Report on the Northern Provinces
WRR, Markus Kane
Dreiton, Sidon Square Publishing House
Lowharveste, 27th dawn, 4852
INL
In his heyday as one of the foremost generals in Dreiton’s humble but elite military, Addison Mayfield described the distant Kazimir Empire as the “mortal enemy of the Commonwealth.” While the Mandate may negotiate favorable trade conditions with the sultanate, his suspicion of that nation of desert-dwelling is not without merit. Their eclectic oracular practices and veneration of the unseen arts are at best hokum, and at worst bordering on heresy. Still, their control over a plurality of Aquila’s precious gems makes them a lucrative partner and a powerful ally should more sinister nations rise to threaten the pristine Commonwealth.
By most accounts, the “Northern Provinces of the Grand Imperial Sovereignty” is likely the oldest surviving political entity as of 4852. The notably less verbose Grand Imperial Sovereignty of yore actually co-existed as a distinct, semi-autonomous state alongside the Aquilan Empire for up to 150 years. Its first emperor, Kazimir the Infallible, became notorious in the western reaches of Xolumir for his claims of prophetic powers, and used his legendary silver tongue to amass a sizeable cult of fanatical disciples in the Ertdor wastes. By the soothsayer’s ascendance in approximately 4200, the Mad King was well within his period of dormancy, rarely leaving his palace in Imperium, leaving his empire in chaos. The once fierce cubal hegemony was now plagued with warlord uprisings, and with neither the Mad King nor his inquisition politically active, the daily governance of the empire was left to Princes Notch and Herobrine, who notoriously quarreled over the scraps of the dying country even after it ceased to exist as an actual sovereign entity. Thus, Kazimir’s antics in the east were ignored, and by the time the apathetic duumvirate realized the danger his cult posed, it was far too late.
The prophet, claiming to receive visions of the future by communing with the divines whilst astral projecting, alleged that he had foreseen the chaotic disintegration of the Empire, and only a united Ertdor would be able to withstand the ensuing wars of succession. With the competing tribes of the eastern continent lacking organization and claims of legitimacy, the peoples of the region flocked to Kazimir’s guidance, and in a grand ceremony the Ertdor Sultanate was formed, claiming hegemony over all of the east. The newly crowned Sultan of Ertdor immediately attempted to recalibrate the region’s pitiful economy, commanding his hordes of devotees to reactivate the ubiquitous abandoned imperial mines and begin the construction of a massive continental irrigation system to create vast tracts of fresh arable land amid the harsh dunes.
Throughout the course of his astounding 60 years as the sultanate’s theocratic dictator, Kazimir presided over the early stages of the construction of the Sesostris Canal, the astounding man-made waterway cutting an artificial river from coast to coast, allowing the wealthy nation to easily dominate the trade movements of both the Alshain Ocean and the Thel Sea. In the waning years of his unopposed rule, the sultan ordered the construction of an entire city to be built in honor of him and the divines. Slavery on a scale hitherto unseen was employed in this gargantuan effort, with much of the inferior Alamutian race native to the borderlands forced to practically hollow out entire sections of the parallel stretch of nether with crude tools and zero safety standards. Long before his grand city on the coast could be completed, Sultan Kazimir the Infallible, first supreme leader of the Grand Imperial Sovereignty, met his end at the hands of a team of invisible assassins in a high-profile public execution. It was just as well, as his popularity with the masses had reached an all-time low due to his apparent failure to predict a great flood that crippled the empire’s agriculture for several years. With no apparent heir, a regency council of military leaders from the “Sublime Army of Light” seized executive power and kept the sultanate from collapsing into ruin.
The council’s uneventful ten-year rule was cut short by a former servant to Kazimir named Ptolemy, who claimed to possess the same prophetic powers as his deceased master and thus had a claim to the vacant title of sultan. Ptolemy, leading an army remembered by history as the “999 Zealots” stormed the imperial palace and put the oligarchs to death, signaling an abrupt and bloody end to te regency. While the nationstate is named after its founder Kazimir, Ptolemy the Eagle is arguably the more beloved leader in the modern era due to his wide-sweeping reforms which reconsolidiated rule over the endangered empire. The new sultan completed the construction of the holy city of Akhtamar which quickly became the center of commerce for the entire region, and redoubled the efforts of the Sesostris Society, who were struggling to meet the demands of the daunting task to practically split the continent in two, and devised a system for Alamutian slaves to buy their freedom and even land with enough labor years. Perhaps his most famous accomplishment was the formal institution of the state faith – Astrorecidivism, the religion of the stars. He theorized the existence of the great celestial being Zodiac, who once presided over all of Emanation and would one day restore his rightful rule, elevating his worthy mortal followers to “sun dragons.” One would be forgiven for drawing a strenuous parallel with the malevolent entity Moros in the Transformationist pantheon, though I leave that debate for the philosophers.
Ptolemy claimed that the mortal aspect of Zodiac was reincarnated once per generation and granted unrivaled proficiency with astral projection, allowing them to commune with Zodiac’s divine emissaries. Only the sole mortal aspect of any generation had a legitimate claim to the throne of Kazimir, Zodiac’s earthly kingdom. Lesser astrologists would also be revered, entering the court of the sultan’s imperial cult to act as his advisers. This system of governance by divination continues to this day, and their continued ability to actually somewhat accurately predict future events has been categorized by outside observers as either sheer coincidence or consorting with the dark pantheon of the Old Ways.
While the rest of Aquila scrambled to pick up the pieces of the shattered khaganate, the Grand Imperial Sovereignty of Ertdor presided over a long period of relative peace and prosperity. In 4444, the Sesostris Canal was finally completed, connecting Alshain and Thel and propelling the eastern kingdom into an era of rapid economic development. It was discovered that their lucrative diamond mines stretched even deeper than previously imagined, making Akhtamar one of the richest cities in Aquila. World trade became increasingly concentrated in the wealthy northern provinces of the empire, attracting vast amounts of foreign capital which rivaled even that of the “inn at the end of the world” Hamamitsu in the north. The breathtaking Athenaeum was completed not long after the Canal, which still stands to this day as one of the largest and most impressive libraries in all Aquila apart from the unparalleled Dreiton Library.
The Diamond Age did not continue in perpetuity. As greater and greater quantities of the nation’s wealth became concentrated in Akhtamar and the surrounding provinces along the Sesostris, unrest in the long neglected south became inevitable. In 4680, the occultist Alamut region rose up and seceded from the Sovereignty, declaring its own confederacy which straddled the border between Ertdor and Kilran. Enraged, then-sultan Daroga the Two-Headed-Snake brought the full might of the Sublime Army down upon the rebels, devastating the borderlands and killing untold hundreds of thousands. This tragedy, the Eternal Scream, is still remembered today as one of the great atrocities of the modern era and the largest recorded genocide since the days of the Nightmare Legion. Though the uprising was put down, the entire region still bears its scars, and Daroga was murdered by three senior members of the Imperial Cult, beginning the Second Regency.
The governing priests of the new regency declared that an Imperial Parliament would be formed so as to give some semblance of regional representation and democracy to the empire. While the sultan would still retain undisputed executive power due to divine right, the regular governing of the state would be left to the Parliament and the Court of Justiciars had supreme authority to interpret and enforce the new Imperial Constitution. As the sultanate continued to secularize, it became abundantly clear that the Grand Imperial Sovereignty had changed radically from the early days of Kazimir, and perhaps for the best. In 4713, under the rule of Solomon the Sleeping Bear, three borderland provinces which comprised the historical Alamut region voted peacefully to secede from the Kazimir Empire. While Solomon threatened to unleash the Sublime Army upon the profligates, Parliament pressured him to relent so as to avoid reopening the wounds of the Eternal Scream. Anarchists seized control of the countryside, driving out imperial landlords and farmers and placing the factories in Magheim in control of the craft guilds. Much of the imperial populace were outraged and saw the state allowing Alamut to secede as forsaking the pure Ertdorians to flee from their own homes to make way for the heretical races. Nonetheless, by the time Caiaphas the Waking Bear took the celestial throne in Akhtamar, Alamut was firmly a sovereign nation. The empire’s formal name was thereafter the Northern Provinces of the Grand Imperial Sovereignty.
Akhtamar remained a bustling center of commerce to 4800, but it had lost much competition to the rising jewel of the south, Dreiton, still formally under foreign charter but largely an independent economic force. Adrian II the Lion, not to leave his country falling behind on the mercantile rung, demanded to begin negotiations with the fabulously wealthy Mandate. Much of the empire’s industrial sector had been absolutely decimated by the Ancient Fear, and its leader was eager to salvage the crisis at all cost. The sultan paid a heavy price to bring the empire into a favorable position within the new emerging world economy; the Mandate would seize operation over 50% of the country’s diamond mines and take 90% of what was produced from them, gain unrestricted access to the canal system, and open the St. Martin National Bank on the eastern edge of the Sesostris to essentially monopolize the credit and loan industry in the empire’s richest province; in exchange, Kazimir would be recognized as a favored trade partner of Dreiton, be granted protection of shipping routes by Mandate frigates, and have free military and mercantile access to Aphelion’s western coast. The signing of the trade deal is often referred to as the Colonization of Kazimir. In 4831, following Dreiton’s declaration of statehood, the Mandate was purged of all Kazimiri investors, but the sultanate finally entered into a formal military pact with the new commonwealth. They had finally recognized their masters as all beasts must.
The “Dreiton-Akhtamar Mutual Guarantee” remained firmly intact over the next 15 years up to the start of the devastating War of the Sunflower, at the beginning of which the two nations were formally neutral. When it came to light that Adrian II had illegally been selling arms to Khotan, however, Dreiton dragged the sultanate into the war to avoid suspicion that they were sympathetic to the Eternal Empire. Not much was lost, however, as the war ended a matter of months afterward. Still, the Mandate were furious that the sultan had surreptitiously broken the terms of their neutrality. The Board of Directors were given permission by the Council to tighten the restrictions of the Mutual Guarantee so as to punish the heathen Kazimiri: the Dreiton Navy would construct a permanent base on the southern coast, and the Mandate would assume direct governance over all financial activity within the canal until all the sultanate’s wartime debts were paid – with interest. Additionally, several Mandate forts were secretly constructed throughout Ertdor to survey its economic activities and to be assumed by the Dreiton military should the need ever arise.
At present day, Kazimir is regarded as our foremost ally; in light of their massive debts to the commonwealth and despite their vast material wealth, they are often informally referred to as all but an official colony of Dreiton. The status quo must be tightly maintained; the current Sultan Erdogan “the Prescient” has been reported by our spies to harbor nationalist sympathies, and their continued indifference to the activities of the absolute heathens who openly practice the occult right across their border has made several within the Council nervous. They may be our ally, but they exist as a sovereign county because we allow it, and they must be taught never to bite the hand that feeds them – lest they be relieved of their exceedingly generous privileges.