in the desert, but they were to be overseen by the Saelians and not the standard Faithful, and stated there was no need to spread her teachings to the Saelians, they already believed in her and how they did it was perfectly fine. She also permitted the Desert Zofian settlements on the western edge, barring the youngest ones, to endure and for them to be garrisoned. But the local Saelians had to have their rights respected and that of those from deeper in the desert who came to visit or settle there, and the fortresses had to be dismantled. To address Zofian grievances of the dangers and deaths done by Saelian raids, Mila extracted promises from the Saelians that they would cease their offensive activities. This being but paper promises, Mila provided substance by requiring from the Saelians the giving of a quantity of goods worth a certain value for a number of years to Zofia. So that Lima III would not see this as tribute from loyal subjects, Mila asked that the goods be brought to the monasteries and nunneries, where she would have the Faithful redistribute them to the affected by the raids in Zofia. This she believed was sufficient reparations from the Saelians, and she bade them to turn to her instead of ever resorting to war again if they needed help against the Zofian Crown. Unable to deny her will, the Mila Faithful restricted itself to a few places of contemplation but otherwise abandoned the deep desert. Lima III was unhappy, but he too had to yield to the Goddess’s orders. The Saelians were relieved, but their future they could not see rested on Mila remaining in charge. The assassination of Lima son of Lima III strengthened the Saelians’ hands. Lima III’s final 11 years tainted by accusations of murder weakened him politically, and he had to reduce his passive resistance to Mila’s decrees on her desert. The ascension of Sarion I was a boon to the Saelians. Sarion, out of devotion to Mila, cut down the garrisons in the Zofian desert outposts (which also saved royal funds), withdrew from a couple outposts completely, and offered to Mila some of the surplus food of the crown lands to feed the poor Saelians. He took a tour of the desert monasteries, and with his big heart thanked the Saeilian overseers for their kindness towards fellow Mila lovers. As the desert continued to green, the years of Sarion I’s reign proved prosperous for the Saelians, and their society flourished. Some Zofian continued to remain interested in desert expansion, but when Mila brought this to Sarion I’s attention, together they pruned such impingements. The Zofian aristocracy as a whole didn’t care about the Mila Desert, concerned instead with their own properties in the core of the kingdom. Mazar and his successors where more concerned with propping up royal power within Zofia than expansion into some sands, and thus approved of the withdrawal from the desert’s edge. The Cyrano and Alorc era- the arrival and interactions with Rigelians in the Mila Desert: Spoiler The post-Sarion era for the Saelians through Cyrano and Alorc was a tempest, but not a wholly bad one. This legacy of this tempest endured for centuries, until the ultimate breakdown of civilization in the Mila Desert. Cyrano died before he could formulate his own Mila Desert policy, but for his short reign remained tied to Mila’s commands. Alorc too had more pressing concerns than the Mila Desert, and never had the gusto to do anything about it. The pressing issue which dominated Zofia during Cyrano’s reign was the Pandemic, which cost up to 15, some would estimate 20, percent of Zofia’s population outside of the Mila Desert. This problem originated in the maltreatment of Rigelian refugees from the decline of the Dumason Dynasty during and after the Second Dumason Interlude through the end of the First Great Civil War. So, did these issues affect the Mila Desert? Yes, they did. The Mila Desert in pure desert form could limit the spread of disease, but the natural barrier it posed had weakened with the greening of the desert. It was no lush forested savannah, Mila’s power could only do so much good, but the area around oases and the edges had experienced significant greening. The result was that the Pandemic did reach the Saelians, the nomad Ber more than the settled Nu. About 10 percent of the Saelian population died, not as much as in Zofia on the whole, but it did impact the small Saelian populations nonetheless and curtailed some of the numeric growth the greening had brought. While the Pandemic took, Rigel gave. Rigelian refugees tended to enter Zofia from the west, where most of Rigel’s population was no surprise. But the east did receive Rigelian refugees too, and these on average had to travel further to find work since Mila controlled some of the area directly and the good noble estates where they could be employed lay further south than those in the west. Faced with the abundance of discrimination in Zofia, some Rigelians heard of the Mila Desert not being under the Zofia Monarchy’s control, ruled by a different people they had knew little about. Curious, some Rigelian refugees betted their lives on something good in the Mila Desert, and spend weeks, months even, walking to the edge of the Mila Desert. Arriving there, they were told by officials that Mila had banned mass Zofian immigration into the depths of the desert, but explaining they were Rigelians, the officials didn’t know what to do and defaulted to letting the Rigelians go through. A number of Ber and Nu Saelians met with the Rigelians at the desert’s edge, and at first distrustful thinking them like Zofians, their outlooks changed to speculation when they discovered these weren’t like Zofians it seems, and thus let some Rigelians work with them and brought them into the depths of the Mila Desert. The majority of migrants were single men across the age spectrum (70%), but families and independent females came too. The Sahelians upon bringing the Rigelians into the scorched sands were intrigued by their natural resiliency, despite never having seen a desert before, much less having had generations of ancestors living there. On the other hand, when they saw the Rigelians worshipping Duma, the Mila-loving Saelians grew wary of them. Once in the desert, the Rigelians worked hard as they always did, being allowed to labor in a number of different tasks both pastoral and settled. In their free time, the Rigelians adapted their favorite customs, traditions, entertainment and Duma worship to the new environ. The Rigelians didn’t mind the desert, they were used to harsh climate and geography and scarce resources at home, they had Duma’s blessings empowering them, and they were just happy enough to be free from Zofian discrimination and the chaos of the civil war in the homeland. The Saelians liked the strong work ethic of the Rigelians, and they made sure these strangers living somewhat removed from the Saelians themselves, were well treated. During Cyrano’s reign, there became a noticeable shift in the treatment of Rigelians within the Mila Desert. The first generation of Rigelians had become roughly accepted by the Saelians, and now the boundary between stranger and outsider began to blur. Saelian parents on the daring side decided they wanted their daughters to have strong Rigelian husbands, and their sons to have wives that could bear strong children. Sometimes the parents didn’t need to nudge their kids in the right direction, they were themselves enthralled by the prospects of copulating with a Rigelian. The beginnings of intermixing, on a small scale it should be said for many did not approve of it, was accompanied by a much more general normalization and toleration (not so much understanding) of relations between the groups. Through all of Saelian history, Rigelians lived in separate neighborhoods from the Saelians. Even if the Rigelians continued to be in some measure outsiders as new migrants continued to come. Saelian leaders now sought to make better use of Rigelians under their rule and the Rigelians sought to do more themselves. The Pandemic killed Saelians and Desert Rigelians and Desert Zofians all alike, but the Saelians did not blame the Rigelians for the Pandemic. They shifted the blame to the Zofians or the work of evil in nature, the Rigelians were a clean (they could and did regularly bathe in the desert) and good people. Rigelians migrants became a measure for combating population loss due to the Pandemic for the rulers, and some Ber Saelians traveled beyond the desert’s west edge to visit the shantytowns to recruit more Rigelians when they couldn’t get enough from the edge’s outposts. Politically, the Saelians were used to some infighting along group lines, and the influx of Rigelians intensified this. Rigelians were strong and liked to practice combat as recreation, so they proved quite valuable and were able to shift the tides of internal struggles. Rigelians did not save for a few early attempts to overthrow their Saelian “hosts” for fear of alienating themselves, but did come to make up majorities of their fighters in some not uncommon cases. This destabilized Saelian society to varying degrees at different times, but it did not destroy it. The big divide between Rigelians and Saelians was religion. One group worshiped Duma, the other Mila. The divide was crossable however, and communities of coexistence formed, each group recognizing the other’s right to worship as they wished, within limits for the Duma worshippers. Rigelians on the whole remained Duma-lovers, and Saelians Mila-lovers, with conversion discouraged in a number of ways, including some legally, but it was permitted. In the case of mixed marriages, the woman’s status generally determined the relationship. A Mila worshipping Saelian woman would pass down her faith to her children, while the husband remained a Duma worshipper, who paid token worship to Mila. This was because marriage to a Duma worshipping male was done for the family’s prosperity first and foremost. A Duma worshipper woman would pass down her faith to her children, and her Mila-loving husband would pay Duma lip service. This was because marriage to a Duma worshipping female was often done to produce strong children. These mixed marriages formed an intermediary group between Saelians and Rigelians serving in intermediary and ambiguous roles. Complicating things was the fact that a couple Desert Zofians, a few of whom married into the Saelians, existed in the Mila Desert’s depths. And much more importantly, the Saelians were themselves divisible into not totally ethnically but very much socio-economically distinct Nu and Ber groups. What existed was a general societal divide into Nu, Ber, Zofian, and Rigelian groups, with individuals being able to move along a nonlinear spectrum. One’s genetic makeup determined where you began in society, but one could consciously make choices that could move their position, to a large degree. Depending on whether you worshipped Duma (Rigelian) or Mila and how you worshipped Mila (Zofian “orthodox” or Saelian “heterodox”), whom you married, what lifestyle you took up (Ber pastoralism vs. Nu agriculture), and other things could all affect your exact spot in society. Cultural exchanges of all sorts were plentiful, if not always consciously desired for the sake of pluralism- that was rare. This rarity did occur in theology however. For some time there had been a few monasteries and nunneries where, under Mila’s decree, Saelians Mila heterodoxies had been officially allowed to join the larger numbers of Zofians monks and nuns contemplating in the desert. Originally they lived segregated from each other in the same and or separate buildings, sharing only in the upkeep of the monastic communities. But a few individuals eventually began conversation that traveled over the confessional divide. These began as gentle arguments why one worshipped Mila wrongly, and the other the right way. When Rigelians started showing up in the Mila Desert, incentive to unite and write scathing ecumenical anti-Rigelian polemics formed. They caught on only lukewarmly and largely along conservative Saelian lines, although most Saelians remained opposed to apostasy. The tracts had more success in Zofia itself. And as for worship, an attempt was made at blending the heterodox and orthodox, resulting in a diplomatic style of worship. It was used in the desert’s west edge, and in the mixed monastic communities, and the deep Mila Desert locations where tiny handfuls of Desert Zofians were permitted by the Saelians themselves to live and coexist, but in all cases only for grand inclusive public ceremonies, private worship and intragroup worship remained along their distinctive lines. The third pillar of Duma worshippers did not emerge until later. Some Duma Faithful followed their flocks all the way into the Mila Desert, but their numbers were small and limited. Mila though tolerant of a minority of Duma worshippers in her realm, did not permit the establishment of an official branch of the Duma Faithful and banned the oracles, severely limiting the potential for a native clergy to arise. The handful of Duma Faithful had brought the scriptures including the Decrees of Duma and the ever expanding Living Words and Clerical Writings with them. The Duma Faithful taught their lay in the ways of Duma, and a few went to Rigel to become undergo the training that would end in full ordination as a member of the Duma Faithful, but these numbers were small due to the costs of travel and training. To compensate for the shortage of official clergy from Rigel, the Duma lay folk took up the task of guiding themselves. Borrowing the texts and wisdom of the few Faithful present, they tried their best to mimic the official ways. They would attempt the post-birth ceremony and every other one between it and cremation. Initially, they messed up, but over time they got the hang of it. The divide between clergy and laity originating in Rigel, combined with the new remote conditions, meant what formed wasn’t a watered down Duma Faithful. It was in a sense a Duma heterodoxy. When several of this heterodoxy’s leaders later visited Duma, he gave approval after a good lashing out against what he found objectionable among them. Their response was obedient in the need to avoid succumbing to Mila worship and its ways, but at the same time defiant in its stance against the clerical orthodoxy. The name for the new group of lay leaders was shaots. Shaots often had full time jobs, but did religious duties on the side and spent their free time learning the scriptures and practices. Some shaots did prioritize their religious duties, but never did they turn to asceticism completely, in line with Duma’s commands. Some of the latter shaots sought to escape normal society for an ascetic’s abode, and the nearest were those Mila monasteries and nunneries. But the Mila Faithful was opposed to letting them in. In response, the shaots set up tent communities within sight of the monastics, the blazing sands they withstood. Annoyed by what they saw as an act of protest and squatting, the Mila Faithful informed Mila, and her careful response was to give the shaots access to the monastic resources, but not habitation, provided they assisted them. The shaots thus began to interact with the heterodox and orthodox of the Mila Faithful. Sharing in contemplation in the Mila Desert maintaining the monasteries and nunneries and writing and copying religious texts, the shaots and Mila Faithful slowly began to converse with each other. Prideful each and every one in what they presented, none yielded to the others. But once they did come to a common point of contact, some shaots and Mila Faithful started to explore a syncretic theology. Formalized and eloquently argued justification for the coexistence and intermingling of Duma and Mila worshippers in Saelian society was written, with a smidgen of reconciliation between these and the Desert Zofians. Little effort was put into justifying this coexistence for Zofia or Rigel, just the Mila Desert, which was distinctly different. The justification, which Mila and Duma both considered to be within theological boundaries enough to accept as non-heresy, led to the permitting of Saelians to attend Duma ceremonies in cultural, but not religious, capacity, and the same of Rigelians in Mila ceremonies. It further buttressed the general coexistence in economics, society, and politics. The Cyrano and Alorc era- the founding of the Namor Kingdom: Spoiler Now back to the political situation. The influx of Rigelian immigrants into the Mila Desert began by first boosting Saelian economic output, and then disrupted the society once their numbers grew. In the disruption accompanied by Pandemic, the old cluster of Saelian states broke down due to the strategic use of Rigelian refugees as soldiers. This breakdown brought political chaos which lasted through the reign of Zofia’s King Alorc, but in spite of it, economically and socially the Saelians improved. When the Zofian succession crisis of 147 occurred, Ber Saelian commanders saw this as a chance to banish Zofia from the desert’s edge. Attacking the flimsy defenses, in five minutes the west edge of the desert was in Saelian hands once again at long last. Alorc wasn’t happy to see the dignity of the Zofian monarchy impugned like this once he took the throne, and he wished to muster a reclamation army. Alorc found himself unhappily handicapped though. The Mila Desert outposts did little for the powerful nobility, and though it did more for the burghers, Alorc found it wasn’t a cause enough people were willing to rally to him around. Alorc had limited political capital, and he thought that a reclamation could add to it, but realizing it would subtract, he scrapped his plans. He did beg Mila to stop the Saelians from invading Zofia, the desert could be theirs but not the kingdom itself. Mila agreed to this and told the Saelians they could not bring arms beyond the desert’s edge, loving the Earth Mother, they accepted these boundaries. A few dreamed of walking through Zofia Castle, and then sitting on their throne, but such ambitions were shackled by the adoration of Mila. Weakness from Zofian monarchy continued during the long reign of King Milo I. It was during his reign in 174 that entirety of the Mila Desert was unified under one rule- that of the Namors. The Namors originated in the north in the Mila Desert amongst the Ber Saelians. Their leaders since before the Rigelians arrived been accumulating power and had formed a minor Saelian state of their own. The Namors were not the first to use Rigelians, and for a time they were on the verge of losing their polity, but fortunately they were able to broker an alliance for their official independence. Which bought time enough for them to wilily acquire their own Rigelians, deck them out in weapons and armor and then put them to use. From near extinction, through the perils of war they established themselves as the dominant power in the northern Mila Desert by 163 and were continuing to grow. Breaking the backs of strong Nu Saelian leaders in the east, and buying the loyalty of the weak ones in the west, who found themselves suddenly in a precarious position by Mila’s order against attacking Zofia, it took not long before the south was conquered too. Under King Arbal Namor, the new Saelian state brought the people of the Mila Desert to a new height of power. Hearing of these remote matters in the Mila Desert, Orthrus Patros of Rigel opened diplomacy with King Arbal in 178, something never undertaken by a Rigelian monarch before. Orthrus was inquisitive about this desert kingdom, having only heard numerous Rigelians lived there still, in rather interesting ways. Lacking easy access to the kingdom, Orthrus surveyed his kingdom and found a natural port along the rugged east coast which he hoped to drastically expand to open trade with the Namor Kingdom. It took time for the port to be completed, and the trade began fairly modestly, owing to Rigel’s westward center. But Asterius’s rule saw the port take off. It later collapsed once Saelian civilization did and so did East Rigel. The Namor Kingdom too was recognized by Duma and Mila, and even Milo I grudgingly, who childishly complained it belonged to him and that he let the Namors be. It was during this time that the theological justification for coexistence in the Mila Desert was strongly worded, and Mila and Duma agreed to use this to explain the Namor Kingdom in their Valentia. It was not Zofia, it was not Rigel, though Mila-loving in the majority, its significant Duma-loving population provided enough balance to make it a third, if somewhat uneasily existing kingdom that straddled the Mila-Duma divide. Through Milo I’s rule, the Namur Kingdom flourished, owing much to the Zofian monarchy’s weakness and the nobility’s relative disinterest in the Mila Desert, Vasil’s reign proved to be as fruitful. However, bandits had begun hit and running from Zofia into the Mila Desert, which Vasil could do nothing about. The Namur King swore to combat the banditry, and they did, but not as much as Vasil would have liked. To counter the raid, he began fortifying the towns near the border, and launched pursuits when the bandits were fleeing, even if it violated the borders. King Musoch Namor: Spoiler During the reign of Valenti, the greenification of the Mila Desert hit its peak. Yet the Namor Kingdom was starting to show signs of internal weakness, as the center weakened under regional and group pressures. Able to keep things together, King Musoch Namor (r. 253-274) sought to strengthen the kingdom via external action, and launched an invasion into Rigel in 259 VC, years into its Second Civil War/Time of Chaos. Duma immediately got word of what Musoch was doing, and asked if he, a nominal Mila worshipper, intended to take the throne of Rigel. Musoch said he would if he could take the kingdom. To which, Duma replied he would have to convert to do so, no Mila worshipper will occupy the throne of the Kingdom of Duma. Musoch ignored Duma’s question and after a faulty beginning, was able to inroads into East Rigel, plundering it for all it was worth. Duma asked the question again- did he intend to convert? With all going well for him in East Rigel, in 265, Musoch announced his trusted and talented nephew would immediately convert to Duma worship. This was not good for Musoch. He himself had not converted knowing Mila would take offense to it. His plan was to keep the main branch of the royal family Mila-lovers, but make a cadet branch Duma worshippers so he could pursue power in Rigel. Nevertheless, it created controversy across Valentia. Zofians suddenly saw the barbarians in the east as abandoning the one thing that made them civilized. Conservative Mila worshipping Saelians feared the entire dynasty would change over to Duma worship, and Duma, although liking cunning, disliked Musoch’s plan for it suggested to him that the King of Rigel should Musoch succeed would be a pawn of a Mila devotee. Duma let Musoch try however, he could simply deny the kingship when Musoch’s nephew came before him if he refused to break loyalty to his uncle. Musoch’s plan was to use external gain to fuel internal stability, and to vent internal restiveness through external outputs. All went well while Musoch lived, but following his death on the one hundredth anniversary of the Namor Kingdom things began to change. His son Aurang (274-291) inherited the Kingdom without a hitch, but soon was to be faced with new challenges. The first was a change in the fortunes of the Rigel adventurism, the emphasis on plundering Rigel had its repercussions, the territory the Saelians occupied was becoming bare, and increasingly Namor relied on sending foodstuffs and other resources to keep the campaign afloat. The Rigelians under Namor rule were unhappy, but the Desert Rigelians in the military were having a field day, loving the participation in their ancestral kingdom’s fight for the crown. Musoch’s nephew was fairly talented, as were his generals, but as they died in battle, central control began to break down and the ability to conquer and deflect rivals for Rigel’s throne declined. Musoch’s nephew then met his end in battle in 279 and his replacement from the Namor family failed to meet expectations. While they continued to last, the Namor territories became dominated by lower officers who operated independently of each other and fought only for their own gain. In 288, the Namor territories were put under vicious attack by rivals, and combined with popular dissent, the territory fragmented. Before long, these fragments fell into the miserable chaotic state East Rigel would remain in until Duma lay dead. The port Orthrus Patros had built remained the hub for the residual Namor presence, the pale fell in 312 to a nobody warlord in no lament nor fanfare. King Aurang Namor, Milo II, Sarion II and the collapse of the Namor Kingdom: Spoiler Aurang had much reason to loathe the decline of the Rigelian fortunes, but he had other issues closer to home too. The military campaign had not done enough to stifle internal dissent, it was continuing to grow in the Bers, the Nus, the Desert Rigelians, and the Desert Zofians. Aurang carefully purged a few handfuls of suspected enemies, and then lowered local taxes to appease the communities. After the breakup of the Namor territories in Rigel in 288, he forced the conversion or exile of many Duma worshippers in the royal family, and began to crack down on the Desert Rigelians. This was partly to appease Zofia, with whom he had fallen on bad terms, why? Because Aurang had invaded the Novis Isles in 283. Why had Aurang done this? He wanted an easy solution for domestic difficulties, and thought the Novis Isles were a good choice. They were denser in resources than East Rigel, and would be easier to conquer. Technically, the Isles were Zofian with some Zofian nobles, but Aurang gambled they wouldn’t care given an understanding of prior Zofian rule in the Isles. Still, Aurang hesitated to do this right away, only striking when he spied a good opportunity in the coronation of a new king. That was a bad idea. The initial conquest of the island of Pirate’s Throne was successful, but Milo II did not abide by this for long. He, a deeply conservative monarch, would not let what he certainly believed to be an essential part of the Zofian realm fall into the hands of barbarity. With a conservative nobility backing him, the first great policy of Milo II’s reign was a noble-led counteroffensive to reclaim the Novis Isles. It was owing to a weak Zofian military and a decent Namorian one that the initial Zofian offense was destroyed. Aurang went on to claim the Sea Shrine and set plans for Novis itself. But Novis’s defenders fought back, and Milo II’s forces recouped and tried again, being more successful this time, particularly at sea. Then, Milo II realized that if the Saelians attacked Zofia, he could attack them. On the outset of the attack, Mila had already expressed severe skepticism towards Aurang’s invasion. Mila tried to arrange a peace, but Aurang refused it, a peace wouldn’t do him any good without the Novis Isles being his. Milo II then went to Mila and in his piety pleaded for her approval for a war in the Mila Desert, he said it would be fair and bring Aurang to peace. Mila approved, and thus in a surprise attack Milo II swept into the western edge of the desert. So used to the peace, Aurang had not expected this. He immediately had to assemble hasty forces to defend his western flank. With the Namor Kingdom on the decline and Zofia on the rise, the war in the west was a struggle for a kingdom’s existence. Aurang withdrew from Novis, and after heavy fighting withdrew from Sea Shrine, but maintained an iron grip on the Pirate’s Throne. He tried to sue for peace now, but Milo II refused to anything less than the complete return of the Novis Isles. The eastern Mila Desert, unaffected by the war, became more restive and unappeasable. When Aurang died in 291, the Namor Kingdom fell apart, Aurang’s heir being killed shortly after accession in a coup. The Nu Saelians in the east established their own small states, prospering as much as they could with the breakup. The rest of the desert fell into smaller polities too. Those in the south inherited the Novis battle, and managed to cling to the Pirate’s Throne for a few more years. The west fell under the rule of Ber Saelians, who fought against Zofia. Why hadn’t the war stopped? Mila wanted to end it, and Milo II was willing to consider it, but he wanted to claim the protective barrier on the desert’s edge as in the days of yore. Mila, now declining, conceded to Milo II’s demands and stated that the western edge of the Mila Desert was no longer the exclusive realm of the Saelians. Around 310 VC, with MIla’s permission and Saelian resistance weak, Milo II invaded the Mila Desert seizing the western edge and establishing Zofian rule there. This amounted to a betrayal of the Earth Mother to the Saelians, for she had once protected their realm. Although there were soldiers there, the thought that Zofia would invade was very very unlikely since Mila centuries ago agreed to protect them, and hence there were no westward facing defenses and most forces were located elsewhere. Yet a popular excuse, the Namor Dynasty had fallen into excess, let the Saelian masses accept the loss of the west if quite grudgingly and with lament. By 310, the Mila Desert was losing its greenness. The desert, a heatsink for blessings, had peaked in its greening in the 280s, and had by now entered a real decline in soil fertility. It being that life in the desert was a fragile existence, it was quick to lose its vigor once the blessings weakened and revert to what Mila had audaciously forced it not to be. The Rigelians the whom Duma had blessed and the Saelians had relied on for soldiers, were now weakening too. When Milo II died in 321, already a population crunch had unfolded in the Mila Desert, the numbers declined and people fled westward into Zofia itself, hoping for a better life and escape from the chaos there. Of course, the immigrants faced discrimination. Sarion II was the death knell for the Saelians. Milo II had been amassing troops in the western desert, to ward off Saelian raiders he said. In truth, Milo II wanted to invade the rest, but Mila never gave him the permission he was trying to get from her. Sarion II, eager to assert kingly authority played up Saelian raiding, and his half-brother Patriarch Ander feigned mistreatment of Zofian orthodox in the monasteries. Mila, now certainly degenerating in mind, believed this and bought into arguments couched in condescending paternalism- that Zofians would save Saelians from themselves and convert them and the Rigelians to the good. So it was that Sarion II invaded the rest of the Mila Desert with ferocity in 323 VC, obsessed with the proof of royal majesty it would bring him. The Saelians had grown wary of Zofia’s presence in the west, and so they had prepared as best they could in spite of internal troubles for a potential invasion. Sarion II swept from the west into the south and the north crushing the armies arrayed against him. But he left but the center of the desert and the east intact, the center being heavily affected by desertification was sparsely populated and hence a non-threat. The eastern Saelian states, although they had sent help to northern and southern Saelian states, were able to escape conquest via pacts of tribute and nonaggression. Sarion II had exhausted himself more than he let on in the campaign in the Mila Desert. During Sarion’s war and the decline the already heavily weakened Saelians coalesced and pleaded to Mila for her help, why had she let this happen? Unfortunately, the Mila Faithful blocked their direct access to her. Once the conventional battle had been won by Zofia, Saelian fanatics, believing they had visions of Mila now led foolish attacks on Sarion II’s forces, they were all mowed down. Afterwards, Sarion II withdrew almost completely in 333, believing he had accomplished his mission and finding the deeper sands a burden to occupy. In the east, one last great Desert Rigelian, the fabulously named Leonsys Aruna attempted to create a unified kingdom, and was able to defeat the Nu and Ber opposition. He was only half Rigelian, his parents both mixed of race, his mother Ber and his father Nu. He forced the conversion of the other elite to Duma worship, believing Mila was worthless since clearly she had abandoned the Saelians. There was widespread sentiment something was wrong, and indeed a great conversion to Duma worship, for Duma never disappoints, for he admits the terrible nature of reality, was happening. Still, the population of the eastern Mila Desert remained about 60 percent Mila worshippers to 40 percent Duma worshippers. Leonsys Aruna attempted to salvage the northern and southern lands Sarion II left in ruin, but this was to prove to be Aruna’s ruin. In late 339 VC, Sarion II ordered a return to the Mila Desert to kill Aruna and do away with a Duma threat inside his realm, which included the Mila Desert. Aruna knew the odds were incredibly against him once Sarion II’s men showed up, but he hoped he could maintain his eastern home realm at least. Aruna used every stratagem he had to kill as many of Sarion II’s men as they marched across the desert without confronting them head on, but they kept coming, Sarion II being willing to sacrifice all to conquer the desert. Eventually, Aruna saw Sarion II’s generals at his doorstep, but refused to surrender. Fighting to his last breath Aruna died in combat. His body it is said turned to sand upon death, and the wind then blew it away, denying Sarion II a mortal trophy. The eastern Mila Desert was then decimated, and thus, Saelian civilization, crippled already, was gone for good in 344 VC. What remained was just banditry, small communities struggling to exist, the monasteries and the troop garrisons. Corden’s reign saw the great Zofian military of Sarion II decline, and the garrisons and monasteries did too as the void left by the destruction of Saelian civilization festered infectiously. Then came Lima IV’s reign, where things got even worse. The Mila Desert, almost back to its pre-blessings full extent, now became the haven of barbarism which Zofia always feared it was. And while I'm at this, why not throw in my much less comprehensive notes on the Novis Isles? The last of my burst of SoV fanficting. The Novis Isles up to and including the reign of Sarion I: Spoiler The Novis Isles, named after the largest of the trio, were a much easier matter than the Mila Desert. The native islanders were more culturally and genetically connected to the continent, so while they had distinct customs and traditions and such, it wasn’t so great as that posed in the Mila Desert. The geography was comparable as well, and this made it easier and more attractive for mainlanders to migrate to the Novis Isles. During the Mila-Duma Conflict, the Novis Isles had largely been peripheral. Naval forces were generally small in the conflict, though raids had been launched from the Isles and their resources loosely extracted. Pan-Valentian worshippers had sought refuge from the continental war on the Isles, but they ultimately could not escape it. Mila and Duma worshippers settled on the Isles and brought a smaller scale version of the Conflict to them. This began not so much with warring between the Mila and Duma worshippers, but after they subjected the native populations. When the Mila-Duma Conflict resolved itself on the Valentian mainland, the Novisians, to give them a name, like the Saelians, found themselves in the land of Mila. Once the Duma worshippers withdrew, grudgingly in some cases, the Novis Isles became part of the new Kingdom of Zofia. Given the plentiful Mila blessed lush land on the Valentian continent, few aristocrats wanted to move to the less fertile Novis Isles. Lacking a nobility interested in the Isles, King Lima I appointed a royal governor in charge of all the Isles and their small human population. Lacking a sufficient bureaucracy, this royal governor had weak authority. Moving to Novis and establishing his administration in the Greatport, the governor relied on the Mila Faithful (interested in preaching to the masses) to acquire tax revenues and enforce royal laws. The Pirate’s Throne, the Seabound Shrine, and the small isles all remained under weaker control. Lima I’s initial royal governor focused on establishing norms for governance in the Novis Isles. His successors continued in this way, and although budgetary issues eased somewhat with time, allowing for a larger bureaucracy, the Isles remained understaffed and reliant somewhat on the Mila Faithful. The position of Royal Governor to the Novis Isles just wasn’t that appealing to the noble bigwigs and bureaucrats. During the reign of Lima II, his son, Prince Lima “the Adventurous” had gone to the Isles to investigate their exact worth to Zofia, and to determine how they might be better utilized. Prince Lima caught ill however and died in the Novis Isles. During his time among them though, the Prince was said to have very much enjoyed sailing on the open seas, and wrote he was torn between a royal entombment on the continent and a burial in the remote Isles. A loyal servant of the Prince explained this to Lima the Adventurous’s grandfather Lima I and his father the future Lima II, presenting the contents of the Prince’s diary. After consulting with Mila on what to do, she permitted the heart of Prince Lima to be removed from his body and stored in a Mila Shrine on one of the Novis Isles. Following a careful stitching of the Prince’s open postmortem chest to close it, it was brought back to Zofia for a royal funeral and burial. Prince Lima the Adventurous thus became a royal guardian of the Novis Isles, his name and image invoked by all who ventured onto or lived in the Isles. Despite Prince Lima’s adventuring, the Isles remained the interest of few, and the system of royal governors continued as it did through the reign of Lima II, into Lima III’s. Lima III wanted more from the Isles, and sought to overhaul the system by replacing the lone royal governor based in Novis with a nobility of his creation. Ambitious he was, he didn’t get what he wanted here. For one, he was too impatient, expecting results overnight. Second, the peasantry on the Isles, used to lax royal authority, did not take well to the sudden increase in demands placed on them, and proved resistant to this change. Third, in his hastiness, Lima III over-bureaucratized the Isles, sending too many nobles and too many officials, with no clear system of assigned territories and duties worked out (the maps on which Lima III had plotted the nobles fiefs in advance were inaccurate and did not consider the actual landscape at all, it was just neatly arranged lines placed arbitrarily). This mess, not able to produce the revenues that could sustain itself, much less enrich Lima III’s treasury, ended up taking from it. Several years of trying to get this to work passed with Lima III frustrated, things were getting better with time, but not at a rate that Lima III found to be promising. Rather than reform his self-inflicted mistake, Lima III found it easier to scrap the whole thing and get it gone, reassigning the nobles onto the mainland and rework the officials into a revised version of the old royal governor system. The new one elevated the vice-governor positions on Throne and Seabound to full royal governorship, although the Novis royal governor remained as the greatest among the three Isles equals. Thanks to Lima III’s mistake, the benign attitude the Novisians took to the royal government began to change. The loyal elite, a class of semi-nobility, had not been the best rulers, they stirred up resentment too from time to time, but Lima III’s little experiment had led both the local elite and the peasantry to become a little wary of the central government. This provided some soil on which piracy could grow, not that it didn’t exist on the Isles already, this just gave more reasons for it. When Lima III passed on and Sarion I took the throne, the Novis Isles were set further aside as Masar and his successors focused on mainland politics and governance. Sarion I, before his fiftieth birthday, asked whether he the King of Zofia had any crown lands in the Isles. His advisors relayed that he didn’t, but free of the Zofian nobility, all of the Isles were technically his, as the local elite were not of the same inviolable rights and privileges. With this information, Sarion on his fiftieth birthday bequeathed to Mila a large swathe of good land on Novis, on this gift was built the Priory where Celica begins her journey in SoV. The Mila Faithful had already been using the Isles as a place of contemplation, besides teaching Mila’s word to the masses. Sarion I’s gift simply expanded on this, but it was a fine gift, derived from Sarion I’s thankfulness to Mila for letting him live such a long, healthy, and rich life. The reigns of Cyrano and Alorc: Spoiler Cyrano died young as it has been remarked before, and his early plans of increasing mineral resource extraction from the Isles were never acted upon in full. The Pandemic which defined Cyrano’s reign was brought not by Rigelians, but Zofians and foreigners, as Rigelians were forbidden from sailing on the Zofian seas. Zofia Harbor went into a reverse-quarantine of sorts during the Pandemic. Rife it was in disease, sailors from aboard had to conduct their business in areas designated disease-free. Some bacterium and viruses did however pass to the sailors, and those who then stopped in the Novis Isles brought it there, as did the traveling Mila Faithful and administrators. The Pandemic took a heavier toll on the Isles, depleting about 25 percent to a third of their populations, owing to the compact nature of islands. Seeing that outsiders brought the disease with them, some Novisians went ahead and blocked all ships from coming in. In a revolt against the central government, when the Royal Governor of Throne tried to land for his duty, he found his ship set ablaze and leaped into the waters, drowning to his death. This would have merited a military quashing of the peasantry, but it never came because Zofia itself was in the turmoil of the Pandemic. The Throne incident and virulent anti-Zofian xenophobia by the Novisians led to relaxing of central authority in the Isles, with the royal governor of Novis and Throne both opting govern from the continent rather than risk their lives in the Isles. The chaos in Zofia, the Novis Isles, and the Mila Desert owing to the Pandemic (and Rigelian migration in the Mila Desert) caused a lot of short-term chaos. During this time, piracy rapidly intensified in the Novis Isles, reaching across Zofia’s east coast and the coasts of the Mila Desert. The abatement of the Pandemic and the reign of Alorc saw authority return to the Novis Isles. The population decline however also made the Isles less lucrative than before, and thus central authority remained weaker than it had been in Lima III’s reign. In the Isles themselves, trade quickly resumed with the outside world, and on the whole, the survivors of the Pandemic lived better lives than those who had lived before it happened due to the population drop. Piracy was checked, but just barely. Milo I and a little on the nature of piracy: Spoiler Milo I was the reign which saw piracy reach new heights of grandeur and power. The formation of the Namor Kingdom in the Mila Desert grew trade, and despite the strong Namor forces, it was still lucrative to raid it from Throne. And from Throne, longer voyages the future land of Grust were made as well. Seabound too partook of attacks on the Namor Kingdom and central east coast Zofia. Novis remained under relatively strong royal control, but pirates still hid where they could here, using the marginal Isles of Hasoe (the one east of the Southern Outpost) and Tufal (the one southwest of Novis) as intermediaries, the pirates of Novis reaped handsome profits. And needless to say, all ships at sea were liable to being seized by pirates. The continental nobility shrugged off most attacks, fine to simply defend themselves and not take the offensive. Only the most egregious attacks at sea on shipping led to any mustering of power against the bandits of the waves. On the Isles themselves, the pirates remained happy enough to occupy the more remote parts, leaving the local elite and the peasantry alone. The local elite did try to attack the pirates as they they took from trade- the livelihood that sustained the ports of the Isles, but they were outnumbered and had inferior weaponry. More often than not, attacking the pirates just meant banishing them temporarily, at worse, it made the local elite liable to being killed by the pirates, their lands plunder, and the elite’s heir if spared having to pay protection money to the pirates. Hence the Novisians at all levels silently accepted the pirates, so as long as they didn’t attack them, what else they did didn’t matter. The pirates too strayed from attacking the most valued of Mila Faithful sites, though lesser ones were targets, to avoid drawing too much religious hatred towards them. The royal governors for their part in Milo I’s weak reign, lived off the revenues, avoided upsetting the status quo (those who did suffered for it), and even turned a blind eye to the pirates in exchange for a little tribute. Mila did not like piracy, and she wanted strong action against them. Yet, Mila did not call for violence outright, she believed a firm hand was needed, but that arms of war should be balanced with arms of compassion. To rid the world of piracy, she believed reforming the pirates themselves was possible and should be done. To compensate for what they took from innocents, Mila bestowed the victims with extra blessings and her love. The actual pirates of the Novis Isles were a mixed bunch. Some were continental Zofias, others Novisians, yet others Saelians of Ber and Nu origins, some hailed from the continent of Archanea, and few Rigelians (mostly ones who had first migrated to the Mila Desert) too. The proportion of Rigelians in the pirates’s numbers was greatly exaggerated. This was because some pirates considered themselves descendants of Duma worshippers who had refused to leave the Novis Isles once the Mila-Duma Conflict ended. Even if such communities existed, few pirates would be Rigelian in ethnicity, and the Duma worship practiced by the pirates who did was often a very bastardized form. Pirates aren’t a religious kind, so that is no surprise, nor is their raunchy sacrilegious use of Mila, and their other bastardized religious practices. The Novis Isles during the reign of the rest of the Zofian monarchs: Spoiler King Vasil I after coming to power began to take serious action against the pirates of the Novis Isles. Vasil’s war began decades of continual combat against piracy. Vasil’s weak authority on coming to power and knowledge of where the pirates were based led him to pursue a localized policy of attacking the pirates on the islands themselves using local forces backed by central Zofian assets and reinforcements, ones trained in the Rigelian ways of war. This plan proved problematic, as Vasil ignored local conditions, upsetting the peace and leading pirates to scavenge the Isles themselves. The pirates smashed Zofian ships heading to the Isles and took their crews captive when they weren’t killed. The Novisians found more to dislike in their king than in the pirates- as the pirates had left them much alone so as long as the peace had endured. Throne fell into near complete control by the pirates, and Novis and Seabound too found much land governed by the pirates. Moving out to sea, Vasil continued to fight on with the pirates, sometimes scoring victories, but often losing. The Namor Kingdom exercised independent action against the pirates. Sometimes it was friendly to them, turning a blind eye to coastal hideouts belonging to them for a little tribute, other times fighting them independently of or with Zofia. The Namors wanted to use the pirates to check Zofia, and Zofia to check the pirates. Valenti saw those same old decades of warfare with the pirates continue. Against monarchal restrains, the tide was being turned against the Novisian pirates, such was the stubbornness of Valenti and his father before him. The Namor Kingdom increasingly feared the pirates downfall, offering them additional support to ensure they could and would fight on in a proxy war vs. Zofia. King Musoch Namor pushed his resources to the limits between his support of piracy and his Rigelian adventures, and the pirates took the hit. When his son Aurang found the pirates weakening yet, he launched his controversial invasion of Throne, convinced that left to the pirates, it was soon to be fully pacified by Zofia. This however only incensed the new King Milo II to take back all of the Novis Isles once and for all. Milo II, savior of the Novis Isles who destroyed the pirates and banished Namor, believed the old Royal Governor system was bunk. He believed a good dose of Zofian aristocracy was needed to bring the Isles to governability at last. Rather than impose nobles from the continent like Lima III had, Milo II instead elevated local elite of sufficient rank and service to full noble status, the same as that of continental nobles and expanded their fiefs. He then mandated that they spend a large portion of the year in the Isles, to ensure they’d perform their noble duties and defend against piracy. Using their new status, the local elite soon became more decadent and abusive of their powers over the peasantry. When they revolted en masse, Milo II sent troops to help put down the rebellion, believing it rebellions would invariably led to fresh piracy. Sarion II recognized the local elite were now a little too independent, and sought to extract more revenues from them. Not trusting them in full to do their military duty, he upgraded the fortifications on the Isles and installed small regiments of continental forces. Sarion II proved less successful getting stuff out of them than he did continental nobles, owing to their merit and titles being more recent and hence merited in origin. At the end of his reign and life, his destruction of the Sahelian civilization caused a resurgence in banditry, piracy included, but he was too old to do much about it. Corden came to power thinking piracy was dead, but soon learned this was wrong and fought a continual battle against fresh piracy on a smaller scale than that which had been faced by Vasil-Milo II. The Novis Isles nobility and fortifications and central Zofian troops his father provided were both of value in this piracy battle. Once Corden died, Lima IV the hedonist let the piracy issue get much much worse, refusing to work on combating the problem, leaving the local aristocrats to fight it and never once sending forces into the Mila Desert where many pirates lived as a safe haven. Without royal support, the nobles of Throne eventually met their demise, while Seabound met a similar fate later. Novis alone remained sufficiently defended by virtue of the Mila Faithful and the island’s size and wealth. 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