Formations of Empire

The new gods made a pact that they would never meet in the world in physical form to avoid another cataclysm of Deismaar's magnitude. However they had full freedom and every instinct to give advice to their people, for they felt their former humanity strongly and fondly remembered their families and former neighbours and lands. Haelyn, as a result, walked with Roele in dreams and promised his brother support if only Roele would bring peace to Cerilia.

Thus the Anuirean records say, unlike most of his contempories in Anuire, Roele chose to use his powers not simply to glorify his own station, but to forge an empire of justice that would stand the test of time. Anuire was fortunate that Roele was gifted with the intelligence and nobility of his brother Haelyn, as well as his family’s legendary tactical brilliance and his own gift of being able to set aside personal ambition when his vision of the empire demanded it.

Roele began to form the empire by allying with those who had fought beside him at Deismaar; the allies quickly drove the beast-men and brigands (endemic across Cerilia after Deismaar) from their lands and continued on to forge the entirety of modern Anuire into a single cohesive nation.

Some Anuirean records suggest that one of the key motives for Roele in spreading the empire past the borders of Anuire itself was to ensure that Cerilia could withstand another invasion from Aduria, many feared that the Adurian forces of Azrai would assault Cerilia again, and Roele was far from sure that the other races would support him, particularly given the terrible losses suffered by the Masetian people in what had been, from some perspectives, an Anuirean war. The wise of the other peoples knew Azrai would not have been satisfied with Anuire, but even they knew that war could have been delayed by years before reaching their lands, and the death of the gods had badly shaken all the nations.

The oral histories of the druids and the written texts of the orthodox imperial temple differ in the next stage of the empires development. By the tales of the druids and skalds of the Rjurik, noted in the legendary saga Hruthvir’s legacy, the Anuirean empire’s ambition led it to invade Hjalsone, Stjordvik, and the rest of the Taelshore realms, the Anuireans were driven back by the valiant Rjurik berserkers but then corrupted the jarls of the Taelshore with bribes and flattery until the jarls swore loyalty to the imperial throne. Those Rjurik who refused to bow to the empire migrated north and west settling the sparsely populated Northlands.

According to the Orthodox Imperial Temple however the fledgling nation of Anuire was continually preyed upon by Rjurik vikings seeking plunder, the archduke of Boeruine supported by the Dukes of Cariele and Alamie then invaded Rjurik with the intention of capturing the shipyards of Rjuvik and burning them to the ground. Being Anuirean their armies marched by land rather than trust themselves to the uncertain sea and as a result conquered Hjalsone and Stjordvik almost by accident. The Dukes retreated as winter fell; their aims completed and wintered in Hjalsone. When the Rjurik massed to attack the Dukes, the tales told of an impending racial war were so terrifying that the Dukes called for aid from Roele, when the Rjurik saw the might of the entire empire turning towards them they yielded without battle.

The lands of the Rjurik were poor however, and plagued by goblins and the Gheallie Sidhe. Further the druids held tightly to the Rjurik and the priests of Haelyn found few converts. Once roused however, ambition is rarely quenched easily. The lands of the Brecht were in turmoil, with dozens of tiny kingdoms and rampant banditry. Convinced that he would not merely restore, but actively create order Roele was goaded by those nobles who had gained little from the conquest of Rjurik into attacking the Brecht.

One point of note is that although Anuirean histories give reasons (or excuses depending on the reader’s perspective) for invading the Rjurik (vikings) and Khinasi (slavers) even the Anuireans tend to admit that the invasion of Brechtür was simply a land-grab driven by little more than ambition and greed.

Many of the Brecht states fell with ease, Müden, which was one of the few true realms to have survived the widespread bloodtheft of the decades after Deismaar welcomed the Anuireans and thus avoided bloodshed, its king took the title Grafensteller (count in Anuirean) and although officially chamberlain to his new Anuirean overlord effectively ruled his nation as before. Grevesmühl and Rzhlev however fought the Anuireans for every inch of terrain, and have never recovered. Danigau was one of the few realms to both remain intact after Deismaar as a realm and to resist the Anuirean empire. Wulf Danig, perhaps the first human wizard to learn to use realm magic, and perhaps the greatest Brecht general of all time, smashed every force sent by Roele against his realm until Roele was forced to accept the realms independence. By -961 MR however the remainder of the Brecht realms were firmly held by the empire of Anuire.

Again history is split on why Roele invaded the Basarji, some (mainly Anuirean) claim that the Masetian people called for aid, others (in particular the 'plains raider' tales popular in Anuirean high society around 1250-1300 MA) that the Basarji slave-traders provoked invasion, many simply point to Roele's earlier conquests of Anuire, Rjurik and Brechtür as proof of his overwhelming ambition. Certainly by this stage the general mood of Anuire was when they would unite Cerilia rather than if and little provocation would have been required.

The Anuireans simultaneously invaded south from their holdings in the Basin states of Brechtür and east from Anuire itself. The Basarji, more a collection of nomadic tribesmen and independent city-states than true realms were conquered one by one despite their common use of magic and the Anuirean empire soon covered the entire southern coast of Cerilia.

If Roele did aim to aid the Masetians however, and the legendary scholar Mourde of Daulton (author of Empire: The Kingdom of Haelyn brought unto the Barbarians, described by Emperor Alandalae Roele as the definitive guide to the Anuirean Empire) suggests that strong evidence suggests that Roele did seek to repay the Masetians for their valor and losses at Deismaar, but that he was too late to save the majority of the people, although many elements of their culture were welcomed by Anuirean society. To quote from Mourde ''Long considered inferior by the Basarji the noble Masetians had been alternatively killed or absorbed by the Basarji within a single generation of Deismaar; this brutal annihilation of the peaceful Masetian justified stern measures at first by the Anuireans and only many years of exposure to the previously unknown concepts of honor, fairness and reason brought about by the liberation did the Basarji fully accept the remaining Masetian as their equal.''.

This viewpoint (and many other 'Anuirean Myths') was roundly condemned by ''the Light of Reason'', a religious text written by an unknown author found nailed to the doors of the cathedral of Avani in Ariya which spurred the young Rashid Doune Arrasi to question the focus of the traditional Basarji culture on small family units and eventually unite the people of the Sun Coast and win a substantial measure of independence from the empire. The exact treatment of the Masetian by the Basarji, and the reason for the disappearance of the Masetian culture is lost to the mists of time and generally of interest only to scholars and demagogues.

Having united the civilized lands of Cerilia, and almost entirely annihilated the beast-men and Vos tribes that had plagued the lands after fleeing Deismaar, Roele turned to the enemy he had always truly wished to battle, the Vos.

Almost before he had finished his conquest of the Basarji, Roele moved north, driving the Vos from the lands now known as the Lamia’s realm, Merasaf, Min Dhousai, the Magian’s realm and Kozlovnyy. The Vos retreated into the uncharted north, home previously only to goblins and beasts. Roele continued his advance, slowed only by the cruel winter. Belinik and Kriesha then entered the fray, unable to convince their tribesmen to unite, the Vos gods instead turned to the Awnsheghlien, driving them to dominate the Vos and lead them, and the goblins of Vosgaard against Roele. Kozlovnyy was later re-conquered by the Vos but not until long after the empire fell.

Roele fought in Vosgaard for several years, gaining land in summer only to be driven back in winter until finally he simply declared victory declaring that he had conquered all the lands of value and 'left the barbarians to starve in the barren lands of the north'. He had driven the Vos from the civilized lands of Cerilia, and greatly reduced their numbers; he would be content with what he had achieved. That he could not win without draining the newborn empire to beyond breaking point is implicit in many Anuirean texts describing the time, but never admitted.

The Anuirean empire endured for almost a thousand years until the death of Michael Roele at the hands of The Gorgon five centuries ago.

Although the empire was not welcomed by the peoples of Cerilia, nor was it truly despised by them. In the first years the stability of the empire and its ruthless actions against the Adurian Vos and Beast-men tribes that had fled Deismaar made it far better for the common folk than the chaos of the first few post-Deismaar years when ancient nobles lines fell like domino’s in a frenzy of bloodtheft and unblooded noble lineages collapsed in the face of hostile scion rulers.

The empire was notable for its adherence to the laws of Anduiras and later Haelyn (with certain exceptions such as the Hjalstone massacre and the Zikalan famines) and equality for all subjects of the empire (in the eyes of the law) was rigorously enforced, albeit along the Anuirean feudal lines (a Rjurik peasant was legally the equal of an Anuirean peasant, neither however was the equal of a Brecht or Khinasi baron).

It is noteworthy that for all the pious talk of equal treatment for all loyal subjects of the empire in the City of Anuire, in the distant ‘provinces’ of the empire the local Anuireans routinely treated their native countrymen (often born outside the historic lands of Anuire for several generations but nevertheless Anuirean in thought, word and deed) far better than they did the local population. Commonly for example an Anuirean magistrate could try and sentence any suspected criminals brought before them, but a Brecht magistrate would try only fellow Brecht and foreigners – not Anuireans.

The Anuireans did ban all trade tariffs save for those of the empire, enshrine property rights in the laws of all nations (although this was resisted heavily in Rjurik), heavily punished corruption (this decimated the nobility of the Basarji who, in the words of Traederic Dosiere had ‘passed from barbarism to decadence without considering once to stop at civilization’) and operated a remarkably corruption free rule (for the most parts, although the legendary inability of the Anuirean lords to speak to local language gave local underlings considerable scope for graft).

The Empire did notably destroy the nobility of other realms, the thousand social ranks of the Basarji for example were reduced to one to all intents and purposes (‘natives’), outlawed the ownership of slaves across the continent and spread knowledge of building, farming and fishing techniques throughout the continent.

The Anuireans tend to gloss over the harsher side of the empire, the occasional corruption, the inertia caused by a distant bureaucracy which could take years to respond to events, the often brutal stifling of native culture and ambition, etc. It is unarguable though that trade in particular flourished under the empire, and that since its fragmentation, the rule of law has often reached no further than the nearest kings blade.

Category: Lore