The shaping of the modern world

(The last two thousand years or so.)

Lirian Domination

Until three millenia ago, Liria spanned from Bedia in the west to Tragekia to the east, [Al'Uma]..(/Geography/AlUma.md) to the north, and Dradehalia to the south. Only the ancestral homelands of the Hordes (in Yithia) stood alone, and it is a testament to the fierce prowess of Horde warriors and warlocks that such a massive empire could be battled to a standstill. Aside from the Hordes to the east, Liria governed over all of Azgaarnoth.

The human governors struggled to keep their empire coherent, however, and even with the aid of the Draconic Orders and other organizations, often fell short in addressing the needs of the people--the empire was simply too big and too widespread to govern effectively without the Eldars' particular gifts to aid them. Constant warfare from the Hordes--coupled with the periodic chaos from the various Returns--meant Lirian resources were often stretched quite thin. When various charismatic strategists began to assemble their own fighting forces and rented them to the Lirian generals in the east in exchange for coin and certain privileges, Lirian generals were only too happy to accept (and thus lay the groundwork for the mercenary companies). When arcane researchers offered similar terms--magical assistance in exchange for some limited autonomy--again Lirian governors were all too ready to accept. By the time the merchant guilds had formed and approached the Lirian rulers with their offer, much of the pattern was set in place. Liria had the resources to better combat the threats posed by the Hordes, but at the expense of a great deal of the power normally reserved to government.

Alalihat and Zabalasa

As Liria battled the Hordes in Yithia, two charismatic figures emerged in Merevets that would come to dominate the Eldar's ancient ancestral home continent. Alalihat was a dark and brooding figure, capable of great miracles of faith, and he preached a doctrine of humanity's failures of faith in the Eldar. Claiming that the world could only be put right when the Eldar resumed their natural place as leaders and shepherds of Azgaarnoth's future, Alalihat led a religious revolution against Lirian oversight, and city after city found itself swayed by his words. When Mt Bezulb erupted, and continued to spew forth lava for years, then decades at a time, Alalihat took it as a sign of fiendish forces moving against Azgaarnoth, and began the ritual daily prayers and worship that permeate Alalihatian lands to this day.

The disciple known as Zabalasa first appeared as one of Alalihat's advisors and bodyguards, and gained fame when he single-handedly stopped a Horde assassination against Alalihat while attemping commune with the Eldar in Nyllar. Seeing the Horde threat up close, the normally upbeat and perpetually optimistic disciple took a small retinue to the east, to view the battles waged against the Hordes there. Little is said of where the band went or what they saw, but when they returned to join Alalihat in Zvelaino two years later, grim determination had replaced Zabalasa's optimism and carefree outlook, and he agitated for Alalihat to raise an army to defeat the Hordes.

When Alalihat refused, declaring the Hordes to be "of no concern to beings such as the Eldar", Zabalasa broke away from his Teacher and chose instead to preach a message of martial prowess--that the Fall of the Eldar was not due to a lack of piety, but a lack of arms. Instead of feeding the Eldar empty words and rituals, Zabalasa argued, they required able-bodied soldiers to battle the Hordes, and by taking the burden of combat upon humanity's shoulders, mortals would then allow the Eldar to return to their place at humanity's head.

Before long, the disputes turned into arguments, which turned into threats, and then blood. Even as Alalihat pursued his errant disciple (though whether to persuade or destroy was never quite clear), Zabalasa moved from city to city, recruiting to his cause and training relentlessly, and within a year had a sizable army. Turning half of them east to battle the Hordes, he took the remainder and carved out lands for his own use, to support the battles to the east and safeguard their supplies. Alalihat's supporters took this to be rebellion, and mustered their own forces to defeat the heretics. Battles broke out all along the plains surrounding Chetmyzk and Hogilos, mostly to stalemate--Zabalasa's troops, while much better trained and equipped, were much smaller in number than their Alalihatian opponents. Any reinforcements obtained by Zabalasan recruiting were shipped east, where the Zabalasans were enjoying significant success against the Hordes, and Zabalasa looked forward to exterminating the Hordes in pitched battles at Venonaxaxis, [Onimintilarma]..(/Cities/Onimintilarma.md), and finally Dragazakama.

However, Zabalasa discovered, to his horror, that the battles were not having the intended result--rather than exterminating the Hordes, Zabalasan troops were merely accelerating a general diaspora of the Hordes to the south, into Tragekia, and then again into eastern Dradehalia. Legend tells that when Zabalasa received word from Lirian and Dradehalian messengers that the Hordes had, in fact, seized sizable territories there and sacked several human and elven cities there, Zabalasa wept bitterly, covered his face with sackcloth and fled into the wilderness, never to be seen again.

Whatever the cause, Zabalasa disappeared from sight, and Zabalasan troops were required to reinforce their front with their Alalihatian cousins. Much of Yithian and Zhian lands remained unoccupied for centuries, populated by a gradual blending of Horde and mortal individuals until a new, blended identity emerged, forged by Yithi to create civilization out of the hills and ruins, and founded the Principality. Ruthless pragmatism and strict adherence to codes of honor became the driving force of these emerging city-states, and those Yithians who sought a deeper divine relationship with the world over loyalty to city were encouraged to find alternate lands in which to settle, and eventually migrated north to found the Theocracy in Zhi.

As the wars between the two Al'Uma leaders continued to ratchet upwards after Zalabasa's disappearance and Alalihat's death, a potential battle between the two groups emerged just outside of the sacred city of Merevets. Concerned greatly with the possibility of damage to the City of the Prophets, a Caliph proposed to both that Merevets and some surrounding lands be given over into a neutral protectorate, governed independently, solely for the purpose of safeguarding the city. Grudgingly accepted by both sides, the protectorate was named after that Caliph, and thus was born the Protectorate of Almalz. It has remained neutral in all Al'Uma affairs since, and Merevets is open to any of Al'Uma descent who seek pilgrimage. In the centuries since the Protectorate's founding, it has become common to see generals of Alaliahat and Zabalasa meet in Merevets, take part in religious ritual together, even grow to become friends, then return to the battlefield against one another with ruthless abandon.

Liria struggled to face the savage Hordes in Tragekia, battling them to an eventual stalemate along the Babuzah River, only to see Hordes turn south again and land at Swagab and swarm into eastern Dradehalia. Lirian forces were stretched to their limits.

First Breakaway

Inevitably, given that Lirian attention was focused entirely east, the first signs of Lirian disintegration began in what is now Travenia. A sizable merchant fleet was lost to the denizens of the Undersea in the Travenian Sea, and the populace in Silbel demanded better guards against the lizardfolk and other seaborne predators. When Liria procrastinated, citing the Hordish pressures in the east, coupled with the secondary Hordish migration south, the nobility and citizenry of Silbel collectively decided on drastic action. Quiet plans were made, and within months, conspirators all across the continent were ready. Rising up against the Lirian governors in a dozen cities, almost overnight Travenia became a separate nation, governed by a collection of ruling families. Within a month, Travenia had secured the majority of the continent, and discussions were open with the few cities still ostensibly claiming Lirian loyalty.

Liria, of course, realized that the loss of Travenia--not to mentin Lirian access to the lands west of Travenia--could be disastrous in their efforts against the Hordes, and immediately moved to put this nascent rebellion down. Travenian nobility, who in many cases had recently been Lirian nobility, moved to mobilize and secure their future, and within months, blood was shed in a pitched naval battle just outside of the port of Eartine.

Thus began the long Wars of Western Independence against Liria, and with it came the long, steady, and slow decline of Lirian influence over Azgaarnoth.

When decades passed and Travenia was still no closer to pacification or subjugation that it was when it began, the lands west of Travenia began to question their own loyalty to a distant throne on the other side of an ostensibly hostile power. Travenia sought to convince them to join the Oligarchy, but the match had already been lit: Merchants in Mis, aware of the value their woods offered to the world, chose to hire sufficient mercenary companies to defend against incursion (whether Lirian or Travenian in nature), and declared Travesimia to be independent. Their cousins to the west declared similarly the sovereign nation of Bedia, and lay claim to the uncharted wilderness of Northern Bedia.

Neither Liria nor Travenia was inclined to accept these declarations, and Travenia moved first against the Travesimians. (Liria had by this point grown to accept that their empire was fragmenting, and returned much of their focus eastward and southward.) Travenia navies sought to force landings at numerous points on Travesimian lands, and the Traveian Sea ran red with blood for many years. Landings were finally successful in seeral places, most notably to the north in Bovefose, but the Travenians could never muster sufficient force to conquer the Travesimian lands, nor could the Travesimian mercenaries completely push the Travenians out.

Across the Lishalsound, armies from Liria, Travenia, and Travesimia all found themselves squaring off. Travesimia held the strategic island of Moswind, but Lirian cities in the eastern part of the island (Salle, Steamer, Cliront, and Flavengulf) formed a significant strategic logjam, and Travesimian forces found themselves battling Travenian armies over Gloomerses, Nigme, and Deerross. Travenian forces even managed to push far enough south to threaten Flatwath.

Owing to its relative remote location, Bedian declarations of independence was accepted as a fait accompli by all sides, if it was even noticed, and the fledgling nation was left to eke out its survival against its distance from trade markets and the wilderness within its own borders. Bedian military and naval forces spent the better part of a decade pushing Undersea invaders out of the swamps to the south of Dradow, and carving out a few toeholds of civilization on the eastern shores of North Bedia. Bedian isolationism from world affairs grew as it focused ever-inward, and before long much of Liria had even forgotten that there were humans and firstborn living west of Travesimia.

Dradehalian Descent

The landing of the Hordes on eastern Dradehalia took those populations by surprise, and the humans and elves living there found themselves dreadfully outnumbered. The Hordes moved west steadily, and city after city fell to Horde forces. Swagab, the Hordes' principal landing point, was rebuilt, however, as the Hordes began to learn and adapt to human and firstborn ways, and in time the Hordes came to call Swagab their "capital", and begin to lay down the trappings of Hordish society.

The Dradehalians, however, took no notice of the gradual civilization claiming their Hordish neighbors, and grew increasingly desperate. Cries for Lirian rescue went either unheard or ignored, and Dradehalian society began to break down just as steadily as the Hordish march west. When the Shavew, the largest settlement on Dradehalia, was threatened by Hordish bands, Dradehalia found itself on the cusp of becoming a Horde territory. Much of the continent's food is grown along the shores of the Sunterses River, and if Shavew fell to the Horde, it was reasonable to assume that much of that food would not reach the cities to the west that depended on it. Should Shavew fall, so would fall human mastery of the southern continent. Relocation further west was discussed and explored, but for most of the leaders of the southron humans, it was clear that their last stand was likely at Shavew.

Cursing the Lirians who had abandoned them and forced them into such measures, the Dradehalians began to explore any and all arcane or divine measures that would enable them any measure of success against the Hordes, beginning the Dradehalians' slow descent into collective madness, brutality, and violence. During the five-year siege of Shavew, a figure emerged of notorious brutality, and slowly the Hordes came to fear his presence. Known in time as the Dread Emperor, his cruelty was eclipsed only by his military successes, and through repeated pitched battles the Hordes came to understand they had met someone who could perhaps be their match. A decade after the siege of Shavew began, the Dread Emperor broke the siege, forced the Hordes back to Eagmeaybar and Snaven, and paused.

All of Dradehelia would understand the nature of the bargain they had made for their freedom, for once the Hordes were entrenched, the Dread Emperor took the bulk of his army and marched north and west, brutally subjugating the remainder of Dradehalia by conquest, diplomacy, or treachery within five years. For some, the conquest was met with reluctant enthusiasm at the idea of a leader who could face down the Hordes; for others, resigned acceptance of their fate; still others continued to curse Liria for her indifference, and eagerly embraced the new order if it meant turning their attentions northward.

Once Dradehalia was secure, the Dread Emperor turned his attention eastward again, but by this time two new factors had emerged: the three-way battles for the Chidian continent were in full swing, threatening (he believed) his western flank, and the Hordes to the east had learned from his own actions, and were themselves embracing a deeper level of brutality than before. (In fact, the Hordes were facing a schism of their own, between those that sought a more civilized and peaceful Hordish existence to the north in Trakegia, and those in the south in Dradehalia who sought to return to their fiercer roots of conquest and subjugation.) The Dread Emperor found that his Empire was stretched thin, particularly if he wished to have the level of control over the populace that his governance style required, and he chose that control over expansion. After pushing the Hordes east of the Golpoint River, he declared the Hordes "beaten" and began his long campaign of subversion and treachery in all directions.

The Divide of the Hordes

In Tragekia, Hordes clan leaders began to see the benefits of a higher degree of civilization (aided, it is said, by close contact with several mercenary companies that braved Hordish society and Lirian screams of betrayal to fight for the Hordes), and took steps to enforce a stronger sense of civic duty and responsibility upon their populace. Building became more prized than burning; trade began to supplement pillage; farming provided useful for the lower castes of Hordish society. By the time Hordish migration reached Swagab in the south, Tragekian Hordes were ready to build a new Horde nation, not just plunder the ones they came across. Leveraging knowledge and skills they had either captured from their conquests or bribed from their distant Yithi cousins to the north, Tragekian clan leaders conquered Swagab with minimal damage to the city and its environs, and embarked on this new moment in Hordish history. Borrowing from Lirian history, Hordes clan leaders become Horde governors, as more cities were built atop the ruins of the cities they had conquered in Tragekia and Dradehalia. In time, Hordes ships began to carefully begin trade with Yithi and even Alalihatian cities.

Not all of the Hordes welcomed this new shift in Hordish civilization, however, and particularly those who found themselves on the receiving end of the Dread Emperor's brutality found this desire for civilization to be distasteful. Rallying around a particularly charismatic ogrom named Ulm, a number of Hordes collectively gathered into a single, continental-spanning Horde named after their leader, and savagely embraced their more violent tendencies. Recognizing that a Horde this size required at least some trappings of order, Ulm put captured humans, firstborn, and even Tragekian Hordes to work building a city of his own. When it was finished, Ulm named his new city Klilm (either after one of his numerous sons, or, legend suggests, as a derivative of his favorite phrase "Kill them"), and from it directed his Horde to impose brutal copies of his ideas of civilization upon the rest of Dradehalia.

Tragekian Hordes, realizing that Swagab was directly in the line of sight of Klilm, immediately moved to secure their own city, and for the first time in history Hordes fought against Hordes, a condition which persists to this day.

Continued Fragmentation

The Wars of Western Independence continued to claim victims, even well into their second century of conflict, and in time, nobility and populace within Travesimia grew weary of the constant loss. Independently of, but at almost exactly the same time, the dukes of Mis and Lashal decided that the Travesimian kings were more concerned with glory and visions of the riches of conquest than they were with the practical realities of their people, and each declared themselves apart from Travesimia. Travenia, exhausted from its wars with Liria and Travesimia, and seeing the emergence of a deep threat in the Dread Emperor to the south, chose to acknowledge both Whaveminsia and Bagonbia as sovereign nations, and offered diplomatic and military assistance against the Travesimian reprisal. Bagonbia found a willing trade partner to the west in Bedia, and deepened ties there, while Lashal found Liria to be quite ready to accept Whaveminsian independence in exchange for the strategic position against either Travesimia or Travenia (as well as naval supply and support out of Latervault).

Bagondia chose to ratchet up the military action, invading Travesimian territory by landing at Madhamouth and Dogburymound on the Chidian continent, forcing the Travesimians into a two-front war against three separate opponents, and after Bagondian troops had secured Sanford and Ellowfals, it was clear that the Travesimian King desperately needed a truce somewhere, or risk losing all of the land won at such great cost in Chidia.

Ostensibly, the Wars of Western Independence wound down with the Treaty of Moswind. In practice, it is not uncommon to find pitched battles taking place along any of the borders on Chidia, or on the open seas of the Deepwaters or Travenian or Traveian Seas.

Mighalian Assertion

Just two hundred years ago, urged on by conspiratorial elements funded by Travenian Kings, the Duke of Mighal declared Mighal (and its immediate surroundings) an "free city", owing no allegiance to any government beyond itself. Home to numerous mage schools, mercenary companies, and merchant guilds, Mighal as a city is rivaled only by Flakew itself, and Lirian governors, realizing that retaking the city would be problematic, cautiously probed the Duke as to his intentions in doing so. Upon assurances that the Duke simply sought to be free of the drain on Mighalian families from the near-constant wars of the millennium, and sought no more land than was required to support his city as an independent entity, Liria chose to recognize Mighal as such a "free city" (though not as a sovereign state, which frequently drives both Lirian and Mighalian ambassadors into fits of twisted logic), particularly since this afford Liria a convenient opportunity to meet with representatives from other cities and states that normally would not be welcome inside Lirian borders.

Present day

Azgaarnoth stands, collectively, at a fork in the road of its destiny: Near-constant warfare for close to a thousand years has exhausted much of the population, and wilderness creeps in at all edges. Some cities remain abandoned, still, even hundreds of years after their sack or conquest, and while some cities look to expand, others are seeing their population dwindle from a variety of forces both natural and societal.

Liria is an empire exhausted; her infrastructure lies battered and bruised, her people scattered, and much of the wealth she once commanded spent. She still boasts much of the amazing Eldar architecture, art, and magic that she was born with, but her cities are often also among the most hard-hit by economic downturn. While Liria has, for the most part, avoided direct conflict within her borders, she has also seen a steady deterioration of cities that are now thousands of years old.

To the northeast of Liria, the curious mix of human, Horde, and firstborn that occupy the Yithi and Zhi plains continue to fend off incursions by Zabalasan forces seeking to erase any last vestige of Hordish influence on the continent. Yithi troops frequently take good measure of Zabalasan troops and periodically Alalihatian ships, but are better served by the bitter rivalry between the two nations of Al'Uma descent and their near-constant warfare against one another. While Yithi and Zhi merchants do a brisk trade with Tragekian Hordes vessels, Lirian merchantmen, and even the brave Al'Uma ship, no Yithi or Zhi will set foot in Dradehalia or seek out the ships of the Dread Emperor (except, perhaps, to sink them).

In the Al'Uman side of the continent, Alalihatians continue to worship the Eldar, the Zabalasans continue to fight the distant descendants of the Hordes to their east, and both seek to convert the other to the "true" way of worship.

To the west, the complex byplay that is Western diplomacy continues. The Travenian families seek to recover the half of their territory they lost when Travesimia declared independence, even as they continue to defend their own independence from Liria. Travesimian Kings plot ways to recover Whaveminsia and Bagonbia in turn, even as they fend off Travenian interference. Bedia continues its struggle for survival against the wilderness forces pushing against it. And the four-way battle for Chidia continues.

The Tragekian Hordes fight the Lirians to their west sporadically, and the Ulmhorde to their south fervently. For their part, the Ulmhorde constantly seeks to conquer Swagab, Dradehalia, and anything else that lies over the horizon. Rumors abound that the Ulmhordes have started to reach beyond traditional Hordish boundaries to enlist new allies, as a way to gain the edge they need to rresume their steady march across the world.

And in the south, the Dread Emperor plots, schemes, intrigues, assassinates, and worse.