The history of Reverli of the Orange Tulip

Youth

Reverli of the orange tulip Grew up in the shire, one of the most peaceful and isolated places of the world back then, She was very curious about what was beyond the shire’s borders, beyond the shallow reef swamp or what was on the endless fields, which was taboo back then. Shireling culture demanded that you were happy with what you had, and just accepted things as they are.

But thanks to her stubbornness and determination she kept pushing the limits of what was culturally allowed. Reverli eventually found someone else who was also interested in the unknown, his name was Winthrop Kipps and together throughout Reverli’s youth they made short expeditions everywhere. Together in the swamps they learned the dangers lurking outside the safety of the shire, on the endless fields they learned to fight from what she calls “a mysterious man” who was probably a member of Envarik, based on his fighting techniques.

Over the years she gained more and more experience in exploring and fighting, all leading to what she considers her peak in exploring with Winthrop: climbing on top of the mountain ridge and finding another civilization on the other side. Back then she didn’t knew who those people were, only that they confirmed her theories about more people being out there than just the shire. Today we know them as Shoberok.

Skeleton war

Her exploration was rudely interrupted however with the start of the skeleton war, she took up arms together with pink tulip family members and her brother Derbach, in this grueling war she showed her bravery and charismatic leadership. In many battles she led shirelings twice her age into battle, eventually turning the tide and kicking the skeletons out of the Shire.

At the end the big families found that she deserved a reward for her excellent leadership and collectively agreed upon giving her the title of Chairman, making her the leader of the shire. Although the title did not really hold any power back then, it made it easier to make people listen to you, and they more often came to you with their problems, but there was nothing in place to make them obey your commands.

Theoretical power was not enough for Reverli however, she wanted to make contact with those people beyond the mountains, see how far the swamp reached and how many of their ancestors still remained on the endless fields. So she got back to Winthrop and together they created some “events'' based around exploring the world and started to make contact with others.

With making contact to the other people a whole new world of opportunities opened up for the shire, the people were enthusiastic about these new discoveries, finally understanding her drive to look into the unknown. But what they did not yet see was the dangers that were brought with it.

All that the shirelings could see was new friends but not the potential enemies lurking in the corners of the world,Reverli however was very aware of this. She believes to this day that to make sure you won’t get invaded you have to project force. Making yourself look stronger than you are, it worked for many animals she encountered on her travels and it will work for those outsiders too.

To make this work she needed to consolidate power, while she was rather talented in leadership she did not know much about politics yet. Luckily the leader of the Pink tulip family, Edward Rosethorne had the utmost respect for the Chairman after her many exploits in such a short notice and was more than willing to help her understand the complicated world of politics.

Together they achieved many of the early policies and revolutionised the shire with their slime elevators, ziprails and many more expeditions. This showed not only the shirelings that a country ruled by Reverli is one that can be prosperous but also any outsiders that they are not to be messed with.

Unification war

Reverli got more and more into mingling with other world leaders and eventually got invited to a sheolian event where everyone could wish for one thing. After a hard day of trying to make the big families work together in expanding the borders, and failing she jokingly asked if Sheol could unify the shire for her.

A big mistake, soon the hordes of sheol appeared upon the borders of the Shire. Reverli, obviously panicked, sent out a letter to the general of the sheolian armies asking what they were planning and if they could move away, they were making the citizens nervous. She swiftly got a message back simply stating: “Nothing unifies better than a war” And with that the shire ended up in his first war with a foreign nation.

The moment she read the message she stormed out her home and once again rallied her people against the enemy, she collected all the civilians on the main square and brought one of her rousing speeches, she knew to turn a normally peace loving and accepting people into one filled with hatred for whatever is outside the gates of the shire, willing to lay down their lives for their fatherland.

They rapidly set up defences along the rives, barricaded the smaller entrances, equipped and trained the people the basics of warfare, forming the first official homefront divisions. The Homefront divisions were a thing for a while now but it was very loose and everyone could just walk out whenever they wanted, it was looked upon more like a household chore than a job, not anymore.

The fighting was brutal, wherever the Sheolian troops knew to get a foothold they pillaged the homes and genocided the Shireling civilians, but instead of destroying morale and instilling fear it only enforced the determination of Reverli and her people that these fiends not only should be driven out their homeland, but all the way back to theirs.

to make this a reality Reverli once again turned to Rosethorne if he had any ideas on the topic. Rosethorne saw an excellent opportunity to get his daughter into politics and make a future for herself, so he recommended Lorraine of the pink tulip to become the first general of a tulipian army. Reverli accepted and gave her four divisions and told her: “break down their fucking capitol”.

And that’s what she did, she quickly moved out and towards hell itself. But while those were advancing, many sheolian troops maintained their position within the shire. So until surrender was announced, Reverli attacked on any front she had within the shire, slowly taking back house by house. Learning a lot about military tactics by experimenting, these tactics still leave a heavy imprint on the Tulipian tactics to this day.

On the day of the surrender, Rosethorne and some troops entered Reverli’s home where she was still looking at maps trying to plan the next move, they picked her up and carried her outside while chanting “Hero! Hero! Hero!” They brought her to the centre of the town where the other civilians joined in, eventually the chanting went from “Hero” to “Hail!” which slowly overtime turned into the well known “All Hail” we know today.

Once everything calmed down, Reverli took the moment and proclaimed the creation of the Tulipian kingdom, and promised that not only those within our borders would be safe but also respected by outsiders, if they would not admire the kingdom, they would fear the kingdom. Which was accepted by the people with thunderous applause, to the dismay of some families.

Reverli was still titled the Chairman, there was no royal bloodline. It was accepted that if Reverli would die or abdicate that the families should together discuss who would be the next leader.

She took immediate action in solidifying the borders of her kingdom, they needed more land to retreat to if needed and more resources to be able to work independant and not rely on trade with other powers. Because after trying to trade with other nations earlier in her career they all asked currency, something completely alien to the Tulipians who trade in goods.

Tulipian expansion

So she proposed the idea to the other families to expand southward, over the ancestral homeland, the endless fields. The pink tulip, now led by Lorraine titled to Lord commander of all tulipian armies was all for the idea, but the red and white tulip were firmly against it.

Not wanting to upset the balance between the families by turning her proposal into an order, she accepted the stalemate and looked for other ways to make her expansion become a reality.

She turned to the people of the Shire and asked their view on the matter, although she did spin her reasons for it. She explained how fellow Tulipians live on the endless fields and asked her people to recall how their ancestors lived on those fields, in flimsy tents with no real protection. She asked if we, the so called defenders of all Tulipians could leave our elders alone and vulnerable on those fields, open to attacks of thugs like Sheol. And with that the people of the Shire stood fully behind her, breaking the political stalemate and allowing her to expand southwards, to the dismay of the neighbouring Shoberok.

Tensions rose between the two countries thanks to border friction and the rather aggressive outlook Reverli was portraying. Luckily the leader of Pyrren on the other side of the Shallow reef swamp was rather fond of the Chairman, making a nice ally on the other side of the Tulipian known world.

The world war

Alliances were made left and right, and it quickly looked like that if the Tulipian kingdom would get into a war it would become a world war. Something Reverli rather avoided, so she started to look how she could disrupt other treaties, but it was too little too late.

Quickly after this realisation the leader of Pyrren Mera kimei was kidnapped by the people of Shoberok, once this news arrived Lorraine took initiative and invaded Shoberok as retaliation, her armies swiftly secured the countryside but the battle for the capitol was a tough one and was eventually considered a lost cause by the Tulipian forces, but before the Shoberoki came to understand this, they entered peace negotiations. The treaty further solidified the already existing alliances, setting the world up for another world war. So Reverli went back to disrupting alliances.

From kingdom to empire

The next years of the kingdom were seen as a golden age, Lorraine started the construction of Illithshire, a fortress city on the border of Shoberok since it seemed that the relations between the two weren’t getting better anytime soon. It also saw another Tulipian victory with Sheolian troops influencing the small city state of Pogtown to attack Pyrren.

which in return got invaded by the kingdom, forcing the total annexation of the town. renaming it to Poghtown and officially turning the kingdom into the Tulipian Empire and the capitol from shire to Tulipshire, the name the country still carries to this day.

While the rebranding back home brought another wave of patriotism to the people, it brought more suspicious eyes from both the families and neighbouring countries like Shoberok and the Shadow Highlands. In response to these rising tensions, Lorraine once again expanded her armies and Reverli expanded further into the south, integrating multiple tribes and starting the construction of settlements all over.

This cold war between the three neighbours reached a peak with the horse crisis, Where Shoberok stole a group of horses from Illithshire, causing Lorraine to once again react on her own initiative, threatening the country with war if the horses weren’t returned.

Sheol jumped on this opportunity and stole the stolen horses from Shoberok and brought them back as a token of peace. The token of peace was accepted and Shoberok was forced to pay a debt to cover the mobilization of Tulipian forces or face war. With the debt being slowly paid off, tensions once again lowered.

But this was a big lesson for Reverli, noticing that the army was growing larger and larger by the day and often acting on their own. She was losing control of her forces to Lorraine, who became less and less interested in Reverli’s ideas. Reverli needed to reign in the army, and fast. She did this first by participating in the very first pyrenni convention, where all known world powers came together to decide some global rules, the first set of rules was about what is and isn’t allowed in war, which would help to make the Tulipian army more orderly and less of a band of savages, which Reverli feared they would turn into if given enough freedom.

This also saw the re-introduction of loyalty slabs, an ancient tradition from the pink tulip where those fighting for the family had to carve their loyalty in a stone and seal it with their blood. These loyalty slabs would show the soldiers loyalty to Reverli and not Lorraine. A small group of soldiers refused to carve them but never told this to Reverli and Lorraine didn’t bring the news either.

Dynamite war

Everything came to ahead with the great dynamite war, where Lorraine after a slight conflict decided to occupy the capitol of Shoberok, war crimes were used on both sides and was a disastrous loss for the empire. The empire was forced to demobilize the army and Reverli decided to fire Lorraine as punishment for her traitorous behaviour against the empire. Lorraine refused to surrender her title and rallied her loyalists to her, starting the Tulipian civil war.

Tulipian Civil war

The civil war caused to Reverli’s order to be on the brink of collapse, most of the settlements fell rapidly under Lorrainist control where those openly loyal to Reverli were murdered or turn into slaves for their warmachine, eventually she gave up in secret on saving any settlements and focused on fortifying the capitol with additional palisade walls.

She also reached out to allies and former enemies, explaining the situation, “Even if you rather see me fall from the stairs and break my neck, i can assure you that Lorraine and her lackeys are ten times worse than me” using evidence of Lorraine’s crimes against humanity to further press the world leaders to help her.

The following days where quiet yet stressful, Reverli wasn’t seen outside anymore, according to those who did came in her home so now and then explained that it was a mess, in the living room the curtains were closed, the main table and the floor around covered in maps and the chairman looked like she hadn’t slept for weeks.

Once the siege on Tulipshire began, Reverli was once again seen outside, still with bags under her eyes and as pale as a corpse but in her armour and ready to rip the hearts out of anyone who dares to cross her walls.

With the help of her soldiers and foreign aid she successfully fought off the siege and sent the Lorrainists back home. The homefront division quickly rushed after the routing Lorrainists and began their own siege upon Illithshire.

Although this one didn't take as long, thanks to Lorraine needing to pullback her troops out of the settlements to reinforce Illithshire, causing them to rise up and causing further chaos within her ranks. The homefront divisions broke through the first wall, within all the chaos Lorraine’s messengers thought they broke through all the way through the fortress, causing Lorraine to panic and quickly flee to the east, leaving her troops without a leader. Once the second wall fell the remaining soldiers surrendered to the empire.

In her sleep deprived and anger fueled state Reverli demanded the remaining traitors to be executed. Although many of them got eventually banished or put into prison once Rosethorne took control of the situation. After Reverli got enough rest and the towns of the empire were rebuilt, she made Edward Rosethorne of the Pink tulip the new Lord commander.

He quickly started construction on Tulipburg and focused on reinventing the Tulipian war doctrine into something more defensive and urged Reverli to make sure the empire looks a lot kinder to outsiders, The civil war destroyed the image of a unified empire against outside threats, it would be better to push all the blame of the hostile action on Lorraine and start with a clean slate.

Reverli was able to quickly ease relations with shoberok although those with the Shadow highlands where a lot harder to mend, they demanded that the empire would only buy fuel for elytra units via them and since there was not a lot of money thanks to their bartering nature and the reconstruction effort on the settlements, the families decided to look for alternative ways of getting into the air, which became mechanical launchers place on hotspots all around the empire to the dismay of the Shadow highlands.

The tensions once again rose to a peak when Highland spies sabotaged the bamboo production of the empire, leaving them without the luxury resource. As a countermeasure the empire decided to rip the treaty in two and once again started the production of firework rockets. The reaction of the shadow highlands was the threat of war.

With this Reverli focused completely on the construction of Tulipburg, the largest fortress of the empire at the time, the war never came. The reason why it was cancelled is still a mystery to the empire today.
The empire seemed to be content at this time, the settlements where further developed and normalcy returned to the people. The hostilities between the families seemed to be at a minimum. Everything was pretty swell within the empire.

Anti-Anthelion war

This all changed with the sudden disappearance of the sun, the start of the great anti-anthelion war. The undead invaded from all sides and the army was unable to hold it all, the families and Reverli on Rosethorne’s request were sent to tulipburg for their safety, from within the massive fortress they planned their next steps. Reverli and Rosethorne quickly realized that with the ever increasing amount of enemy soldiers that they could never hold the entire empire and if the sun didn't return within half a year with the current size of the empire that there would be no hope of winning at all.

So Reverli ordered the troops to focus on escorting civilians to tulipburg where they could hold out, once a town was fully abandoned it should be burned down, nothing should be left for the enemy to use. The same was for any front line that was forced to retreat, all equipment that was unable to be taken with the troops was destroyed and crop fields were salted and rendered useless. Eventually the borders stabilized between Tulipburg, Tulipshire and Damshire where most of the proper fighting was held. With loss after loss, seeing her empire turn into smoke and ash for the second time, Reverli’s blood began to boil.

Thanks to Deion the lesser who was ordered to play messenger between the empire and whoever outside there still held out she found out who was behind this. It was Sheol, and they would pay for this. She grabbed an elytra suit and went out to where the enemies of the empire and traitours of the world would be and started a skirmish on her own. Her sheer determination combined with anger kept her alive, and with the help of some Shoberoki members who secretly switched sides again she knew to push back the evil and managed to return the sun to the world.

On the first sunrise of the new sunrise era, Reverli returned home, tired, broken and covered in blood. Her exploits reached the empire quicker however, on the battered walls of Tulipshire stood her loyal troops looking just as weary as she did, the bodies of their enemies covering the area around it and river red of all the blood.

Once they saw her walking they shouted “All hail our goddess of protection!” “All hail the protector of the empire!” Her fighting was considered unnatural, none should be able to hold off so many enemies and live to tell the tale. From here on out her people considered her a demi-goddess and felt proud and safe knowing such an entity was willing to lead them to greatness.

The final days

Once she was able to take a look upon her empire the only thing she saw was destroyed homes, families ripped apart and death. And when reconvigning with the Red tulip family it also looked like the empire did not have enough resources to rebuild the empire. It seemed to become a tough couple of years for everyone involved.

Reverli however seemed to have no more energy to spend, she gave the four families all the power they needed and the simple order of “rebuild the empire” and retreated to her home where she kept to herself for a long time. When the second year of reconstruction started she slowly crawled out of her home again after some pushing of loved ones like her mother Lucrin, Winthrop and her recently returned brother Derbach.

Rosethorne was very happy to see his demi-goddess up and out again and made sure to stay by her side and help her wherever he could. She took control over the reconstruction effort, brought out new propaganda that asked the people to work together, bringing the Tulipian people closer to their socialist anarchic roots and over the next three years the empire slowly but surely recovered, and so did Reverli.

Eventually the empire was fully up and running again, it even further expanded by colonising islands in the southern ocean and setting up a new settlement further south on the endless fields. Reverli quickly started reconnecting with the other countries and started to exert influence on other nations. One of the bigger examples is the crimson war, where tulipian troops were deployed to help shoberok survive another plan of Sheol, bringing the two closer together.

The ancestral coalition

With the relations between shoberok and the empire fully mended, Reverli decided to fully focus on settling the south, finally completing the very first goal she had when the Tulipians unified. But this was blocked by a coalition of ancestral tribes who banded together to stop the Tulipian expansion onto their lands.

Normally Reverli would just smash through those who stand in the way of the empire, but these are the people she promised to protect to her people, plus the coalition exists out of five members which would definitely turn into a long drawn out war, which was something the army didn’t want after the Anti-Anthelion war. So for now she decided to leave them alone, let them calm down and realise that she actually accepts their borders.

While this was going on, the families didnt sit idle either, they were gathering their own loyal subjects to gain some more political power within the empire, because since the creation of the kingdom the only two families with real power where the orange tulip for obvious reasons and the pink tulip for controlling the entire army.

Once they had some of their own “personal guard” set up the red and white tulip demanded more representation within the empire, they proposed to do this by giving away cities to the families where they can exert their influence better. Not wanting another civil war, Reverli decided to listen to their demands and after a bunch of talking they came to a compromise. The families did indeed get their land but are not allowed to make any new rules nor change anything significant without agreement of the Chairman.

But there are not enough towns to equally divide the empire between all families, and this more land was needed. The south was blocked by the ancestral coalition, the west was under the influence of shoberok and the Shadowhighlands so there was not much space left to expand into. Eventually Deion of the red tulip came with the idea to use their polder idea which they used to drain some land within the capital, giving space for more farms, on a greater scale, drain parts of the shallow reef swamp and settle there.

Northward expansion

And so the workers of the empire went to work, first draining a small part, then a bigger part and they kept increasing and increasing. And with every polder their experience increased which made the progress only faster. Although plans from both the federal ocean which has been very absent in tulipian politics up until now and shoberok seem to conflict with how the swamp should be used.