Some huge amount of time in the past: Elikommet’s life.
A slightly less huge amount of time in the past: Heresy of the Holy Blood King
544 BA - The Duchy of Kata requires every woman between the ages of 14 and 22 to have at least four children. Failure to do so means conscription into 'blue brigade'.
100 BA - Aleke the Nomad (or Aleke the Eunuch, both work) begins the 100 Year War with just his 200 strong band of nomads by taking over a starving town, giving out food, and promising revenge against the nobles in return for loyalty.
79 BA - Aleke the Nomad is killed at the Battle of Lech, his adopted son Nikolay I continues the 100 Year War.
0 – Year of the Alenov Empire’s founding after the 100 Year War (15 rival kingdoms/duchies/tribes coalescing into the Alenov Empire). Nikolay III is crowned Emperor.
121 - Emperor Boris I creates the 'Bountiful Mother' Law, inspired by Kata's law, requiring every woman to give birth to seven children. Instead of forced prostitution, a fine of three yods (1/10 of a crona) is imposed. Women who are clergy, unmarried at the time, or widowed are exempt.
122 - Emperor Boris I dies after slipping on an ice patch.
187 - Belgorod, the White City, becomes capital.
299 - The first Empress, Vieno, is crowned. Crushes all resistance to her rule and enforces an era of peace and prosperity that lasts for 200 years afterwards. She's seen as a bloody but fair butcher in the Southern Lands thanks to her slaughter of disloyal nobles and her sparing and rebuilding of towns and villages.
746 - Emperor Radomir III dies at age 79.
747 – Civil War (War of the Four Princes, quadruplets, all 40 years old)
767 – End of the War, Empress Rana (age 36) crowned.
772 - Empress Rana lifts Boris I's Bountiful Mother Law (rarely enforced at that point, however) to the cheers of women everywhere.
780 - Empress Rana passes away, Emperor Ivan X crowned.
817 – Theft of a piece of the Flesh from small Northern Territory town
Between the cracks, the empty land that connects one to another, are the remains of an ancient empire. The very cause of our broken world, and may it stay broken!
The world was once whole, but it was not beautiful or full of life. It was still a harsh existence even after Elikommet's Flesh, so his grandson sought to give the people prosperity at any cost. He would not take 'no' for an answer. They called him the Holy Blood King, and he ruled from a throne he built with his own two hands.
A bit of history recounted by Mrs. Zarifa N. Mutallibov
Ah yes, the Holy Blood King. Where do I start? The children love this, so I know it by heart.
The Holy Blood King began a prince of a small land, his very lineage gave him more prestige than the greatest kings of the day for he was the grandson of Elikommet himself! His hair was as black as a crow's wing, and his body stronger than an auroch, to prove his worth to his people he built his own throne by himself from the trees near his small palace. He set up a grain charity for the poor of his land, and gave women the right to own land. He rewrote the laws to create a gentle land, a kind kingdom. The King was not satisfied with improving his own land, as his ambassadors returned home with news of the wretched other kingdoms ruled by cruel and petty people. He thought, and pondered, and decided that rather than let people suffer under malevolent rulers, he would come and liberate them into his kingdom. To him, I am sure, it seemed like an excellent idea at the time as all such ideas do.
The first surrounding lands gratefully accepted the Holy Blood King's rule. The warriors would refuse to fight the very grandson of Elikommet, the Crow! People were overjoyed, celebrations were held and their own rulers quickly overthrown. Other lands were less willing to submit to his rule, and war was swift and brutal. It was ten years, ten years of war, submissions, and overthrowing of various monarchs.
At last, the Holy Blood King's rule stretched all over the body of the Great Earth. Yet he still lived in his small palace, he sat upon the throne he had built in his youth, he had created no laws to discriminate against his new populations. Every man was allowed a fair trial, the poor and weak had bread every week, the taxes no longer left farmers to starve through the winters, and a young man now had the choice of whether to serve the Holy Blood King or not.
But yet… the king was mortal. Even with the blood of the Speaker of the Earth in his veins he still would face the fate all mortal men would. Some believe the King feared his death, others say that the King was concerned for his nation and people. Whatever the truth is, it did not matter, for it began the downfall of the King and the terrible sundering of the world.
He had his scholars and sorcerers scour the world over for knowledge. Books, scrolls, runes, clay tablets, ancient mountain hags and young river witches were taken to the capital into his palace. Slowly every inch of the palace was consumed by the King's expanding library of knowledge. He worked alongside his men. He ate when they ate. He slept when they slept. He wrote and read when they wrote and read. Every few days they would all convene in the throne room to discuss what they had learned. While the King continued his ravenous search for an answer to his problem, he turned away from the every day problems of his kingdom. As I remember it, a famine struck one year… and then continued into the next year, and the next. Perhaps it was the Great Mother Earth asking him to stop? Regardless, the King was so deep in his studies that he ignored the suffering of his people.
A solution was found, at last! The Holy Blood King would become the very fabric of his kingdom, immortal and forever like his nation surely would be and like the Great Mother Earth herself. As his grandfather, Speaker of the Earth, The Crow Elikommet did before, the King shed his flesh and stuck his feet into the ground, carving symbols onto his body and chanting long forgotten words. His most loyal sorcerers and scholars circled around him, repeating his actions and words as they too shed their flesh and chanted. Their red meat turned hard like bone. Bone became branches, the bone became roots, and the roots spread throughout the palace like weeds in fertile ground.
These roots stretched out from the palace and became entwined with the grand city around it. Roots made of bone and bark, that bled marrow if you struck it. They sank deep, deep into the Mother Earth's body, sucking out the life from it and leaving behind barren lands where nothing grew. From his roots came thin trees, heavy with bitter fruit. The roots grew outwards, creeping ever so slowly over the earth, taking over villages and towns. Thievery and murders stopped for if such a crime was committed, the punishment was being fed to the roots.
As the roots grew, so did the hatred and discontent of the people. The Twin Sorcerers Slava and Stri and their students, the young Prince Mirslav, the Nomad Queen Gulani and her warrior women, King Zal and his loyal knights.
They came together to discuss the state of the world. Slava and Stri had been in hiding with their students and wished to be free once more, Mirslav's family had been deposed unjustly and without the Holy Blood King's watchful eye the governer of the land had become corrupt, Gulani's people were being chased from their lands only to find barren wastes covered in the Holy Blood King's roots, Zal wished to be a vassal no more to a king who had so brazenly twisted himself into an abomination that stripped the life from the Great Mother Earth herself.
A pact of blood was made, and they turned their gaze towards the seat of the Holy Blood King's power.
They challenged the King, who was yet still protected by his own faithful army. The fruit may have been bitter, but no one was starving. The land may have been dry, but no one was stealing. The King had given them peace, and they would protect that peace.
For fifty days and fifty nights, a war raged across the world and soaked the ground in blood. On the fifty first day, the fighting finally paused as the sky began to darken. The sun faded away, and the Red Moon grew bright. The Great Mother Earth had spoken, and the punishment of the Holy Blood King was nigh. With a crack that sundered mountains and laid low thousands, the moon opened and a massive creature of feathers and claws flew down. With a shriek, it landed on the root covered palace of the king and raised its wings, which burned brighter than the sun itself as the ground began to tremble.
Those who could, fled. The roots of the king began to break as the earth crumbled beneath them. The Red Moon Beast continued its shrieking, tearing into the palace and bleeding into it as its feathers fell away.
With a final scream, the world broke into pieces, the land of the Holy Blood King being torn away from the rest, leaving the great big gaps you see today. Oh yes, of course sometimes those chunks of land come back! With ruins in them, even. I used to live in Madvok, right there at the end of Alenov, and I remember seeing this great big stone fort occasionally appearing on the horizon. We were told it was safe to walk across that land to get into the other country, if we so wished, but that we must never go into those ruins.
But, should you find yourselves among the ruins somehow, and I pray to the Great Mother Earth herself that such a fate would not befall you, listen closely to my advice.
Run for your lives!
The Sorcerer Twins, Slava and Stri
Slava and Stri were said to be the result of virgin births from a 70 year old hag-witch in the mountains. Slava and Stri created the Great Tower of Osud, full of books and young scholars they took under their watch. They resisted the call to the Holy Blood King's palace, although a few of their students were eventually kidnapped. Slava and Stri were known for being pale haired and having reddish eyes, suggesting they were albinos. During the battle, Slava, Stri, and their students conjured up great storms and creatures made from stone to battle. After the world broke, Slava and Stri went their separate ways. Stri married a farmer, built a large library (which was converted into a castle, a fort, a storage building, a castle again, a fort again, and is now just a tourist attraction/archaeological site) and died at a location named for him, Stri's Crossing. Slava married and had a son, and perished from a plague. His grave was destroyed during a war centuries later.
Prince Mirslav
Prince Mirslav was the youngest, in some legends he's said to have been just fifteen. Prince Mirslav's family was deposed by the Holy Blood King's supporters and a governor put in their place while the infant Mirslav was held hostage so that his father's supporters wouldn't do anything. Mirslav escaped his imprisonment and lived like a rat on the street before being found and turned into a proper prince. Despite his young age, he was said to be incredibly compassionate, which almost cost him his life during the battle. After the battle, Mirslav went on to rule his land and became known as King Mirslav the Gentle. Popular geneology says his grandson married Slava's granddaughter, and in turn their descendant founded what would become the Duchy of Kata.
There are three moons and no stars in the sky. One moon is slightly blue, the other slightly green, and the last one is slightly red and has a massive hole in it. The Sun is more distant, or perhaps smaller, so the world itself is a weeeee tiny bit colder than our world.
Alenov Population in 747: 936,000,000
Alenov Population in 767: 312,400,000
Alenov Population in 817: 313,800,000
Alenov itself is separated into three parts (actually five, if you want to get really technical).
The Northern Territories - Vast swathes of land from dry cold steppes to blizzard battered mountainous regions, to patchy farmland with an extremely short growing season before the bitter frost sets in. It is the largest area by sheer landmass, but has the smallest population. Because of the ground being primarily used for farmland, mining, or too cold to dig far in for most of the year, the Northern Territories traditionally feed the skin and organs of the dead to The Flesh and bury or burn the bones.
The Commons - Actually separates into the West Commons Special Administration Area, the East Commons Special Administration Area, and the Capitol Administration Area (which covers the Central Commons). A large inland sea sits inside the Central Commons (the fishing season is four months every other year). The Commons are known for many lush meadows contrasting with heavily industrialized cities.
The Southern Lands - Covered in tall trees with green leaves and heavy fruit, black fertile soil, half frozen swamps, and many bloody atrocities committed during the Civil War. Some would call the Southern Lands the breadbasket of Alenov, others would call it 'the place wedding alcohol comes from'. The Southern Lands produces many types of sweet potent alcohol, and has a rich culinary tradition. People from the Southern Lands are also seen as snobbish towards Northerners and the Commons People.
Alenov's government system operates in four parts. Local town or city councils, kvadrats, administrators, and finally the vuall.
Kvadrats handle a specific area (…called kvadrats). There's a kvadrat for Svetta, an area in The Southern Lands containing eight towns, for example. Kvadrats can draft laws that do not infringe on the laws laid by the vuall or the Emperor himself, and can choose to raise a minor tax. Larger suggested taxes need to be submitted to the administrators.
The administrators run the day to day business for the entire region (Territories, Commons, and Lands). While they cannot make laws themselves, they can punish kvadrats by withholding tax funding or even dramatically increasing taxes (called a 'spite tax'). They are also responsible for maintaining historical and government structures, and keeping the records of the disabled, accepting or denying applications for those asking for welfare, checking the quality of alcohol being shipped around the country, making sure farmers keep up their quota, and other mundane tasks.
The Vuall is said to be directly below the Emperor in power (some disagree, and say that the Quiet Crows/military spy branch are actually more powerful than the Vuall), they are made of people culled from administrators, the military, and kvadrats. They number at 440. Once you become part of the Vuall, you cease to exist outside of it. All record of you is purged, your family is told you have died, your name is taken away and you are given a new one. The Vuall live in the 'Special Government City'. When outside of the Special Government City or the Parliament, they are dressed in long bulky clothing with masks like dead wolves.
The Special Government City has no actual name, and no one knows its true location. What is known is that there are normal people who live in it who are never allowed to leave.
<Vehemency>: The Flesh makes the land fertile to support crops rather than just grass and small shrubs that cattle feed on
<Gaffsey>: ahhhh
<Vehemency>: Heresy: Elikommet's grandson wanted to basically bend his great-grandma to his will so he could create a peaceful utopia for his people. He learned ancient magics and turned himself to a great bone tree creature and there was a huge rebellion against him and eventually his great-grand-aunt (who was in the red moon) came down to basically punch him into a new
<Vehemency>: plane of existence without death or life
<Vehemency>: It broke the world though
<Vehemency>: Which is why it's in its current state
<Vehemency>: Because Elikommet's grandson was a well meaning megalomaniac.
<Vehemency>: The heresy was the idea that he could overrule The Great Mother Earth
<Vehemency>: Of course
<Vehemency>: Different places have different ideas
<Vehemency>: On if he was actually well meaning
<Vehemency>: or just feared his mortality and tried to use his world spanning empire as a support system to become immortal
<Vehemency>: (in a way he got his wish, you could say?)
<Vehemency>: Lets seeee
<Vehemency>: what haven't I covered?
<Vehemency>: OH Northern Nomads
<Vehemency>: Actually all of Alenov used to have all sorts of nomads, but they either settled or got pushed farther north by settled people
<Vehemency>: The Northern Territories settled people have very good relationships with the nomads there though, since a lot of the towns there were made by nomads who decided to just settle down.
<Vehemency>: (Eha's town is an example of one such place)
<Vehemency>: Nomads tend to be pastoral and still have shamans (typically female) and storytellers who record the groups history
<Vehemency>: Their religion is much like typical Alenovite, they see Elikommet as a deity being, the Great Earth Mother was the top-dog god, but they also usually worship the three moons as goddesses too and some groups of nomads also venerate ancestors
THE ZALS-MEDUS MASSACRE
On an unnaturally cold spring night in 759 in the Southern Lands, the city of Zals-Medus had largely gone to bed. With a population of 2,445,000 at the time, it was a thriving place that focused on lumber and honey production. During the night, the army of Prince Rurik had just beaten the army of his brother Prince Igor. Pressing on, he found the city of Zals-Medus and, based on its proximity to where the battle had been fought and the direction Igor's army had come in from, assumed that Zals-Medus had sheltered Igor's army. Rurik ordered its destruction to every last man, woman, child, and cow. The army of Rurik poured into Zals-Medus, forcing the people awake and marching them into the city center. The lone survivor, a young woman named Lyuba, recounted it to be a night of terror. Rurik's army was high off their victory, and beat the people of Zals-Medus, raped them, and even cannibalized infants in Lyuba's account. Every last woman was stripped of her garments and repeatedly assaulted throughout the duration of the massacre. In the morning, the men were forced to start tearing up the roads and digging a large ditch that extended across the city. If they did not dig fast enough, they were bayoneted where they stood. Once the pit was declared deep enough a day later, the exhausted men were told to crawl into the pit along with the elderly, and were promptly shot. Next were the children, taken away from their mothers and thrown into the pit as well to be shot. Finally the women were lined up and shot, falling into the pit. Afterwards, the soldiers of Rurik's army jumped into the pit themselves, stabbing corpses to make sure there were no survivors. Lyuba's account says she used the corpse of her own friend to protect her from a potentially lethal stab wound.
Afterwards, the soldiers covered the massive grave, set the town on fire, and left.
Lyuba crawled out of the grave and into the inferno of her town. She fled north and was found by a member of Princess Rana's guard. It is her testimony that made Rana choose to bring the Capitol's might against her warring brothers.
Zals-Medus has long been reduced to ash, a giant black scorch mark on the earth. After the civil war, a memorial was built to the victims of the massacre. It is a tall marble cylinder with names of the victims etched onto it along with the bone-runes for suffering and grief. The nearby towns have a yearly ceremony where flowers are laid around the cylinder and prayers for the dead are recited. Many believe the area Zals-Medus once stood to be haunted by the dead who are unable to move onto the Womb, held down by the traumatic deaths they experience. An unofficial ceremony takes place on cold spring nights, where people sacrifice small farm animals to the dead in hopes of easing their suffering. Some even think that these spirits can confer blessings or curses.
Not much is known about Lyuba's life prior to the massacre besides that she was 18 when it happened, she was the daughter of an apiary owner, and that she was a budding botanist. Lyuba was given a home in the capitol by Rana, but disappeared in 763. Some believe she had leaped to her death, or that she had changed her name and went to live out a new life, or even that she was kidnapped to live in the Special Government City. She did however leave a massive body of work based on what happened during the massacre, as well as a book called 'Poems of Despair', which is exactly what it sounds like and is considered a fine example of the popular genre called Suruna.
Suruna
Suruna is a genre that arose in the middle of the Civil War. It is a mixture of self reflection of one's own helplessness against the will of others, the fear and at the same time allure of a violent death, the 'beauty' in decay and rot of both physical and spiritual varieties, a feeling that humanity does not deserve the Womb of the Great Earth Mother and rebirth, and the hope that despite all that there would be a better tomorrow. There's also subtypes of Suruna, one of the more well known (and constantly parodied) being the Vada Suruna which throws in the fear and love of women into the mix. Vada Suruna was created and named after the poet only known as 'Vada', who was said to have been a lover of both Rana and a Matron of the Church named Bogdena. In his poetry he both worships women, and yet is also terrified of them and their power.
Alenov has conscription, with men from the ages of 18 and 20 serving. There are very few exemptions to this. However, since Alenov has roughly been in 'peace time' for more than a decade, conscripts have an option of Military College which will instill foundation skills in things such as medicine, engineering, and other 'practical' career paths.
The Quiet Crows are the military spy branch and officially Do Not Exist. Culled from the best and brightest in the military, the Quiet Crows enforce the Will of Alenov throughout the land and its members never officially retire. Their (occasionally unknowing) agents are riddled throughout every strata of Alenov society, and are at liberty to do whatever is good for 'Emperor and Country'. Its said if you see a huge flock of crows following you, it's already much too late to run.