The Aurelian Republic
Pre-War History of the Republic
Formerly known as the Landings League, the Aurelian Republic was once little more than a loose coalition of city states desperate to maintain their freedom away from the tyranny of the Vanyal Empire. Officially founded in 2655AR, the Republic's history dates back as far as 2463 when the first voyagers crossed the Cleaving Sea upon the repair of the Scintillstrait, thus allowing full traversal of the ocean west of the Henos super-continent. The first voyagers and explorers were drawn to the eastern coasts of Aurelia by what they believed to be a spark of divine providence: the bio-luminescence of the holy tree, Kho'ehden G'loy. A uniquely massive monolith of nature, the holy tree was sacred to the native Aegium, a druidic coalition of tribes living on the plateau above the stretch of coastal land that would one day become the great city of the first Landing, Highmantle. Thankfully, the Aegium and the first voyagers found an unusual kinship in their shared reverence of light-themed faiths, and were, miraculously, able to reconcile their systems of belief fairly rapidly. Upon hearing their plight, the Aegium were welcoming, but strict. They shared their knowledge of the land with the colonists of the Landings, but initially forbid entry to the Great Wardwood; their ancestral lands atop the high plateau overlooking the sea. This initial friendship with the Aegium, more than any other event, is what aided the survival of the initial settlements. Eventually more Landings, primary city-states sporting distinct cultural heritages, would settle elsewhere on the coast. First was Doroa, a large island and its children just north of Highmantle. Second was the Hearthlands in the valley and plains to the southwest. Eventually the Aegium would relax their restrictions and allow trade and certain refugees to enter the Wardwood. It became known as the fourth Landing. During the settlement of Aurelia, the colonists met the Araashi, a great kingdom composed of elves, humans, and orcs living in the arid southlands of Aurelia beyond colonial expedition. Additionally, elements of the Arkspire Order in Highmantle were delighted to hear that a new Arkspire had been located in the middle of a massive crater lake west of Highmantle. Lastly, further colonial expeditions were sent to the Shards, the legendary island remnants of the great draconic continent of Pharanazor southeast in the Cleaving Sea. In 2633, a splinter faction of dwarf nobles separated themselves from the Empire and assisted in establishing much of the financial infrastructure that would set the foundations for the First Bank of the Republic and the Honza. Over the course of about 90 years of development, the Landings created a chain of trade routes and alliances that cemented their presence in the region for the foreseeable future. They would found the city of Deepsong in the Southern Canthus Range. The Landings would go on, over time, to form their own loose league of governance. The Landings League helped provide assurances in a new world of loosely-established territorial borders, squabbling townships, and fearful colonials. However, their organization did not go unnoticed, and the Vanyal Empire, having constructed a fleet in response to the Great Voyage, were swift in reacting to the birth of a new government that might oppose them. The Vanyal's arrival in Aurelia was too sudden to resist. Long expected but quickly executed, their grand plan began with the forcible annexation of a portion of Doroa. Doroa proper would become Grand Doroa, and the island territories taken by the Vanyal would come to be known as Little Doroa, and later New Vanyala. From here, the Vanyal established a beachhead from which their tyranny might grow. Enforced taxation, industrial sabotage, political espionage, and assassination were rampant. However, the Vanyal, suffering from slave revolts at home, were not in a solid position to commit a significant force to such a distant theater of war. At last, the Empire that had ruled for 2500 years had met a foe it could not conquer or subvert. The more the Vanyal tightened their grip, the more the people of the Landings rose up against them in open opposition, and the more the politicos cried out for unified government. In the years preceding 2655, an outlaw historian named Koziss the Elder proposed a form of government based upon ancient, extinct principals held by a long-bygone nation now erased from public knowledge by the Vanyal. These ancient ideals were rooted not in tyranny, but in concepts of equal representation for constituents of the nation. Koziss' ideal of republic enchanted the pre-war colonists, who had long been hungry for true freedom from Vanyal oppression. Sadly no great thing comes about without conflict. In 2655, the Landings League held its first public vote to form a unified Aurelian Republic, something previously unheard of in the history of the Empire. The Vanyal made desperate bids to foil the vote, but countermeasures by colonial mages largely thwarted their efforts. By an overwhelming majority of 87% of the vote for and 13% against, the people of Aurelia voted in favor of republic. The Vanyal promptly declared war, stating that Vanyal citizens were in open rebellion having declared themselves a subversive government in the face of their "perpetual Imperial citizenship."The Liberty War
The war that followed the Declaration of Republic was brutal and bloody. Waged in the jungles of the Kelsinian Basin, across the plains of the Hearthlands, and across the Western Cleaving Sea, no territory of the fledgling Republic was free from violence. In 2657, Highmantle was sacked, and its people and the Republican government retreated to the high plateau of the Wardwood and its cavernous capitol city of Greendelve. Halflings in the Hearthlands were, once again, taken as slaves. Native orcs, who had never known service to the Vanyal, were forcibly conscripted or given blood money to act as mercenaries. This new idea that Imperial "citizenship" (I.E. slavery) was permanent, even in lands the Vanyal did not directly control, enraged the peoples of the Landings. Despite the initial losses against the Vanyal army, the Republic was not deterred. Doroa and the stygian lancer guilds who had migrated from old Henos in search of fresh hunting grounds had, for nearly a century, forged a peerless fighting fleet that astonished the newborn Vanyal seafaring forces with its ferocity and guile. Entire legions drowned at sea, and the supply lines from Henos were anything but stable. Furthermore, the druidic prowess of the Aegium in conjunction with wily and fearless colonial forces combined to create an army that simply would not engage the Vanyal in a manner that was in any way suitable for their centuries-old way of fighting. The Liberty War, for its duration, resembled the case of an ancient, enormously ponderous beast being shredded to death by a pack of innumerable tiny predators. The battles were many, and the losses on both sides great. However, in the end, the Vanyal failed. Though the war had remained a stalemate for almost four years, two major catastrophes guaranteed a Republican victory in 2660 and 2661: the arrival of the ancient dragon Chrusoklepsis, and the Eclipse, respectively. With Chrusoklepsis obliterating the Grand Imperial Fleet and the Eclipse initiating the Imperial Collapse on Annuam 2661, the Vanyal Empire in Aurelia was reduced to a remnant government in exile. They would sue for peace in Spring Waning of 2661, agreeing to become an auxiliary seat of the Republic.Modern History of the Republic
Today, the Republic still stands almost two hundred years after the first landing. That said, its progress as a nation has not been easy. The colonists of Aurelia are only eight years into this grand experiment. Territorial lines on the rural level are convoluted, and the number of civil issues are too many to count. Nonetheless, the people of Aurelia are generally content with their lot, and are in the nascent days of creating a great nation. The Storm-Throng Surge and The Battle of Antakiaton. Early into 2662, the Republic was faced once more with annihilation. The Araashi Sultanate, who had refused the Republic aid in the Liberty War, begged for assistance against an immense horde of centaurs that had risen to violent singularity in the westernmost reaches of the unexplored continent. The Republic sent token forces that were promptly consumed, literally, by the Storm-Throng. The Araashi Sultanate was quickly fragmented by the murderous, seemingly unstoppable horde of centaurs rampaging across their lands. A large number of refugees came east to the city of Antakiaton, one of two cities adjacent to the Republic's borders, claiming that the centaurs were demon-possessed, with a will to kill and eat anything that they could. If they were not stopped, the Republic would be next. The tales of the refugees galvanized the Republic, which had not yet demobilized its forces for fear of reprisal by the Vanyal Remnant. Their hope was to stop the horde at the Longblue River on the city's west banks. The forces of the seats of Highmantle, Greendelve, Deepsong, Arkspire Island, and the tattered remains of an Araashi royal guard regiment fortified the east side of the river in preparation. Even the Vanyal sent a force of elite honor guard led by none other than Reysh iet Vanyal, Emperor-in-Exile, to assist as a gesture of good faith. On the 7th of Spring Waxing, a ululating swarm of centaurs of a size without number made an attempt to charge across the banks of the Longblue. The slaughter, some say, was unspeakable. Having entrenched upon the east bank and broken the only bridge to Antakiaton, the heavy infantry of Deepsong and the Vanyal Remnant had created overlapping kill boxes that the Throng made no attempt to avoid. Arcane fire rained down from the heights of Antakiaton. Firelocks roared leaden death for hours. The wolfsteeds of Highmantle and the rangers of Greendelve mopped up what few centaurs managed to make the initial crossing. The mages of the Arkspire Order lit the night so that the killing could continue unabated. Before and during the battle, the Grand Doroan fleet bombarded the horde from the southern shore, killing thousands of rampaging centaurs upon their approach. The breadth of the river was choked with dead horse-things, and part of the lower city was flooded as the Longblue broke its banks, staining Antakiaton red with blood-water. Having created an uneasy bridge forged of their own dead about a half-mile long, the centaurs were able to engage in melee with the Republican forces by early morning of the 8th. Pike-dwarves and war-bards of the Deepsong Choral Legions sang the death knell of ten thousand centaurs as the Vanyal expedition force backed them up with volley after volley over the heads of their stocky comrades. On the north end of the island city, the wolfsteed dragoons of Highmantle fought viciously alongside Aegium rangers and their druidic support squads. The Doroan fleet, by early evening of the second day, signaled that the Throng was thinning, faltering, and scattering. Since what would come to be known as the War of the Surge, the Araashi would come to find their once-vast kingdom devastated; the victim of a swift, all-consuming genocide. Its cause still unknown, vivisection and interrogation of captured centaurs yielded little. Of what little was revealed, it came to be known that the centaurs were at one time eladrin who had magically evolved themselves during the Sun Slaying. This was not an unusual finding, but the extent of their metamorphosis was, at the time, almost unique among the eladrin-morphic species. Furthermore, extensive study of the physiological causes for their sustained, ravenous fury indicated that each and every centaur examined had been in a berserk mental state for months. The most disturbing findings came when members of the Radiant Church performed rituals upon the bodies that revealed traces of demonic possession. In a sample of 83 corpses, every one displayed the same trace. The sheer scale of possession had never been heard of before in history, whether during or after the Sun Slaying. When beseeched via spells of necromantic communion, the spirits of the dead centaurs were belligerent and violent, only promising the wrath of an entity they called "the Black Stag." What this dark god that inspired their crusade of blood was, no one yet knows. In the wake of the Surge, the Araashi Refuge was formed as an auxiliary seat of the Republic. WIP Kho'ehden G'loy represented on the flag of the Republic, with four stars surrounding her, one for each of the Landings involved in the founding of the old league.
Type
Geopolitical, Republic
Controlled Territories
Neighboring Nations
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