The Kingdom of Lionen
At the height of the Voidgate War, as the The Eternal Commonwealth faced defeat after defeat at the hands of the elves and their flesh-warped slaves, the Commonwealth was forced to abandon several of their provinces, withdrawing their troops to ensure the security of the capital province Saltus.
Those who stayed behind--the Legionnaire Glaives who disobeyed their orders to leave, the Exult Priests who obeyed the Emerald Pope's directive to stay, the former subjects who had no other choice, and the elven traitors following Faliara--all would eventually come to form the feudal kingdom of Lionen.
Lionen is a nation of duchies all answering to a single dynasty endowed with the divine right to rule. The royalty descends from the Church of Flame's messiah, the elven rebel Faliara, and no ruler may be crowned without having a direct line to her.
The Lionen emblem is a burning red flame on a yellow background with a two rings of thorns crossing it.
Structure
The Kingdom of Lionen is arranged into 12 different duchies, each with a handful of communities within its borders. Each community provides resources and soldiers to the duchy, which in turn provides a portion to the capital. Each duke is usually provided an Exult Priest in an advisory position and each community holds a Temple to the Resurgent Flame.
Culture
Lionen culture is one of etiquette and grace, owing both in part to the influence of the elves who joined to form the nation and the complex norms of the Commonwealth that the region previously belonged to. Great care was taken with the design and construction of the peasant communities, leading to Lionen holding some of the most beautiful settlements in Guuran . Art is highly valued, and many well-known painters have come from the nation.
Lionen is a heavily integrated nation, its people owing their survival directly to the heroism and sacrifice of the many elves who turned against their own empire. Once the war ended many communities welcomed the now nationless elves into their communities, allowing them to integrate and contribute to their communities. As a result, in the present day it is common for people to have a mix of human and elf ancestry.
Owing to their long lives, many of those original elves still survive to the present day, with several serving as advisors or, in some cases, as dukes or ducheses themselves. Some, however, retired to a queits lives within the communities, content to live common lives free of the influence of their former God-Empress.
Public Agenda
For the past several generations maintaining peaceful relations with its neighbors has been a priority for the De'Shan dynasty. This has grown increasingly difficult as their former rulers from The Eternal Commonwealth grow increasingly resentful over their lost territory. Relations with The Maginatrix Confederation remain solid, though ideological tensions with The Karnos Republic have become of increasing concern. There is near active hostility with Arkveil, coming from both the intense zealotry of their priests and their often brazen attempts at looting the sites of the Ancients within Lionen territory with little regard for the nation's ownership or the possible dangers it could cause local communities.
Assets
Much of the nation's financial resources and assets came from what was left by the Commonwealth when they retreated from the region. The Ichorsap from the trees of Blooded Vale has a number of applications from cooking to alchemy. There are still a number of untouched ruins from both the Ancients and the earliest days of the Commonwealth, both of which hold treasures and valuables for adventurers to acquire.
History
When the Glaives and Priests who had stayed to defend their adopted homes in Lionen, it with with incredible suspicion that they viewed the arrival of a group of elves claiming to have forsaken their empire and wished to help them defend their homes. But their leader, an elf woman named Faliara, bore a halo of flame and eyes scorched with the burning tears from her conversion to the Exultist faith. A hierojule, an angelic servant of the Pancreator Themselves, had gifted the elf with the ability to feel pain, both hers and of those her people had tormented. This gift, granted in the void-being's last moments of life at the end of a torturer's blade, had sent Faliara on a doomed question to save the world of Aramanth from the armies of the elven Novagleam Empire.
Years of tribulation followed, with thousands martyring themselves to save who they could from elven blade and spell. It was the intervention of a council of Nanos who finally provided a single chance to secure a victory for the falling world. In the end Faliara would sacrifice herself along with dozens of loyal friends and allies to destroy the massive voidgates granting the elven host access to Aramanth. Those who saw the act and lived to tell the tale described Falaria's halo grow to consume everything around her, igniting the gate in a chain reaction that collapses them across the world.
In the chaotic years that followed the surviving peoples of Lionen slowly organized a hierarchy with which to order and protect themselves, for the still-standing communities still required the support and defense of one another to survive. Faliara's sole heir, a son she had born of a human noble during her years defending the land, was crowned King and the seed of a new dynasty was begun.
Religion
Strength in Unity
Founding Date
23 FE
Type
Geopolitical, Kingdom
Capital
Demonym
Lionite
Leader
Leader Title
Government System
Monarchy, Constitutional
Power Structure
Feudal state
Economic System
Mixed economy
Currency
The Krisos
Location
Controlled Territories
Neighboring Nations
Comments