The Empire of Ascalon (As-ka-lon)
The Empire of Ascalon (colloquially referred to as 'the Empire') is a sovereign nation consisting of two Domains: Ascalon Domain (its capital territory) and the Domain of Solomon's Reach (its colonial frontier). The Empire also possesses militarized outposts in the Domain of the Scarlet Sea. The Empire borders the Domains of Eleusynia and the Scarlet Sea through Solomon's Reach. If the outposts in the Scarlet Sea are counted, the Empire also borders the Domains of Malakain and Ulysses.
The Empire's population is predominantly human, a blend of the several related ethnicities that came with the main Imperial populace that fled their original homeland. There are non-human sapient beings also in the Empire, which are native to the Domains of the Ethereal Sea and have joined the Empire (to varying degrees) as citizens.
The Empire's largest city is its capital, Aeston, located in the heart of Ascalon Domain. The Ascalonian ports of Avolire and Boltangate are the next largest settlements of the Empire. Trailing them are the Reach capital, New Draycott, and Port Alnor as the largest cities of Solomon's Reach Domain. The main Imperial stronghold in the Scarlet Sea (and said Domain's "capital") is Black Hollows, though it is quite small compared to its contemporaries.
The Empire is just over five centuries old, being founded after the chaos of the Evacuation. The nation was confined to Ascalon Domain for its first three centuries, before the development of the Transit Relay opened up access to Solomon's Reach. Over the course of the third and fourth centuries, Solomon's Reach was explored and colonized. While new paths to other Domains proved difficult to find in Ascalon Domain, Solomon's Reach proved easier. The first new connection was to the Domain of the Scarlet Sea, which saw its own wave of exploration and small-scale settlement. The Empire found that the Scarlet Sea was home to organized native peoples, who referred to themselves simply as "the People" while Imperials referred to them as "Crimson/Scarlet Men". While relations between the Empire and the People were initially friendly, they soured soon after a Transit Relay to another Domain, Malakain, was opened. This occurred as the Malakites declared war on the Empire for control over the Scarlet Sea and the People, fearful of what will happen to their home, felt they could no longer trust either the Empire or Malakain. They consolidated into a single group and took the moniker of the Scarlet Guard before opening a third front in the War for the Scarlet Sea. Currently, the Empire is mostly focused on the Scarlet War, with secondary focus on continuing expanding the realm in Solomon's Reach and securing the Empire from marauders/pirates taking advantage of the Imperial Navy's focus on the war. The Imperial government is also watching Solomon's Reach with some trepidation, as a swell in rebellious sentiments has grown among many settlers in the Domain.
The Empire has been ruled by the House of Montagu since its founding, with the reigning Empress being Euphemia.
History
The Empire was born roughly five centuries ago (though technically a reconstitution of the previous Kingdom of Savan, much of the governing institutions of the old kingdom were rebuilt due to the chaotic circumstances of the Evacuation). The Empire was formally founded several decades after the conclusion of the Evacuation and the chaotic flurry of building new homes for the refugee population.
The First Century
The Empire for most of its first century didn't really extend beyond the growing periphery of Aeston in the heart of the Domain. While a small number of settlements claimed fealty to the Imperial Throne, in practice Ascalon was fragmented and disunited for the first century. Things slowly changed in the latter half of the first century with the development of using locomotive engines as vessels to travel from place to place (prior to this, several ad-hoc setups were used for travel around Ascalon). The first mass use locomotive ship was the Donnal-class Strider, made by Morwell Ironworks out of Aeston's Industrial District.The Second Century
By the Empire's second century, most major ports in the modern era have been established. By this century, the Empire had been able to assert political control over the vast majority of the Domain through the creation of the Imperial Navy, which allowed for secure trade and communication links between Aeston and the many ports of Ascalon. It was this century that saw the first main flurry of major industrialization in the Empire. The Empire that would be present in the modern era was truly established during this century.The Third Century
The third century of the Empire was mostly quiet. The Empire had been solidified for a few generations now and the majority of the Domain had been thoroughly charted. Piracy was a perennial issue as there were many on the periphery that did not wish to conform to the political and cultural standards of Imperial Aeston. Those populations who felt were abandoned during the early years after the Evacuation or afterwards continued to nurse this and grouped together to strike against Imperial hegemony. Another issue that led to the creation of marauders was star-madness. Humans when exposed to the open vastness of a Domain's star-lit sky tended to struggle with holding onto their sanity. Engine-makers and buildings used stained glass to shield people from the raw starlight. Damage to an engine or pure lifelong exposure could lead to star-madness - which created a crew of maniacs who would attack any engine or settlement that they felt they could strike at and take resources (or slaves) from. Those crews stuck in star-madness either make bases in isolated areas of Ascalon or flock to existing pirate bases (who rarely cared about the maddened crews so long as they didn't attack the pirates as well). The issues with star-madness would grow throughout the second and third centuries as the early engines didn't use stained glass for quite some time (the effect is variable, from a slow descent into madness to a quick devolution of sanity). By this century, the various Imperial Ministries were also fully established and integral parts of the Imperial government under the reigning Emperor/Empress. Prior to this point, the Ministries were more ad-hoc in their structure and function. Near the end of the third century came the development of the Transit Relay (principally by Rietz Technology and Mysteries, a corporation dedicated to combining the strange, effectively magical effects of glyphs found in the Domain with pre-existing technology). The Relay was built following the determination that a path out of Ascalon was possible and the Ascalonian entrance was found near the settlement of Boltangate. After a few unsuccessful attempts at having an engine pass through the relay and come back, the HML Argulon successfully created a Relay in the new Domain and returned to Ascalon intact. This lead to the discovery of the Domain that would be called Solomon's Reach (in reference to the captain of the Argulon, Isaac Solomon, who lead many early expeditions into the new Domain). While the new Domain entranced many, the exploration and colonization of it was slow and arduous for a variety of reasons. One of the greatest is that Ascalon still held vast reserves of its own resources and the earliest attempts at setting up colonies in Solomon's Reach founded and failed. But even with these obstacles, explorers and colonists still made their way into Solomon's Reach over the latter parts of the third century and throughout the fourth century up to the present.The Fourth Century
The fourth century was one marked by colonization and many, many new discoveries. Firstly, the colony of New Draycott was finally established in the heart of Solomon's Reach in the first half of this century after several disastrous failures. This was followed very closely by the formal founding of Port Alnor, which was built around the Relay back to Ascalon. These two became the core settlements from which new colonists would disperse across Solomon's Reach. New colonies were created all throughout the century, though many failed and were re-founded as new pioneers came to the Domain. Although a solid trade route between New Draycott and Port Alnor (and then to Ascalon) would be established, charting Solomon's Reach proved difficult and uneven. Many explorers were loath to relinquish their charts or make them public and the few charts that were public were (and remain) out of date to varying degrees. As such, newcomers to the Domain find that they need to either make their own charts (if running their own engine) or trust in a local captain to get them to where they want to go to. The second major development within Solomon's Reach was the discovery of new Relay Paths. Efforts to find new paths within Ascalon proved difficult and without success, so most efforts shifted to searching Solomon's Reach for new connections. The first success was to a Domain that would be called the Scarlet Sea. This would be the first Domain with a truly widespread native population (the Scarlet Men as Imperials would call them). As such, most outposts were small and worked to remain peaceful and cooperative with the local Scarlet Men. A few fledgling outposts were built mostly as trading ports to bring Imperial goods to the Scarlet Men and bring interesting goods they made back to Solomon's Reach and Ascalon. Further exploration of the Scarlet Sea in the couple decades of the century would lead to the discovery of two more Relay Paths: the first lead to the theocratic society in the Domain of Malakain (the native name for their home) and the second lead to the Domain of Ulysses (which had a strong republican tradition among its natives). Initially, relations between the Empire and the two newfound Domains went well. The Empire was allowed to set up small trade posts in both Domains to facilitate trade (at this point the Empire retains control of these outposts). For a few decades this was the status quo in the Scarlet Sea, Malakain and Ulysses - the Empire facilitates trade between the Domains (travel between Domains was believed to be impossible to the native peoples of any Domain) while the other factions/nations try to build up their own fleets of engine-ships. As time progressed, relations with Malakain began to deteriorate. The Malakites were strongly religious, with the priestly leadership advocating for the realm to seize the Transit Relay and try to expand their faith and nation through force and missionary work (something that the Empire was against, its Church leaders fought ferociously to keep Malakite missionaries out of the Ascalonian and Solomonian ports). The Malakite political leadership did not support the priests viewpoint, preferring to maintain peaceful trading relations. Roughly a decade before the end of the century, the Malakite priesthood led a successful rebellion which seized power and created the Theocracy of Malakain. They spent the rest of the building up the Malakain military before seizing the Malakain Transit Relay to the Scarlet Sea. This was an open declaration of war which followed with the Malakites taking the Transit Relay to Malakain within the Scarlet Sea and fortifying the new outpost. They attempted to lay siege to the main Imperial stronghold of Black Hollows but were pushed back handily due to the vastly superior quality of the Imperial war engines docked there. This was the beginning of the Scarlet War, which continues into the current fifth century. The last major event of the fourth century besides the Scarlet War was the New Draycott Revolt (which occurred roughly a decade before the outbreak of the Scarlet War). Many settlers of Solomon's Reach Domain were people who wished to have a life away from the Imperial Ministerial government, which grew in power over the course of course of the third and fourth centuries. The Imperial government was content to allow considerable freedom within Solomon's Reach as there was great profit potential to be had in the Domain and having the dissidents not in Ascalon proper made things more peaceful overall. On the other hand, there were also many Imperial Loyalists, guilds and companies that established themselves in Solomon's Reach to help keep the new Domain loyal to the Empire. However, tensions began to mount as the Empire began an anti-smuggling campaign of goods illicitly trafficked from Solomon's Reach to Ascalon. Many factions in Solomon's Reach greatly disliked what they saw as Imperial overreach into their lives (they campaign was very broad and impacted many innocents as well as genuine smugglers). This, along with other policies, led to a boiling over of tension and violence between settlers and various Empire-aligned groups. This civil war raged for about three years before culminating in the massive Battle of New Draycott between various settler engines and the combined fleet of Imperial companies, Imperial Loyalist engines and sympathetic Navy units. The battle eventually ended in a draw with the Loyalist blockade broke apart and the settler fleet dispersed into the wider Domain. In the following two years, Navy patrols kept the peace in the region and ensured the trade lanes were safe but did not pressure the rebellious settlers beyond the patrols. The Empress, Euphemia, ordered a thorough investigation into the events and issues that led to the New Draycott Revolt and severely punished the Imperial ministers responsible for the policy changes. She reversed most of the policies (though keeping a few in place) and organized a meeting between agents of the Throne and the leaders of the Revolt to come to a peaceful resolution. The compromise, which granted a local Colonial Assembly the right to propose legislation that impacts Solomon's Reach alone but still can't outright veto laws set down by the Empress over the Domain. The compromise also made it so that the only main efforts to end smuggling would be confined to customs checks at the Transit Relay. While generally accepted, this compromise was not complete enough in the eyes of many settlers who wished to break away completely from the Empire (as part of the compromise, the Colonial Assembly swore to uphold Imperial Law and remain part of the Empire). Rebellious sentiments would continue to simmer from this point onwards.The Fifth (and Current) Century
The main event within the fifth century is the ongoing Scarlet War, which initially only was between the Empire and Malakain. However, as the conflict between them heated up, the Scarlet Men grew increasingly worried about what would happen to them and their home when the conflict ended. As such, the leaders of the Scarlet Men (and most of their people) agreed that they couldn't trust either faction (the Malakites were too aggressive and dogmatic while the Imperials had grow more interesting in gathering more of the resources of the Domain and pushing things in that trajectory). The native tribes consolidated into the Scarlet Guard - the native faction that entered the Scarlet War against both the Empire and Malakain. Using the many sky-beasts of the Scarlet Sea that they had either tamed or created pacts with in place of the war engines of their opponents, the Scarlet Guard struck against the Malakites at their main base of Port Shar and the Imperials at Black Hollows and a few other outposts. While not able to oust either power from their current strongholds, the Scarlet Guard proved themselves to be a credible threat to both powers that had to be accounted for in the conflict. The war had trudged on for about 7 years to the present at this point in time and shows no sign of stopping. The second issue is the continuing rebellious factions inside Solomon's Reach. Many were either angry at the compromise with the Imperial government or unsatisfied with the end result. While open rebellion has been strongly discouraged, low level conflict between zealous elements of the rebel settlers and Loyalist factions still occurs, typically in the periphery of the Domain away from the main trade corridors. To the side of these conflicts is the discovery of new Relay Paths from Solomon's Reach to three new Domains: Eleusynia, Sozomon and the Scaled Kingdom. These new territories have made Solomon's Reach become an absolute necessity for the Empire to maintain control of so that trade with the newly found Domains can continue to flourish.
Founding Date
Year 1 of the Imperial Calendar
Type
Geopolitical, Empire
Capital
Alternative Names
The Empire, Ascalon
Demonym
Imperials, Ascalonians
Government System
Monarchy, Constitutional
Power Structure
Unitary state
Economic System
Mixed economy
Currency
Gold Sovereign coin
Legislative Body
Imperial Parliament
Judicial Body
The High Court
Controlled Territories
Comments