Kingdom of Lampuato
"We will not bow to a distant emperor who has never set foot on this land. We shall rule ourselves, for ourselves." - attributed to General Meko in stories about the founding of the Kingdom of Lampuato
The Kingdom of Lampuato was founded in the aftermath of Hundaru of Telmun's death, when the western parts of the Telmunic Empire broke away. Meko, one of Hundaru's generals, ensconced himself and his army on the island of Lampuato, and founded one of the most enduring nations in the history of the Great Ring. For over seventeen centuries, the Kingdom of Lampuato persisted, until the excesses of the royal family incited a rebellion and a metaphysical collapse that not only destroyed the kingdom, but rendered the island itself virtually uninhabitable.
From Province to Kingdom
When the great conquerer Hundaru of Telmun was poisoned, chaos descended in the western half of the empire. The generals who had served under Hundaru had never met his cousin and heir, Tylos of Nisi. They had no reason to respect him, and knew that the eastern empire had no power to hold the newly conquered western islands without their cooperation. While they all rejected Tylos as their new leader, there was no such consensus about who should be the new emperor. Unsurprisingly, this led to conflict and war among the generals of the west.
One of these generals was Meko, a young commander who had been a protege of Hundaru. He had been raised from a simple soldier due to his competence and good luck to be noticed by the emperor, and many of the older generals resented his rapid ascent. When they began to fight over the rulership of the Empire, Meko decided to withdraw from Lahat where most of the conflict was happening, and to establish his army in a fortified location on the island of Lampuato.
Over the next five years, Meko and his troops built up their defenses and waited to see who would emerge from the war. In the end, there was no real victor on Lahat, only survivors. Some of those did attempt to invade Lampuato, but Meko's rested and fortified defenders were able to repel them easily. While Meko waited, his army also made Lampuato their home. They married and had children, and many fell in love with the island itself. When Meko decided to establish himself as the King of Lampuato, they celebrated and began to call themselves the Mekongga.
The Rise of Kosalo
The Kingdom of Lampuato prospered in the centuries after Meko established himself as king. He and his descendants proved to be good rulers, and the Mekongga people thrived under their leadership. Meko's army has consisted of soldiers from all across Hundaru's empire, and their cultural and genetic legacy blended with the native Lampuatans to make the Mekongga a distinct and rich culture.
Nearly seven hundred years after the kingdom was established, the great philosopher Kasamurti was born. He became the most important shaper of Mekongga culture since Meko himself when he introduced and popularized the idea of Kosalo, the divine order of the world. Over the centuries that followed, Kosalo became an integral part of everyday life on Lampuato, used to guide everything from the design of buildings, to legal codes and religious practice. Common people could quote the proverbs of Kasamurti from memory, and considered the upholding of Kosalo as the prime reason for the Kingdom's continued wealth and stability. This belief had more than enough power behind it to create lasting metaphysical effects through the Egregoric Force, and after a thousand years of development would eventually bring about the destruction of the kingdom itself.
The Destruction of Lampuato
While it is not true that all the blame for Lampuato's fall can be attributed to King Saambu, his actions in the last decades of the kingdom served as a spark which ignited the kingdom. The royal family had long drifted from a strict observance of Kosalo, claiming that their position in the divine order exempted them from many or most of its proscriptions. Under Saambu, the monarchy abandoned even a token observance of the philosophy. Instead, they behaved as though they were divinities from outside the universe, completely unconnected to any order and free from any consequences to their actions. Over the course of two decades, Saambu and his court repeatedly outraged the population of Lampuato, trusting to their belief in Kosalo to prevent any attempts at rebellion, as the position of the royals in society was considered one of the prime pillars of the divine order Kosalo described.
What the royalty of Lampuato did not understand was how their betrayal of Kosalo would reverberate through the metaphysical environment of the island. As the common people saw their leaders violate the tenets they believed in, they became certain that the universe could not tolerate this outrage. Crops began to fail, and the fishing boats came back empty. Strange storms attacked the island, and the great lake of Rano Moko turned to poison so virulent that the bodies entombed within it couldn't even rot.
By the time the rebellion happened, it was too late to restore the Kingdom. Saambu and the other royals were executed - itself a violation of Kosalo so egregious that people feared Lampuato would sink into the ocean. Earthquakes rocked the land, and the gods of Lampuato turned against the people, driving them to commit horrific acts against each other. While the rebels succeeded against the monarchy, they were forced to flee the island and seek a new home elsewhere in the world.
The Kingdom of Lahat
Battered, starving, and sick, the refugees from Lampuato went to Lahat, where many of their distant ancestors had originated. There, they embarked on a campaign to conquer the island and recreate their kingdom. The Tau Tanah and Tau Dilaut of Lahat resisted, but these people had been so long at peace that they had little power to drive back the desperate Mekongga. And so the Kingdom of Lahat was born.
The Mekongga did not do this for power alone. Ever since the fall of Lampuato, the Mekongga have harbored a terror that Kosalo is on the verge of total collapse, which would cause the entire universe to dissolve into the endless known as Keterbagaan in Kosalo). The goal of the Kingdom of Lahat was to gather the resources needed to create a kind of artificial Kosalo, while the order of the world stabilized and healed. In this endeavor, the Mekongga have established a strict social order and hierarchy, as well as several arcane devices supposed to help promote Kosalo. It is unclear whether any of these measures are meaningful, but the Mekongga people are beginning to believe that the universe will not dissolve around them in the immediate future.
2115 - 3835
A Symbol of Corruption
During the last years of the Kingdom of Lampuato, the Royal family took up the Tonggali as a primary means of transporting themselves and their court. These vehicles were enormous litters or palanquins that were born upon the backs of men, and became a symbol of the monarch's abandonment of Kosalo. You can read more about the Tonggali here.
Artificial Kosalo
There are several methods by which the Kingdom of Lahat attempts to create and maintain an artificial state of Kosalo. These largely depend on a particular device that is a closely guarded secret, located in the capital city of Ratubala. This is known as the Kosalo Astrolabe, and it serves to coordinate and bind all of the other methods together and project a stabilizing force upon the universe. You can read more about the astrolabe here.
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