Rise of Halaan

40 A.C. to 207 A.C.

A thousand years after the Massacre at the Crossroads lead to the destruction of Halas and his supporters, Halas’s dream was revived by elven supremacists who founded a kingdom in the old Halasian heartland. They named their new kingdom Halaan after the long dead Halas. In the Golden Age of the ausrani empires, however, the racism and xenophobia of Halas was suppressed for millenia. There was simply too much money and power to be had establishing trade routes to the new empires of Godossea and Alousia. Elven supremacy (specifically Halaanian supremacy) was given lip service, but rarely overt unless behind closed doors.
Halaan  was an independent kingdom until c. 3200 B.C., when Godossean  armies captured the Halaanese capital of Issa. In the centuries afterwards, a strong sense of Halaanese nationalism became tied to the old elven supremacist ideology and hero worship of Hala. When independence was finally (and bloodlessly) won in 32 A.C., the Halaanese nobility became expansionist slavers. With the powerful states of the Cernoa to the east and the remains of Godossea  to the south, the Halaanese looked west.
For thousands of years, the territory between the western empire of Alousia  and the eastern empire of Godossea  had remained the traditional lands of ausrani caravans (still nomadic since the time of Mother Ausra  ) and a scattering of free city-states. The Halaanese army decimated them, taking their land and enslaving the survivors. Over the course of two hundred years, Halaan expanded to the borders of the Ancient Alousian Empire, which even in decline was strong enough to withstand the elves’ attacks. By c. 200 A.C., the Halaanese had expanded west as far as their supply lines could handle. Emperor Actheon, however, was eager to continue their rapid expansion, and began eyeing the disorganized peoples of the south. Southern conquest became a holy cause among the Halaanese court. For a nation built on elven supremacy, defeating the caisheni kingdoms and their miscegenating allies was a moral imperative.