Ilya Shiroko (I'LEE'ah Shee'ROH'koh)
Emperor Ilya Shiroko (a.k.a. Founder, Ancestor, The Divine, The Great)
Ilya was the founder of the Shiroko Dynasty, creator of Stitching, and the first to make viable, genetically obedient life forms, the Ilyannoi.
Mental characteristics
Personal history
Ilya was born as the oldest child to a minor noble family in Parishi on the northern border of the main country of what would become the Eoion Empire. His family was not particularly wealthy despite their title, but he was educated as all other nobles were at the time. While he was a decent student in mundane matters, he excelled in magic and military history. In particular, he became interested in the formation of the early kingdoms and the alliances that held them together. With no wars being fought, his parents steered his interests toward his other talent, essence magic.
The discovery of his abilities as an aliq-esh were extremely fortunate for a young man with aspirations toward the magic field and he dove into this. Through the development of his skills, he learned to switch rapidly between heat and light. This resulted in a rumor that he could use both simultaneously, something that was accepted as impossible.
These rumors lead to the king of Eoion, Mihlante Lukari, summoning him to the palace in Niuus and Ilya arrived with full knowledge of what the rumors said. Even so, he presented his technique to the king, defending himself against accusations of fraud by the higher ranked nobility. King Mihlante agreed that there was no fraud and instead recognized the young man's talent. At 17, Ilya became the youngest High Esh ever appointed and he began working to develop new applications for magic.
For ten years, he continued his work, but the nature of it led to several arguments between himself and Mihlante. Ilya sought to form an external application of fusion and use it to create new life rather than attaching various characteristics with an already existing being. He hypothesized that the key to this was the application of all three schools of magic. The king believed that his work was grotesque and would lead to nothing as Ilya had only been able to produce small creatures that could barely function as independent beings. Ilya persisted, splitting his time between his experiments and work for the kingdom.
Through the years, he befriended a general in the Eoin military, Osk Unenemet, who saw the potential for battle if the creatures became viable. Using his influence, Osk, himself twelve years older than Ilya, helped secure funding and materials to continue the experiments. After the first large creatures were completed, the two devised a plan to prove their worth and proposed freeing their longtime ally, the nation of Ulena, from the Yzel Kingdom which had conquered them in 200.
King Mihlante agreed only to prove that the creatures were pointless and secretly planned to disavow any actions taken by Ilya and Osk. Before setting out, Ilya perfected his battle mount, a large tsirin that would become the symbol of the empire and royal family after his death. Together, Ilya and Osk led an army of monsters into Ulena, surprising Yzel and forcing them out. They reinstated Ulena's royal family and returned to Eoion as heros, with Ilya lauded as a magical genius as well for his new creatures.
Using his success and the fact that Milhante had not openly supported him, Ilya painted the king as weak and subversive, initiating a campaign of propaganda to discredit the current monarchy and promote himself. Behind Mihlante's back, he made several alliances with powerful noble houses in Eoion and pursued the backing of Ulena's royal family. Once public sentiment had soured on Milhante, Ilya openly rebelled, using the creatures Mihlante had dismissed to slaughter every member of the Lukari family.
By 298, Ilya had established himself as ruler of Eoion and began setting his sights on expanding the kingdom. Rather than turn on his allies, Ilya moved westward, first conquering the smaller kingdom of Faren and then moving to invade Metray.
After Faren's fall, Metray and Braca called on Ulena, a nation they believed was still allied with them, for assistance against Eoion, but Ulena had already sided with Ilya. Between the two remaining kingdoms, they were able to hold Eoion at bay until Ilya cut off access to the major roadways and rivers into the two countries, using Faren as a bottleneck. He waited for the outer towns to starve and then offered them food and supplies, painting their own government as having abandoned them. Metray was the first to fall and Braca soon followed.
Rather than execute the former royal families and foreign nobility, he granted new titles to those who pledged fealty to him and spared the prisoners he had taken. Those who refused were fed to his creatures. Metray's royal family was killed and a new governor installed from among the noble houses who had submitted. Braca's royals, seeing the fate of their allies, obeyed, and Ilya left Osk to oversee Braca to ensure they followed through on their submission.
Ulena was the last kingdom he conquered, in 301, but instead of military conquest, he offered to continue the alliance. However, his terms effectively relegated Ulena to a vassal state. By 303 all pretenses of them as an independent nation were dropped and they were integrated into the solidified empire.
In 299, he married Osk's daughter, Raiy, and nine years later, they had their first child, Sava I Shiroko at the old Shiroko manor in Parishi. While Ilya worked to create and solidify the empire, he insisted that his wife and son remain in Parishi rather than Niuus. However, after he was certain that the empire was stable, he called for them to be brought to the capital and the family was reunited in what would become the Gandenye.
For much of his son's early life, he was not in the Gandenye and instead in the former Bracan territory cleaning up the mess left by Osk's incompetent administration. This detour and retaking of power led to several arguments between the two men. In the ensuing years, the two spent much of their time wrestling the Bracans under control. Ilya produced many of his creatures to act as guards and Osk used his power over the human military to form a primitive spy network. Aside from their show of force, Ilya wanted to have something softer to convert the conquered people. He allowed them to continue life mostly as they were, but in key aspects showed that he was now in charge.
One of his most lasting changes was a slow villainization of the former Bracan royal family. Their losses were fodder for him to twist the public's mind, a skill he had become extremely good at given his experience in turning public perception after his return from Ulena. The process took far longer, but he was able to hand the territory back to Osk after many years and returned to the capital.
While he was gone, his son had grown into a young teen and he followed Ilya around during the day, trying to learn. With his micromanaging style, Ilya was not suited to being a father and instead focused all of his energy on running the governmental departments rather than spending any more than the bare minimum of time with his family. His only direct education of Sava came in the form of teaching his son to make the Ilyannoi, a decision that would be used as a key point in the Doctrine of Dea-an Heritage. He praised Sava for his progress in magic even though the boy was disappointed he was not an aliq-esh like his father.
The lack of teaching in anything other than magic would lead to Sava having only a basic understanding of how the empire worked. He left the empire to his son in his will, but seemed to have completely overlooked the fact that he needed to educate him in more than just magic, an oversight that caused Sava to resent him after his death. In the end, the departments and system he had controlled so tightly were restructured under his son.
In 322, Yzel attacked the new empire in order to reclaim the Ulena territory they had lost. This once more took Ilya away from his family and the former Bracan territory. He used the Ilyannoi to once more beat back Yzel and further established them as a terrifying force. Using his defense of the former Ulena lands, he was able to show his power and willingness to defend the citizens of the new empire no matter their former country. In 325, Eoion and Yzel reached a treaty known as the First Peace, and Ilya returned to his duties governing the empire.
The first tsirin, his creation Soloia, died three years before him and he had both of her femurs and all four of her coffin bones removed before cremation. He kept the bones as a remembrance of her. Upon his death, one femur and coffin bone were buried with him, the beginnings of the tradition that would later become known as the Tsirin's Rest.
Unlike successive rulers who retired generally between sixty and seventy years old, Ilya worked until his death in 350 at the age of 82 from heart failure brought on by his advanced age.
Ilya's death was mourned for a week throughout the empire. His body was carried in a large procession from Niuus to Parishi. On the specific day he was interred at the old family home, all businesses and government operations were closed. Sava and Raiy delivered the funerary addresses and the Bolugama priests present declared him a Dea. Since then, he has been worshipped as one of the primary Dea of Bolugama.
Accomplishments & Achievements
After all of the kingdoms were conquered, including the full submission of Braca, he established a peace through the empire that lasted almost 30 years after the First Great War , until his death, and continued until his grandson began the Second Great War . In total, his peace lasted nearly 100 years.
He brought the discordant departments of government under centralized control. Under the previous dynasty, they had been largely regional and left in the hands of private noble citizens. Ilya restructured them, placing himself as the primary overseer and rooting out the corruption that had plagued the decentralized system.
His treaties and trade agreements with Yzel fostered a prosperous relationship between the two countries. He also invested heavily in updating the infrastructure (roads, building projects, water movement, etc) of the new empire, making it easier for goods to move across old borders and streamlining trade. These roads also made for more effective military communication and troop movement, necessary for securing the empire.
In terms of magic, he created a new field that later came to be known as stitching. This and the creation of the Ilyannoi are considered his most lasting legacies outside of the formation of the empire. His family and Eoion at large have used the creatures to maintain dominance for 700 years.
Failures & Embarrassments
While attempting to conquer Metray, his tactic of starving the populace led to several attacks against his camp and his prioritization of his creatures over the human soldiers lead to many deaths on his side before he was able to turn attitudes.
Leaving Osk in charge of Braca proved to be somewhat disastrous. The man was a good general but not ruler and Braca revolted several times during his stewardship, forcing Ilya to attack multiple times between 305 and 320. In the end, he set up a secondary residence in the conquered kingdom and ruled from there for five years to wrestle the nobility and populace under control.
Ilya had an extreme need for control and failed to set up departments and administrative offices that could run independently of himself. Upon his death, his son was much less adept at large administration and was forced to massively reorganize the structure of the empire's government.
His fierce protectiveness of the Ilyannoi secrets led to only his family learning how to make them. This caused problems in the dynasty and led to the inbreeding and mental instability of later generations.
Personality Characteristics
Virtues & Personality perks
intelligent, charismatic, meticulous
Vices & Personality flaws
ruthless, callous, tendency toward cruelty
Social
Family Ties
Ilya is the founder of the Shiroko dynasty.
Religious Views
He was a devout practitioner of Bolugama during his lifetime and spent much of his free time studying essence magic.
Relationships
History
Ilya was a generally absent father through most of Sava's early life due to his responsibilities with running the newly formed empire. It was not until Sava was in his early to mid teens that Ilya began teaching him anything about ruling. Before that point, Sava had been left to learn from various government officials. They bonded over Sava's ability with light magic. Given Ilya's affinity for both light and heat, he was able to teach his son a great deal about how to use it and further taught him to create the Ilyannoi, which Sava also passed down to his children. Sava felt filial affection for his father and, later in life, understood why Ilya was constantly away from his family. Even so, he held some resentment regarding Ilya's failure to educate him thoroughly in rule before his death, which Sava felt left him unprepared for the deluge of duties left behind due to Ilya's controlling need to micromanage almost everything.
Divine Classification
Dea
Church/Cult
Honorary & Occupational Titles
During his lifetime, he took the title of 'Emperor' after conquering Eoion's former allies. Other titles added to his name were 'commander and creator of the Ilyannoi' and 'master of the empire'. A variant of these titles are still in use by his descendants.
After his death, he was given the titles 'the Great', 'Ancestor', and 'Conqueror'. His status as a Dea added the title 'the Divine' as well.
Life
268
350
82 years old
Circumstances of Death
Heart failure brought on by advanced age.
Birthplace
Parishi
Spouses
Siblings
Children
Height
6'0"
Quotes & Catchphrases
Create for a purpose.
Breaking a mind is a stronger path to loyalty than breaking a body.
Aligned Organization
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