Karadatra Empire
The Karadatra Empire was once one of the most powerful states in Southeast Ærellion, but decades of hedonistic and detached kings, ambitious advisors, and the power of its unchecked nobility have left it in poor shape. Its numerous semi-independent counts and dukes grow less and less attached to the government by the day and even the last few territories directly held by the crown itself are slowly being chipped away. Over the years, most of Empire's outer lying lands have declared outright independence, while the rest cling to the structure of the empire not out of loyalty, but for their own gain. The empire which once claimed to be the protector of all Jhasdom has crumbled to a husk, and its days seem to be draining away faster than ever as ambitious warlords seek to decorate new empire with the corpse of the old.
Hey, gotta throw in a collapsing indian harem court with a dash of the Ottomans in here somewhere, right?
Hey, gotta throw in a collapsing indian harem court with a dash of the Ottomans in here somewhere, right?
History
Once, the world was young, and now it is old. Such is the cycle, that all things once young and new must come to be old and feeble. Such is the fate of the Karadatra Empire, but this was not always so. The Empire began when the young Andhaliman III of the Karadatra March of the Dudurian Empire rose up in 912 S.C. against his nominal overlord. The previous years had been droughts, and the Dudurian coffers were running low. For this reason, the Dudurian Empire demanded increased tribute from its subjects on the borders. After 5 years of bad harvests and increased tithes, the Karadatra March had nothing more to give, and Andhaliman said as much. At this slight, the ruling Emperor demanded his head and sent an army to get it. Upon arriving, however, the army's head realized that Andhaliman had been his friend when they were young, and after listening to his grievances decided to commit his army to a rebellion. With Andhaliman at its head, the army marched on the capital and met the Emperor's forces in pitched battle. It is said that Commander Thalidigal goaded the opposing leader into charging up a hill which he had filled with pits; the elephants stumbled and fell, crushing the foot soldiers (and the enemy commander). Before more forces could be mobilized, the emperor was deposed by Andhaliman, who declared a new empire, a fair empire, one that would look out for the people. And away with that foreign name which had ruled the empire for so long. Karadatra was a fine name which any empire would be proud to bear.
And so, in 913 SC, the Karadtra Empire was born, and with remarkably low bloodshed. Andhaliman immediately set out to lead reforms in several areas- judicial, organizational, military, and religious. He wrote an entirely new law code which would reduce central power and empower local councils and those who lead them. He ensured that slavery would be clearly defined and regulated and restructured the provinces from the old empire into more flexible forms. Alongside Thalidigal, the military was restructured to be more evenly distributed and professional, instead of just peasant rabble and nobles on elephant-back. He also swept out the corrupt priests of the Adhavāda religion and converted to Vishalaan . Perhaps most importantly, however, he established the Kaalovash, a new order of officials whose job it was to travel the realm and mediate disputes. Later, their duties would expand to cover keeping the military in check, advising the monarchs, and a number of lesser duties. However, it should not be said that Andhaliman was perfect. He failed to reform the rights of women and in establishing an impartial justice system beyond the Kaalovash. He also could not wholly sweep aside the power of the nobility. There was also one more duty he attended to during his reforms- that of an heir. It is said in an ancient Indhiri proverb that a man's number of wives should scale with his station, a slave should have none and an emperor at least twenty. When Andhaliman came to be the emperor, he had two, which was already considered low for a man of his station. To seal his pact with Tahlidigal, he took his friend's daughter as third wife, and to honor his defeated enemy (and ensure none would be born to oppose him) added his daughters (the sons will be discussed later). Still, even this widening harem was considered a small number, and indeed would not come close to those of his successors. It was still sufficient to bear him a number of children, but probably none were more valued than the future emperor and son of his friend's daughter; Ghavalesh.
Having dealt with the matters of state, Andhaliman struck out to widen his borders. A number of lords under the Dudurians had become de facto independent and there were many other states that he saw would be useful. And so the Empire grew, sweeping through the petty kings and warlords like a knife through butter. From each, the army was widened and strengthened. The tribes of the deepest jungles became tributaries and provided berserkers and spies. The Coastal states added a navy. The others provided levies which would be used as supplemental troops to the new Mamalk legions. Formed in the reforms he had made, the Mamalk were slave soldiers who could obtain freedom by following a code of honor and fighting for a decade. They were trained harshly, allowed no personal property, could not marry or have intimate relationships, and would not receive a wage, but it was better than many could hope for otherwise, should they survive. The sons of the Dudurian Empire would be forced to be Mamalks, which only one would survive. By the end of Andhaliman's reign, the Empire stretched from the foothills of the Temperior mountains to the edge of Mapinguan territory and had all the tribes to its north as subjects as well as a small colony along the [tbd] river. Having conquered pretty much all the land worth having at that time, Andhaliman was glad to sign treaties with the various dark elven clans acknowledging them as independent. Thus, the only border that posed any significant threat was that with the Mapinguan (and anyways, most of their eastern border was with human tributaries). Thus, he left his son Ghavalesh a territorially contiguous and seemingly stable empire. Having no more need of conquest, Ghavalesh focused on internal matters. Following a rebellion by the surviving Dudurian, the Mamalks and indeed the rest of the army was to be under the purview of the Kaalovash from then on. He also relied on the Kaalovash and many old "wise tutors" to continue his fathers reforms. Seeking order above all, he authored one of the most lasting legal documents in history: The Caste System. A complicated system of determining one's position in the sprawling empire, the caste system would dominate the development of the nation from then on (some say it hamstrung it, but it certainly stabilized the empire for many years). The caste system covered everything from the imperial court and the position of priests to the status of the slave soldier Mamalks and the Kaalovash. At the time, the castes were decently fluid, though the upper castes were always near-exclusive, but over time it came to be more rigid. Ghavalesh also discussed the rights of men and women as well as marriage practices in his following legal document, which solidified customs in many places and tore them up in others. A prodigious womanizer who in legend had a harem of over 200 women, Ghavalesh basically enforced patriarchy on the entire country and enforced polygamy. In some places this went better than others. For most of the country, polygamy was already the norm and women were already considered lesser, but not all of it. The tribes to the north had a long history of female rulers who had taken multiple husbands as well as the male rulers who practiced polygamy, and were very angry about this enforced rule, so Ghavalesh pretty much made them hate the Karadatra Empire forever.
Ghavalesh remained peaceful throughout most of his rule aside from fights against the Mapinguan, and so he came to be known as Ghavalesh the Lawmaker. Many of the Emperors that followed, however, would also remain peaceful, but in a more idle manner. While the Empire prospered, its military became more and more out of date. And with the practice of polygamy going strong and a surplus of young men who could never find wives because of this, the empire began to suffer from serious internal problems by the 13th century SC. Every few years, peasant rebellions would break out and would be put down. These men would then be sold into slavery and their homes burnt, which kept the Empire's field full of toiling workers. Decrees would quickly ban slaves captured during rebellions from joining the Mamalks. Thus, without a steady source of new slaves, the Mamalks began to shrink in size. As the Mamalks shrank in size, it forced the empire to rely more and more on peasant levies from local lords, who demanded privileges in return for the use of their levies. It seemed the empire was on the edge of collapse, until Dhavalend came to the throne.
Brash, reckless, and a hawk, he had little time for the petty squabbles of the court and even less for women (not because he was gay, he just hated women that much). Dhavalend quickly swept aside the corruption of the court using violent methods, strengthened the Kaalovash further and massed an army. He had two plans with this army. First, swing north and crush those stupid tribesman, who, he knew, had women ruling them despite their claims to the contrary. Next, crush the Mapinguan once and for all (their raids had been intensifying as of late). The first part of the mission went well, he captured a bunch of tribesmen and press-ganged them into the army and killed a few female rulers. Sure, it made the tribes even more pissed, but when you're the leader of the greatest empire ever seen, who cares. He then marched east and set out to destroy the Mapinguan. It went horribly. The army marched into the jungle and was immediately beset by attacks from out of nowhere, poisoned wells, and traps galore. Still, Dhavalend pressed onwards, determined to do... something. Then one night, in a rare pitched battled, the Emperor was found dead, throat slit and an arrow through his chest. The weapons used made it likely his death was assassination, and not by the Mapinguan either. Fingers were pointed and the army dissolved into factionalism. It may never be known whether it was an angry tribesman, a Mamalk who saw that if the war continued he probably would never gain his freedom, or a disgruntled noble. Perhaps the Mapinguan purposefully killed him with a human-sized knife specifically to sow discord, after all, sometimes they seem smarter than many give them credit for...
[Note, from this point forward the history is abridged]
So, Dhavalend was not the answer to the Empire's problems. Because he was young and without an heir, his half brother would go on to become Emperor. A weak man, his rule saw the rule of the nobility rise far above its previous mark, a rise which would not be stopped until Masalamir III took the throne a century and a half later. Masalamir was a deeply pious man, and he funded various temples and religious buildings throughout the realm. While a great cost to the budget, these investments had several important affects. The clergy rose to be a counterbalance to the nobility, and in many cases became the main educators in the state. Besides the academies from training Kaalovash, the clergy came to control most of the nations schools by the end of Masalamir's reign. With the rise of the clerical class, the Kaalovash and nobility took a hit to their power, but nowhere near as much as the Mamalks, who saw their funding drastically reduced. With the successors of Masalamir weaker emperors than ever, it seemed they would be doomed to fade away, until Javashir the illustrious took the throne in the 17th century SC. An immensely charismatic man, Javashir saw the need for the various estates, factions, and power blocs to work together. The Empire was increasingly backwards compared to its neighbors and with a weak army they could not effectively stop the raids by either the Mapinguan or by the tribes (who had stopped paying tribute in the aftermath of Dhavalend's bloody catastrophe). Javashir re-committed the empire to supporting the Mamalks, reducing the need for peasant levies once more. He confirmed a number of privileges of the various groups in order to give each their own avenue of control so that they were not fighting all the time. The peace and cooperation that followed became known as the Javashiri Golden age, and lasted through Javashir's 60 year reign as well as that of his two successors.
But, given time, cracks began to show in the estates' cooperation. The familiar clashes between clergy and Kaalovash over laws, schools, and the place of religion reappeared, and the nobility once more began to chip away at the power of the crown. However, this time, the Mamalks were far more powerful and were able to provide essential services as the Emperor's personal army, and so these issues were never at a catastrophic scale, though they simmered behind the scenes for several centuries, well into the 1900s SC. The year 1913 SC marked the Empire's 1000th year of rule, and in that time, little had really changed. While strong rulers had kept the empire above water, in truth its power had been dropping. To the east, inactive Emperors had ignored small incursions into Mapinguan land by former Mamalks. These former Mamalks would then buy Mamalks and establish their own personal states in the region. The southern coast, grown prosperous and fat off of trade, boasted a wide array of all-but independent city-states. While merchants had no special place in the realm, the lack of oversight allowed them to ignore the restrictions inland cities had imposed by clergy and nobility alike. Fed up with the de jure restrictions, however, they plotted against the crown. The clergy, monopolizing huge amounts of land and the northern the slave trade to boot, had gained fat estates which fed only them. Besides, their control of the education system kept their position stable. Lastly, and all throughout the land, princes, dukes, and marches looked for power over loyalty. And indeed it did not take long for the whole rotten pile to start collapsing, the merchant cities declaring independence in 1920 and an invasion by former Mamalks from the east in 1922. The delta regions declared a rival government under a relative of the Emperor in 1925, and waged war. And then, in a move that shocked all, the slaves of the delta rose up in 1933, seizing control over ships, goods, and ultimately much of the land as well. The church, powerless in the face of so much hard power (having dealt primarily in soft power) was decimated, and so forced to stick with the Empire. They made an uneasy peace with the Kaalovash, who at this point were the only ones even trying to keep the nation together. The capital region was saved, but the rest of the empire was lost. Then, in 1965, the young and competent emperor was murdered by his own guards, the captain of these guards declaring the short lived Empire of Aaralat (of 2 weeks). Though a new emperor was placed on the throne, this effectively ended the hopes for a swift restoration, and set the clergy and Kaalovash back to their bickering.
And so, in 913 SC, the Karadtra Empire was born, and with remarkably low bloodshed. Andhaliman immediately set out to lead reforms in several areas- judicial, organizational, military, and religious. He wrote an entirely new law code which would reduce central power and empower local councils and those who lead them. He ensured that slavery would be clearly defined and regulated and restructured the provinces from the old empire into more flexible forms. Alongside Thalidigal, the military was restructured to be more evenly distributed and professional, instead of just peasant rabble and nobles on elephant-back. He also swept out the corrupt priests of the Adhavāda religion and converted to Vishalaan . Perhaps most importantly, however, he established the Kaalovash, a new order of officials whose job it was to travel the realm and mediate disputes. Later, their duties would expand to cover keeping the military in check, advising the monarchs, and a number of lesser duties. However, it should not be said that Andhaliman was perfect. He failed to reform the rights of women and in establishing an impartial justice system beyond the Kaalovash. He also could not wholly sweep aside the power of the nobility. There was also one more duty he attended to during his reforms- that of an heir. It is said in an ancient Indhiri proverb that a man's number of wives should scale with his station, a slave should have none and an emperor at least twenty. When Andhaliman came to be the emperor, he had two, which was already considered low for a man of his station. To seal his pact with Tahlidigal, he took his friend's daughter as third wife, and to honor his defeated enemy (and ensure none would be born to oppose him) added his daughters (the sons will be discussed later). Still, even this widening harem was considered a small number, and indeed would not come close to those of his successors. It was still sufficient to bear him a number of children, but probably none were more valued than the future emperor and son of his friend's daughter; Ghavalesh.
Having dealt with the matters of state, Andhaliman struck out to widen his borders. A number of lords under the Dudurians had become de facto independent and there were many other states that he saw would be useful. And so the Empire grew, sweeping through the petty kings and warlords like a knife through butter. From each, the army was widened and strengthened. The tribes of the deepest jungles became tributaries and provided berserkers and spies. The Coastal states added a navy. The others provided levies which would be used as supplemental troops to the new Mamalk legions. Formed in the reforms he had made, the Mamalk were slave soldiers who could obtain freedom by following a code of honor and fighting for a decade. They were trained harshly, allowed no personal property, could not marry or have intimate relationships, and would not receive a wage, but it was better than many could hope for otherwise, should they survive. The sons of the Dudurian Empire would be forced to be Mamalks, which only one would survive. By the end of Andhaliman's reign, the Empire stretched from the foothills of the Temperior mountains to the edge of Mapinguan territory and had all the tribes to its north as subjects as well as a small colony along the [tbd] river. Having conquered pretty much all the land worth having at that time, Andhaliman was glad to sign treaties with the various dark elven clans acknowledging them as independent. Thus, the only border that posed any significant threat was that with the Mapinguan (and anyways, most of their eastern border was with human tributaries). Thus, he left his son Ghavalesh a territorially contiguous and seemingly stable empire. Having no more need of conquest, Ghavalesh focused on internal matters. Following a rebellion by the surviving Dudurian, the Mamalks and indeed the rest of the army was to be under the purview of the Kaalovash from then on. He also relied on the Kaalovash and many old "wise tutors" to continue his fathers reforms. Seeking order above all, he authored one of the most lasting legal documents in history: The Caste System. A complicated system of determining one's position in the sprawling empire, the caste system would dominate the development of the nation from then on (some say it hamstrung it, but it certainly stabilized the empire for many years). The caste system covered everything from the imperial court and the position of priests to the status of the slave soldier Mamalks and the Kaalovash. At the time, the castes were decently fluid, though the upper castes were always near-exclusive, but over time it came to be more rigid. Ghavalesh also discussed the rights of men and women as well as marriage practices in his following legal document, which solidified customs in many places and tore them up in others. A prodigious womanizer who in legend had a harem of over 200 women, Ghavalesh basically enforced patriarchy on the entire country and enforced polygamy. In some places this went better than others. For most of the country, polygamy was already the norm and women were already considered lesser, but not all of it. The tribes to the north had a long history of female rulers who had taken multiple husbands as well as the male rulers who practiced polygamy, and were very angry about this enforced rule, so Ghavalesh pretty much made them hate the Karadatra Empire forever.
Ghavalesh remained peaceful throughout most of his rule aside from fights against the Mapinguan, and so he came to be known as Ghavalesh the Lawmaker. Many of the Emperors that followed, however, would also remain peaceful, but in a more idle manner. While the Empire prospered, its military became more and more out of date. And with the practice of polygamy going strong and a surplus of young men who could never find wives because of this, the empire began to suffer from serious internal problems by the 13th century SC. Every few years, peasant rebellions would break out and would be put down. These men would then be sold into slavery and their homes burnt, which kept the Empire's field full of toiling workers. Decrees would quickly ban slaves captured during rebellions from joining the Mamalks. Thus, without a steady source of new slaves, the Mamalks began to shrink in size. As the Mamalks shrank in size, it forced the empire to rely more and more on peasant levies from local lords, who demanded privileges in return for the use of their levies. It seemed the empire was on the edge of collapse, until Dhavalend came to the throne.
Brash, reckless, and a hawk, he had little time for the petty squabbles of the court and even less for women (not because he was gay, he just hated women that much). Dhavalend quickly swept aside the corruption of the court using violent methods, strengthened the Kaalovash further and massed an army. He had two plans with this army. First, swing north and crush those stupid tribesman, who, he knew, had women ruling them despite their claims to the contrary. Next, crush the Mapinguan once and for all (their raids had been intensifying as of late). The first part of the mission went well, he captured a bunch of tribesmen and press-ganged them into the army and killed a few female rulers. Sure, it made the tribes even more pissed, but when you're the leader of the greatest empire ever seen, who cares. He then marched east and set out to destroy the Mapinguan. It went horribly. The army marched into the jungle and was immediately beset by attacks from out of nowhere, poisoned wells, and traps galore. Still, Dhavalend pressed onwards, determined to do... something. Then one night, in a rare pitched battled, the Emperor was found dead, throat slit and an arrow through his chest. The weapons used made it likely his death was assassination, and not by the Mapinguan either. Fingers were pointed and the army dissolved into factionalism. It may never be known whether it was an angry tribesman, a Mamalk who saw that if the war continued he probably would never gain his freedom, or a disgruntled noble. Perhaps the Mapinguan purposefully killed him with a human-sized knife specifically to sow discord, after all, sometimes they seem smarter than many give them credit for...
[Note, from this point forward the history is abridged]
So, Dhavalend was not the answer to the Empire's problems. Because he was young and without an heir, his half brother would go on to become Emperor. A weak man, his rule saw the rule of the nobility rise far above its previous mark, a rise which would not be stopped until Masalamir III took the throne a century and a half later. Masalamir was a deeply pious man, and he funded various temples and religious buildings throughout the realm. While a great cost to the budget, these investments had several important affects. The clergy rose to be a counterbalance to the nobility, and in many cases became the main educators in the state. Besides the academies from training Kaalovash, the clergy came to control most of the nations schools by the end of Masalamir's reign. With the rise of the clerical class, the Kaalovash and nobility took a hit to their power, but nowhere near as much as the Mamalks, who saw their funding drastically reduced. With the successors of Masalamir weaker emperors than ever, it seemed they would be doomed to fade away, until Javashir the illustrious took the throne in the 17th century SC. An immensely charismatic man, Javashir saw the need for the various estates, factions, and power blocs to work together. The Empire was increasingly backwards compared to its neighbors and with a weak army they could not effectively stop the raids by either the Mapinguan or by the tribes (who had stopped paying tribute in the aftermath of Dhavalend's bloody catastrophe). Javashir re-committed the empire to supporting the Mamalks, reducing the need for peasant levies once more. He confirmed a number of privileges of the various groups in order to give each their own avenue of control so that they were not fighting all the time. The peace and cooperation that followed became known as the Javashiri Golden age, and lasted through Javashir's 60 year reign as well as that of his two successors.
But, given time, cracks began to show in the estates' cooperation. The familiar clashes between clergy and Kaalovash over laws, schools, and the place of religion reappeared, and the nobility once more began to chip away at the power of the crown. However, this time, the Mamalks were far more powerful and were able to provide essential services as the Emperor's personal army, and so these issues were never at a catastrophic scale, though they simmered behind the scenes for several centuries, well into the 1900s SC. The year 1913 SC marked the Empire's 1000th year of rule, and in that time, little had really changed. While strong rulers had kept the empire above water, in truth its power had been dropping. To the east, inactive Emperors had ignored small incursions into Mapinguan land by former Mamalks. These former Mamalks would then buy Mamalks and establish their own personal states in the region. The southern coast, grown prosperous and fat off of trade, boasted a wide array of all-but independent city-states. While merchants had no special place in the realm, the lack of oversight allowed them to ignore the restrictions inland cities had imposed by clergy and nobility alike. Fed up with the de jure restrictions, however, they plotted against the crown. The clergy, monopolizing huge amounts of land and the northern the slave trade to boot, had gained fat estates which fed only them. Besides, their control of the education system kept their position stable. Lastly, and all throughout the land, princes, dukes, and marches looked for power over loyalty. And indeed it did not take long for the whole rotten pile to start collapsing, the merchant cities declaring independence in 1920 and an invasion by former Mamalks from the east in 1922. The delta regions declared a rival government under a relative of the Emperor in 1925, and waged war. And then, in a move that shocked all, the slaves of the delta rose up in 1933, seizing control over ships, goods, and ultimately much of the land as well. The church, powerless in the face of so much hard power (having dealt primarily in soft power) was decimated, and so forced to stick with the Empire. They made an uneasy peace with the Kaalovash, who at this point were the only ones even trying to keep the nation together. The capital region was saved, but the rest of the empire was lost. Then, in 1965, the young and competent emperor was murdered by his own guards, the captain of these guards declaring the short lived Empire of Aaralat (of 2 weeks). Though a new emperor was placed on the throne, this effectively ended the hopes for a swift restoration, and set the clergy and Kaalovash back to their bickering.
List of Emperors
- Andhaliman I 'The Great', 913-954
- Ghavalesh I 'The Lawmaker', 954-990
- Andhaliman II, 990-1013
- Masalamir I, 1013-1040
- Andhaliman III, 1040-1053
- Ghavalesh II, 1053-1111
- Ghavalesh III, 1111-1126
- Ghavalesh IV, 1126-1165
- Indra I, 1165-1187
- Masalamir II, 1187-1219
- Andhaliman IV, 1219-1222
- Indra II, 1222-1256
- Indra III, 1256-1281
- Vitthaya I, 1281-1299
- Ghavalesh V, 1299-1316
- Indra IV, 1316-1344
- Dhavalend I 'The Reckless', 1344-1350
- Vitthaya II, 1350-1369
- Andhagupta I, 1369-1394
- Ghavalesh VI, 1394-1398
- Andhagupta II, 1398-1416
- Andhaliman V, 1416-1444
- Masalamir III 1444-1471
- Vitthaya III, 1471-1496
- Indra V, 1496-1508
- Ghavalesh VII, 1508-1520
- Ghavalesh VIII, 1520-1544
- Ghavalesh IX, 1544-1551
- Ghavalesh X, 1551-1577
- Andhagupta III, 1577-1591
- Ghavalesh XI, 1591-1616
- Andhaliman VI, 1616-1622
- Javashir I 'The Great', 1622-1682
- Sardin I, 1682-1719
- Vishagupta I, 1719-1745
- Javashir II, 1745-1766
- Indra VI, 1766-1788
- Javashir III, 1788-1800
- Andhaliman VII, 1800-1817
- Masalamir IV, 1817-1854
- Andhaliman VIII, 1854-1859
- Javashir IV, 1859-1887
- Ghavalesh XII, 1887-1901
- Javashir V, 1901-1919
- Masalamir V, 1919-1953
- Indra VII, 1953-1961
- Javashir VI 'The Young', 1961-1965
- Druv I (ursurper), 1965-1965
- Andhaliman IX, 1965-1982
- Vishagupta II, 1982-present
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