Dyarchy of Laria
The Dyarchy of Laria was an ancient kingdom which existed on the northern coast of the continent that is now known as Kataris. Centred around the Vale of Galen in modern-day Mandragore, at the height of its power it controlled a kingdom which stretched from Baletto (then known as Kepe'Aletu) in the west to the Great Rainforest of Grezhu and the Plains of Yajer in the east.
The origins of the Dyarchy are somewhat unclear; the most commonly attested theory is that it emerged in the middle of the 5th century pre-AK, when two powerful dragons unified a number of dragonborn clans that dwelled in the region, and began to annex the lands around them.
The Dyarchy warred with the Empire of Kataris in the second century AK, with Kepe'Aletu being conquered in 150AK, Szorosanya in 159AK, Alperion in 165AK, and the capital of Tholos in 179AK.
The Dyarchy only met its final defeat at the Battle of Khorderion in 235AK when a huge force of Katari slave-soldiers and legionaries assaulted the redoubt of the dragon-kings on the Plains of Yajer; despite enormous losses - perhaps as many as seventy thousand soldiers on the Katari side - the Larians were overwhelmed and the two dragon-kings slain. The precise location where this took place is unclear; "Khorderion" is a name that was applied to the conflict only after the fall of the Katari Empire, and translates approximately to "place of the battle"; it is said that the Basilisk Queens decreed that the precise location where the dragon-kings made their final stand should be erased from history, and that the true name of the place is forgotten.
Remarkably little is known about the Dyarchy in modern times; as with a number of their more hated foes, the Katari Empire made a concerted effort to obliterate all traces of Larian culture. It is often suggested that the modern Protectorate of Mandragore is a successor state to the Dyarchy, in the same way that the Dyarchy is considered by some to be something of a successor to the long-lost Draconic Imperium, which some scholars have claimed collapsed around a century and a half before the founding of the Dyarchy.
Based on surviving descriptions of Larian iconography, some have claimed that the two dragon-kings of Laria may have been Hassoreliath and Morkatherit, who now stand as two of the Five Great Dragons of Mandragore - though there is no reliable account of either of them having expressed an opinion on the matter. Were this truly the case, it is unclear whether the Katari reports of victory at Khorderion were mere propaganda and the dragon-kings somehow escaped; or whether somehow the dragon-kings were able to return to the world many centuries after their deaths.
circa 450 years pre-AK - 235AK
Type
Geopolitical, Kingdom
Capital
Demonym
Larian
Location
Official Languages
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