The Camethop Dynastic Period (130 AE to 160 AE)

War, Blood, and the Start of Decline

Formation and Rise

The Camethop Dynasty arose after a heated argument between Emperor Okarnel II, and his premier military commander, Came I. Both strong willed men, the argument that ultimately saw them come to blood, was one of war and conquest. Believing he deserved the position of Serene Commander for an invasion of Upper Sunar, Came I was hell bent on subjugating the backwater region and bringing it under the authority of Sunas.
Came's views on the subject, were no doubt based in his rumored childhood as an orphan from Phernac. Forever scarred by the near constant warfare and instability of the region, it would be no stretch to assume his desires were based around providing order and stability to his homeland. The validity in these rumors and legends, however, is heavily questioned, as few credible sources actually label Came an Upper Sunarian. The origin of this myth, likely arose decades, or centuries later, from the lack of knowledge on the man prior to his rise to power. This absence of documentation seems to have indicated that an organized effort was made by either him, or his later successors, to wipe much of his pre-imperial history from the record. This belief is bolstered by the Camethop Dynasty's well known tendency for censorship, with all three Camethop emperors being documented and responsible for the desecration of Akenit artwork and iconography. This habit of theirs would see the widespread destruction of artistic sources and mosaics from the period of the First Akenit Dynasty, to such an extent, that almost nothing remains today. What does exist of this early imperial period is drawn almost entirely from the reign of the Second Akenit Dynasty, who would return to power following the collapse Camethop rule.
What is known and well documented though, is that Came saw it as the responsibility of Okarnel to rule over all of Sunar and to spread order and law to every child of the Sun, in his mind, such a campaign to unify the two halves of Sunar was long over due. From this belief, Came had already ordered some minor incursions, raiding just across the border, but had yet to take the step into an actual invasion and occupation; to do such a thing, direct approval of the emperor would be needed.
This view of unification, was widespread in the empire at the time and had backing from many within the imperial military, as such an invasion carried with it little risk of failure, and would reinforce the glory and might of Sunar. Despite this though, many also opposed such an effort, seeing it as a clear and needless waste of resources that would extend the already over stretched bureaucracy to its limits. Supported and led by the emperor, these bureaucrats and administrators found in Okarnel, a man absolutely opposed to the idea of military conquest.
Viewing Upper Sunar as a criminal infested, and economically starved region of turmoil, Okarnel like his predecessors, had no desire to expand his domain into such a place. Exhausted with Came's never ending demands, however, he would on more than one occasions, offer vague promises of future campaigns, while never taking the steps to turn these plans into reality. This situation would after years, infuriate the military minded general, until such a point that in 870 FD he confronted the Akenit emperor, and ultimately murdered him.
What exactly was said at their meeting to drive Came to such a crime, remains a mystery, but what is known is that his status within the military as one of its paramount leaders allowed him to seize power in the wake of Okarnel's death. Lacking a legitimate heir, Okarnel's death would be the end of the First Akenit Dynasty, and give rise to a period of Camethop dynastic rule, lasting thirty years.

Expansion and/or Reform

After solidifying his grasp on power, Came mobilized the Sunarian army, and led it south within a year of taking power. Finding no serious opposition to their invasion, the victory was greeted by no cheers among the newly conquered peoples of Upper Sunar, however, upon his triumphant march north, Came was hailed as a liberator and war hero among his own subjects. Praised for finally uniting the lands of Sunar, Came's glorious campaign was seen by many as a perfect war, with their new emperor bearing striking similarity to the mythic First Emperor and his military campaigns that gave birth to the empire.
While the masses cheered the name Came, many within the imperial bureaucracy saw only economic ruin on the horizon. Under staffed, and overburdened the only highlight in these administrator's minds was the vast treasury the empire could fall back on to whether the ensuing trials; but even this would blacken with time, as war quickly left government coffers empty.
Expanding the imperial borders in every direction, Came would not stop with Upper Sunar, and the following year marched on the powerful trading city of Oros. Obtaining a costly victory thanks only to the sheer quantity of men and resources rallied, Came did not hesitate to continue his conquests, and turned his vast host back east. Here as he passed through the capital (on route to a new campaign against the hill folk of Nebtka), he would take stock of the treasury crisis, and ignore his administrator's plea to reign in his spending.
By this point though, Came's over spending had begun to bleed unto his subjects. Feeling the burden of new, harsher taxes, as well as the drain of young men lost at Oros, a cry for peace and consolidation went unanswered.
Came's invasion of Nebtka, would be a far cry from his previous campaigns. Unable to assert itself, or navigate the winding chasms and passages of the Nebtkan Highlands, Sunar, would face defeat for the first time during Came's reign, but not in any single battle. Worn down by the heat, and a lack of water, alongside disease, Came would be forced to turn back after only a year in the foreign land, having nothing to show for it besides a mountain of his own dead. The target of Came's invasion had been the mountain fortress of Garamae, as it guarded the paths onward into the wealthier lands of the Nebtkan Plain, but his army had come no where close to reaching it, and had turned back long before reaching the hill folk citadel.
Embarking on a second invasion a few years later, Came would eventually breach the rocky highlands and reach Garamae, however, his army would take horrific casualties trying to assault its ancient walls. Ultimately the Sunarian forces would prevail, after several months of hard fighting, but it had cost them well over twenty thousand dead and was a Pyrrhic victory. Unable to push to much further into the highlands, Came spent the next few months razing Garamae to the ground, and ransacking the surrounding hill folk communities, before he finally returned to Sunar at the head of a much smaller army.
Dying a few months after his return in 876 FD, Came I would be a figure of the utmost controversy. With the economic crisis not yet reaching its pinnacle of severity, many still viewed him as a glorious leader, and maintained a fierce loyalty for the power he displayed as Sunar's head of state. Many other's though, rightfully saw in him a man driven only by personnel glory, who had just squandered tens of thousands of men's lives to take a glorified bandit fort. Refusing to properly manage the empire's spending, Came would leave that burden to his successors and in so doing, laid the foundation of his own dynasty's downfall a few decades later.

Hegemony and/or Stagnation

Wishing to expand the imperial military greatly for a renewed invasion of Nebtka, as well as a later conquest of the farther east, Came implemented a policy of conscription onto his subjects in the final few months of his life. Hoping to more than double the number of men serving in his ranks, Came made it so every male commoner aged eighteen or older was liable for conscription into the military. This age for the military draft was increased to twenty after his death, by his son Came II, as one of his only actual acts as emperor.Came's army of conscription differed greatly from the previously used system introduced by Akenit I and II, which had been that of a volunteer army, grown in times of crisis, through a higher wage for the common soldier. Came's new army, would force thousands of men into uniform unwillingly though, and upset many, who took to desertion to escape serving. It would be while overseeing the punishment of some of these disloyal recruits, that he would be injured and killed when his horse stepped wrong, and collapsed upon him, shattering his spine.
Succeeding his father, Came II would be proclaimed emperor within only an hour of Came I's death, and would be left the impossible task of managing the disaster his father had wrought upon the treasury. Came II only furthered the rapidly approaching crisis though and handled it in a number of poorly thought our measures. Determined to continue his father's plans for renewed conquest of Nebtka, Came refused to put a halt to the conscription of unwilling commoners and instead increased taxes to buy their loyalty with unsustainable wage hikes. Within only a few months though, the empire was on the brink of economic ruin, as the common people were by and large unable to sustain the new taxes on top of others put in place by Came I. Left with the option of continuing to tax his subjects and inevitably face a popular uprising, or lower them, Came II revoked his former decree, but such a decision came to late.
Utterly unable to afford the vast army, but having spent the last few months drilling it, Came II now had the dangerous duty of laying off thousands of trained and disloyal recruits; as expected in such a situation, the men who had never wanted to be conscripted to begin with revolted. Feeling they were deserving of recompense the freshly drilled army marched on the capital and planned to storm the palace, but were appeased when Faphek, Came I's younger brother, and Came II's uncle, promised payment in exchange for their backing, before forcing Came II to abdicate the throne unto him.
Unlike his relatives, Faphek, would prove a far more conniving leader, and raised the funds necessary to pay off the imperial armies within only a few days, by gifting away much of the Camethop Dynasty's personnel wealth. This would win him no favor from his family though, and on two occasions, Faphek would face attempted coups, by his displaced nephew; before he had Came II finally executed.
Overseeing the empire for the next twenty or so years, Faphek I would never be loved, or restore the prosperity his brother had lost. Instead, his reign would be spent one step ahead of disaster, with him narrowly avoiding civil war, coups, and mob uprisings on dozens of occasions. Barely able to survive, Faphek miraculously stayed in power for as long as he did through a combination of spinelessness and luck. Ceding much of his power over to the army, his rule was bolstered by the commanders, who he allowed to run wild. Extorting pay from the civilians of the empire, and serving as the life support to Faphek's dying reign, the imperial military and its commanders would be the primary cause for the economic recession lasting as long as it did. By bolstering their puppet emperor against the masses though, the disloyal military perpetuated the disaster, long after it may have been treated by someone wiser, and more capable of rule then Faphek I.
With Faphek's reign cemented by selling his dignity and power to the army, economic ruin was allowed to hit Sunar in full force. Unemployment quickly took hold as corruption and over taxation left businesses and other actors unable to function or maintain workers; as a result, rioting, and vagrancy quickly spread across much of Lower Sunar. In the south, matters were even worse. Among the newly conquered lands of the Upper Sun, annexation by the north never brought the order and unity Came I had intended, and now with the wealth of north gone, so too disappeared what little remained in the impoverished south.
Unable to manage the vast territory of the empire, the bureaucracy quickly gave up on the task as imperial authority dwindled and the military assumed more power. As the military became the dominant power in the empire though, they grew worse and worse at their job, not bothering to reign in criminal elements that had always been present in the south. Annexation as a result, would only open the way for such organizations to move northwards, where disorder and lawlessness was now spreading wholesale.

Collapse

Luck would ultimately run out for the last Camethop though, and as disorder and weak government became the staple of his reign, he was finally captured by an outraged mob, and murdered. Over the next year, the empire would balance on the knife edge of extinction, with riots becoming a daily occurrence as soldier's and furious mobs fought throughout the empire. Unable to decide who among their number should succeed Faphek, the commanders present in Sunas, formed themselves into a military clique of high ranking generals, and attempted to hold the empire together until a new, puppet emperor could be installed. Unofficially, this decision, would instigate a year long period of interregnum, where government authority rapidly continued to decline. With no clear heir to the bloodline of Akenit I, and the Camethop Dynasty essentially extinct, legitimate claimants were few and far between, and unwilling to assume the duty of managing the ongoing disaster, most magistrates were content to lead a more meager lifestyle outside the burden's of being the most hated man in the empire.
Despite this crisis though, the empire would survive, and a claimant would eventually come forth; but he would not be an ally, much less a puppet to the clique ruling out of Sunas. Almost immediately would this new contender come out against the tyrannical, and abusive reign of the military, throwing his full weight behind the outraged citizenry who rightfully blamed the military for the collapse of imperial power.
This figure would be Asq I, of Akenit, a distant relative, of the late Okarnel, and by extension, Akenit I; Asq's branch of the family had long since gone into secrecy after the rise of Came I, with his father, and then him, serving small secreted away rolls in the imperial bureaucracy. Reemerging now as the empire tore itself to ribbons Asq and his few surviving relatives, took up the mantle of populism, and promised a suffice, and quick resolution to the turmoil; earning for them the adoration of the masses who after decades of economic stagnation, were sick of conflict, and desperate for someone to lead them back into a golden age.
In 900 FD, when a rebellious mob stormed the palace and slaughtered the military leaders of the clique, Asq's chance to seize power arose. Petitioning the rebel faction in control of the palace, he was invited up by them, and quickly proclaimed the new emperor, unceremoniously, that afternoon. Desperate for a change, the young men who captured the imperial palace, wanted changes that the military cabal refused to provide. Seeing in in Asq a fellow youth, and someone untainted by the decadence of imperial life, he symbolized a new path forward that the impoverished men and women of the Empire clamored for.
Authors Notes * The Canethop Dynastic Period: Rising to power after a heated disagreement with the last Akenit Emperor of the first dynasty, the Canethop founder, Emperor Caneth I, desired a glorious restoration of the old borders of the Kingdom, which called for a large scale military campaign into Upper Sunar, in the name of uniting the children of the Sun river, under a singular banner. The Akenit emperors, however, had grown comfortable with the status quo, and in the past century begun to view military conquest, as an after thought in favor of trade and prosperity. Berating the final Akenit Emperor, Caneth I soon after organized a coup involving large swaths of the military and the palace guard. While little else is known about the event itself, few records mention the final Akenit Emperor later in history, and it is presumed he was murdered during or after the coup. The Canethop Dynasty, would differ from its predecessors, and maintain a far more militaristic series of policies, first moving, as Caneth I had desired, on the lands of the Upper Sun. Sweeping north on the back of Akenit prosperity, the region fell without much of a fight, and was brought under the authority of the Sunarian Empire by 1285 FD. Like minded campaigns would be carried out for the remainder of Caneth I's reign, with him leading several expeditions to the west and east, subduing city after city, until in 1291 FD he would perish on a march back to Sunas. Having completed his objective of uniting Sunar once more, Caneth remains a heavily controversial figure to this day. Credited by some as war hero, who championed Sunarian identity and cemented its borders, he is also viewed as a tyrant, who used military might to overthrow the well liked Akenit dynasty, and squandered the wealth and armies of Sunar on unnecessary conquests. Regardless of one's views of him though, it would be the rule of Caneth's son, and grandson (Caneth II, and III), that tarnished the name Canethop forever, and brought what could have been a century spanning legacy, to its end. Continuing the military conquests of their father, both Emperors lacked the vision of their father for a united Sunarian people, and instead, focused their sights on foreign lands, on the periphery of the Empire. These campaigns, would overstretch the gradually shrinking resources of the Empire, without providing prosperity to the core lands of the Empire, and thus, both Caneth II, and III, would lead unpopular and unstable reigns that in 1310, culminated in the overthrow of their dynasty. * Military of Sunar I: During the Canethop dynasty, Sunar underwent a large reform to its military, which saw it shift from a mismatch of regional soldiers to a united, disciplined fighting force. Prior to this, most armies were made up of a variety of warriors, armored and armed with an exotic range of weaponry based on where in the Empire they originated. Cavalry at this time was rarely used in anything but the most basic of forms, used mostly just to chase down fleeing enemies. Under Caneth, this too changed, instead, light cavalry began to see usage, as scouts and raiders, meant to support his armies, rather than directly engage the enemy in battle. Besides this change, Caneth I also standardized the equipment of his armies, supplying each man with a spear or kopesh (Sunarian variant of the sword) based on his role and place on the battlefield. Similarly, soldiers during this period also began to see an increase in the armor worn into battle. Where before, most men fought in leather, with metal being reserved for the most wealthy of soldiers, Caneth spent much of Sunars vast wealth, armoring his men in an early form of bronze plate, which gave them a cutting edge in his numerous conquests. This strategy, while effective at ensuring victories, was not cost effective, however, and Caneth's successors quickly found their treasury dwindling, from the vast fortune spent on maintaining such a costly military. These reforms were minimized not long after the end of the Canethop dynasty, with some aspects like cavalry tactics, remaining, and others, like armored infantry, being dropped to save money.

History of Sunar

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The First Empire

The Camethop Dynastic Period

Years Active

130 AE to 160 AE (30 Years)

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Capital

Sunas, Lower Sunar, Sun Delta

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Successor Period

The Second Akenit Dynastic Period

Predecessor Period

The First Akenit Dynastic Period

Posthumous depictions of both Okarnel II, and Came I.

Military System

Under the Camethop Dynasty, the Sunarian military did not change much from what it had been under most of the Akenit dynastic period. Came I as a former commander in the imperial military continued the style of professionalized army, with levies having long faded away in favor of a paid, trained class of soldier; devoted to their commanders and the emperor.
One of the few things Came would change in the armed forces of the empire, would be to introduce the usage of camel cavalry. Embracing the animal into his armies after the conquest of Upper Sunar; Came recognized the value in the animal as a scouting and load carrying beast, and left a permanent mark on the imperial military by integrating them into its logistics in a non combat oriented capacity. Later changes would eventually further this presence to include combat roles, where camel cavalry would serve as primarily light, but in some cases, heavy, cavalry. In either case, the main goal of these units was the chasing and capturing of already routed enemies, or in wide flanking maneuvers meant to target the enemy's supply lines and or camp. Ultimately the camel would not in any way serve as a replacement for horses, but were none the less a highly respected aspect of Sunarian armies.
Naval elements saw a somewhat more prominent role under Came I, but it did not solidify into anything concrete, or comparable to Sunar's focus on its land based armed forces. The main reason for this was in the war against Oros, which as a sea based port, called for some level of primitive blockading, to assist in the siege.

An example of desecrated artwork from the First Akenit Dynastic Period.

Emperor Faphek I, final ruler of the Camethop Dynasty.