Childhood
Esam was born to Varo and Atbaya of the Kedrazir family in 1810 ME. The Kedrazirs were once a powerful family, a ruling dynasty of Calazen, but they had fallen from grace over a hundred years ago. Kedrazirs had lost their grip on power across the empire and had been demoted into oblivion, and their family was largely crumbling into splinter families. Varo and Atbaya were too proud to jump ship, though: they were proud members of the last dynasty, who saw themselves as the proper rulers of Calazen. Without family support, they had lost all of their money and were largely running on name value alone- in fact, they were rather deep in debt by the time Esam was ten. Esam was raised with the expectation that he would win them glory, and what love they had for him was always colored by extreme pressure and harsh family discipline. Esam was expected to be eternally polite, a tool of parental intrigue, a perfect scorer, a child prodigy, and a taskmaster for his younger sibling. And while the younger sibling, Masaad, rebelled and fled the family, Esam stayed behind and took the punishment. He resented Masaad for leaving, and hated his parents on their own terms: not for being bad parents, but for being failures and hypocrites. To survive and prosper in this household, Esam learned to manipulate Varo and Atbaya; their loveless cousin marriage was based around trying to breed a perfect line of sorcerers (and around a shared sense of resentment and identity) and financial stress made their relationship horribly toxic. This manipulation was crude at best, but ultimately taught Esam to read people and control the room at a young age. It also taught Esam that all relationships were inherently predatory, setting up a whole lifetime of manipulative behavior.
At age 12, Esam was sent to the Rahtesra Academy along the Eastern coast with many other young sorcerers of the elite. It was Esam's first chance to really break out of the local cliques his family were in and to really test himself against the other prodigies of Calazen. He had gone to school since age 6 back home, but it was a smaller school and his parent's presence had always crippled his sense of confidence. But he thrived as Rahtesra, building confidence and agency for himself. He built a clique of other young nobles around him and fought his way up the student hierarchy; his grades were great in the subjects that
mattered to the school admins (rhetoric, magic, law), and he was always able to slip out of trouble for illegally fighting with other students. And more importantly, he made connections. As part of his ascent, he became the rival of the current top-dog of the Academy- a member of the imperial family by the name of Dipetsa Ziriba. For several years they fought, and then made peace, and then became friends. By the age of 16, Esam had managed to impress his way into the graces of the Imperial Dynasty itself. His parents threw all the resources and efforts they had to back Esam up: they hoped he might marry into a lesser Ziriba branch and perhaps elevate the family for the next generation. Esam used this opportunity to befriend Dipetsa's uncle, Alniret: a powerful sorcerer and wealthy member of the Ziriba's dynastic leadership, cousin of the Emperor. Alniret offered Esam the opportunity of a lifetime: Esam could become Alniret's apprentice if Esam left his family behind and became an adopted Ziriba. Alniret provided forged lineage documents that established Esam as a bastard child of his, and Esam denied all knowledge of his former parents. To solidify his position, he began regularly bribing his own parents with part of his new allowance.
Rise to Power
From age 16 to 22, Esam and acted as Alniret's messenger, enforcer, spy, and apprentice. This was a dangerous time, filled with assassination attempts, duels, and dangerous missions. Esam was a Ziriba, but a disposable one for his new "father"; useful as a tool and eventual court magician, nothing more. As Alniret plotted and planned to secure the throne for himself from his aging cousin, Esam did much of the dangerous legwork. Through skill and determination, Esam survived. He began to gather allies of his own: his old rival Dipetsa, another young disillusioned Ziriba, Daratba, and a prominent court powerbroker by the name of Tichen. In 1832, after Tichen was elevated to court spymaster, Alniret's plot launched and the old Empress was forced to abdicate. Everything seemed to be going according to plan, until Tichen got greedy and thought to play Alniret and Esam against each other. Esam had greater ambitions and wanted to pressure Alniret to name him as heir; Alniret was afraid of Esam's rising influence. Tichen encouraged Esam to demand either heir-ship or co-rulership, so that they could come in and act as the mediator.
Esam, Dipetsa, and Daratba were able to complicate succession enough that Alniret was forced to deal with them publicly. Before it could go to the courts, Esam challenged his false-father and teacher to a sorcerer's duel, to assert their claims by right of magical power. Alniret agreed, and the two fought in a massive spectacle as the people watched. It seemed unlikely that, even if Esam won, he would actually be able to claim the Imperial throne - but the show was more than entertainment. Much of their fight was actually spent debating, weaving personal and political together to rally the crowd and legitimize themselves. Esam barely won the fight, but he absolutely won the theatrical performance, and led the ensuing mob to the palace. Esam was able to secure the throne, just barely, but he needed to act fast if he wanted to keep it.
The Early Wars
Thankfully for Esam, an opportunity to distract other claimants quickly arose: a civil war in the neighboring Kingdom of
Sikrek. Esam struck quickly, turning the civil war into an imperial coup in 1833. The initial success was followed up by turning Sikrek's army South to conquer its local rival, the Kingdom of Rofika. When Esam returned in 1834, he was able to bolster his position with loot and stories of victory. The massive deposit of
Starmetal he brought back was seen as particularly heaven-sent. It was enough power for Esam to launch a series of surprise purges he had been planning with Daratba: Tichen was arrested, Esam's parents were arrested, and a number of other schemers Esam had worked with only a few years ago were rounded up and imprisoned. The carrot and the stick were on the table now, and Esam's legitimacy as emperor was unquestionable. Esam then married Daratba, ensuring his children would be unquestionably legitimate.
A Map of Greater Inahng in 1830, prior to Esam's ascent
Esam continued seizing more and more power, using the loot from conquest to bribe factions into allowing him to take greater control. And so conquest simply became part of life. First Esam targeted Calazen's traditional rival in the West, the Kingdom of Sonisha, in 1840. This bled into a campaign against the neighboring Kedijah Confederacy - after which the whole of the
Adira Mountains was either conquered or agreed to pay tribute. Securing the Mountains was generally accepted as a great accomplishment, and Esam finally took some time to secure what he'd conquered. His cold pragmatism allowed him make peace with the Cult of Zethko - classic religious rivals dating back to Jade Atharzen herself, that still imagined themselves equals to Calazen - and bring the West together under Calazen's Temple of
Nedira . Not long after his victory, Daratba and him had their first child, which they named Ritara. Now would be when most emperors would sit back and enjoy their victories. It was a time punctuated by happiness, but neither Esam nor Daratba would let it last. Esam was not satisfied - he needed more, and seemed to grow steadily unhappier the longer things stagnated. And Daratba's own personal insecurities were spiraling out of control. Their began to grow rather standoffish, as he seemed to respect her less and less for her "pampered" upbringing and she began to see him as an irrational liability. So while Esam spent a good part of the late 1840s and early 1850s raising his daughter and managing his empire, he was already looking outside his borders to the next conquest.
The Great Campaigns
In 1854, an encounter with a strange and powerful
rebel thief added to Esam's baseline paranoia. The thief, he learned, was
Sunekan - a target he knew was a little too large for his current army. He would need more armies for this endeavor. And so Esam turned to a more reasonable short-term goal to accumulate even more power: bringing the world of Nedira under one centralized ruler (him). While he pivoted East, he appointed his old friend-rival Dipetsa to prepare logistics for the eventual campaigns West, which would take years of construction. He began handing a lot of the domestic administration to Daratba- who was all too happy to take over, as it was becoming clear that their marriage was best when they were apart. Daratba also took over education for their daughter, though Esam still returned to see her frequently. Ritara was a symbol of the happiness he vaguely remembered, and he doted on her when she was young. His visits with her only made him more driven to conquer - to prove himself worthy as a parent. He seemed to have difficulty finding the same love for his second daughter, Alnira. By the time she was born, he was already marching East on his first quest: the crush Calazen's traditional Eastern rival, the Federation of Shirmarsa.
In Shirmarsa, Esam found victory in battle easier than lasting control, but was able to co-opt a number of local lords by offering them loot raiding mutual enemies. But unlike the divided and slow-moving Western mountain states, the East was able to spot the threat of Calazen and rally against Esam's aggression. Thus began the "great campaigns" of the 1860s, in which Esam fought a coalition of Eastern kingdoms: Lirkarsa, Tarasa, Weteysa, Ershikal, and the Dimedsan states. With only the allied Republic of Rashem, Esam charged into the opposing alliance with full force. The campaigns, which ran from 1859 to 1870, was able to turn Calazen's clunky and often inexperienced army into a well-oiled killing machine of experienced and loyal veterans. And each conquest added to Esam's forces, slowly rolling all of Inahng's militaries into one big wrecking ball.
It was the height of Esam's success, but also a breaking point for his mental state. The highs of victory became an end to themselves and the endless propaganda nurtured growing delusions of
actual world conquest. His family life was also increasingly strained. Daratba was feeling trapped in an authority position that she felt she didn't really sign up for, and was getting annoyed at Ritara's relaxed and social demeanor. Ritara became the target of her mother's stress and anxiety; Daratba isolated her from her friends, flew into rages whenever she spoke up or acted, and generally treated Ritara poorly. Daratba and Esam's relationship, which largely hinged around their children at this point, also collapsed: scandalous rumors began to leak out into the Empire about their marriage, which they blamed on each other. In 1862, Ritara went to Esam and asked for his help - and he took Ritara with him on the campaign. But taking his daughter on the war-path at age 16 didn't improve their relationship like he thought it would. If anything, Ritara's distaste for violence and lack of military tact caused Esam to panic at her failure to live up to expectations. Esam began pushing her into the field to "toughen her up" and began tearing her personality and interests apart as "decadent". Ritara was miserable, but her mother refused to accept her back. And, in Spring of 1867, after five years of campaigning, Ritara died leading a charge against the Dimedsan coalition forces. This was not entirely unexpected, and so Esam had a
Life Cleric resurrect her; but Ritara's spirit refused to return from
Paradise. She condemned Esam as a failure and a bad parent, causing him to emotionally spiral out of control. He began reigning terror on the conquered land of Dimedsa in response; fueling a growing rebellion that would one day overthrow Calazan rule there.
The Sunekan Wars
And so Esam flung himself wildly into the another war, the Great War: the invasion of Suneka. If he could do this, no continental power would survive to challenge Calazen; this was his destiny. And in 1870, the invasion was launched into
Ikatlan. Through rapid mobility, overwhelming firepower, and effective diplomacy, the Northern Sunekan heartlands were under Esam's rule by 1875. And yet, the wizard who had once challenged him,
Darza, eluded capture. She increasingly came to symbolize his lack of control and mastery - her survival infuriated him. He also assumed she had more power over the Sunekan forces than she actually did. And so, resources were wasted on her capture and the Sunekan alliance began to reform into a stable coalition. The "easy victory" - never really possible, as conquering all of the Suneka was never a viable goal for one war - was lost. And when Darza was sighted infiltrating Calazen in 1878, Esam left his forces to his old friend Dipetsa while he gave chase.
The two spellcasters played cat and mouse, chasing each other around the Temple of the Immortal
Mavara for over a year. The Immortal Mavara could bless those who pleased her with immense boons, it was said; and while she rarely gave them to people like Darza or Esam, Esam assumed that Darza had some kind of grand strategy in mind he needed to foil. The two fought in the late winter of 1879 on the footsteps of the temple, and Darza won. She had been planning this fight for some time; he was unable to keep up. When he saw the fight turn against him, he teleported away, ashamed. Luckily for Esam, Darza turned out to be deeply misinformed and without any real plan. Mavara gave her nothing. And yet, the two continued to fight, more out of pride now than any real material purpose. The skirmishing, hunting each other, and chasing each other around continued for
another year until, finally, the wandering God
Haru arrived to de-escalate the situation. Darza was convinced to leave the continent entirely, and Esam stayed behind with Haru and Mavara.
In a moment of unusual selflessness, Mavara took Esam in to live and study with her. The war raged on in Suneka, but Esam became enraptured with the two Gods. The fights with Darza had broken him, and he wanted their wisdom and kindness. Mavara saw him as someone much like her own sister,
Suwota, and began telling him the things she wished she'd been able to tell her sister. Esam lived like a monk with the Gods for a year, working through his emotional problems and rediscovering himself. He finally returned to the capital city in 1883, after several years presumed dead, to propose relationship counseling to Daratba. She was furious that he had dissapeared voluntarily, and demanded he finish his war in the West. And so, in 1884, he headed back to the Sunekan wars.
Things had gone poorly in his absence. Dipetsa, the war leader in his absence, had tried to settle for peace, but the Sunekans were relentless and refused to concede serious amounts of land. While Esam's return momentarily pushed the war back in Calazen's favor, the two decades of relentless violence had radicalized his enemies and slowly sapped his army's troops and resources. Esam began a slow, strategic retreat while keeping up what pressure he could. In 1890, Esam was finally able to negotiate a ceasefire.
After seven years of tenuous peace, the war re-ignited. The Sunekan coalition wanted
Akatlan,
Gwalan, and
Ikatlan back; Esam saw them as rightfully conquered land. In 1897, the Sunekans launched a massive invasion. Enough troops had been brought home to handle Eastern rebellions that Esam's forces had only one serious defeat before entering full retreat. Thirty years of struggle, and Calazen gave up trying to conquer Suneka- though they took all the wealth, resources, and specialized personnel they could with them.
The height of Calazen's gains in 1880
Peaceful Days
Esam let the rebellious Sunekan lands and Dimesdan lands go in 1900; war was no longer worth fighting. He had a family life to pursue! Developing things like empathy, love, and healthy relationships was a full-time job for Esam. It took years to get better, and his wife and kids never really saw him as a great person. He relapsed sometimes, but time with Mavara and Haru had a way of getting him corrected again. And he had a goal: he wanted to fix his relationship with Ritara, to be the father in Paradise he could not on Earth.
The later chapters of Esam's life are less interesting than the early ones. He wrote laws, reformed court patronage, built schools, and prepared his extended family for government. He tracked down his long-estranged brother. He reconnected with his younger children. Wars still happened- in 1948 the Shirmarsan federation launched a war of independence, and not long after a massive religious revolution broke out in the nearby region of Minarsa. Ultimately, the aging Esam was unable to contain these movements and realized that he would really rather just retire. So, in 1955, he did. And after ten years enjoying retirement, he died in 1965. In
Paradise, he has been spending the last few decades working to build the family he realized too late that he wanted.
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