On one side of the Sea of Tranquility, north of the Southern Mountains, is the Republic of New Nerath. It is a land stained by its history.
Over a hundred years ago, most of that continent was ruled by the Nerathi Empire. It was an empire by humans for humans, and it grew from a small seed in the center of the continent to an mighty power forged with sorcery and steel.
At the Nerathi Empire's height, it ruled over the riverlands and the plains, from the Sea of Tranquility to the Necklace in the East. After a series of unsuccessful wars with Evernia, its southern neighbor, the Empire turned its sights across the Sea of Tranquility to the Thousand Kingdoms.
The Thousand Kingdoms, while individually hardened by centuries of strife, lacked any collective response to the Imperial invasion, and within a few years, Nerath had obliterated the coastal kingdoms, and colonized several cities along the shore.
As they pushed inwards, however, the Thousand Kingdoms formed a desperate Alliance, and drove the Nerathi forces back to their coastal strongholds. There the Nerathi held, besieged on land, but freely resupplied by the Imperial Navy. In time, the Alliance's forces melted away, returning to their own lands.
Realizing that Nerath could well mount a fresh attack if the Thousand Kingdoms remained disjoined, the leaders of the Alliance undertook the journey to the Storm Isles, and signed a treaty under the watchful gaze of Leximundi herself, the demigod of Law.
They returned with an agreement that if Nerathi forces ever passed a day's march beyond their current cities, the entirety of the Thousand Kingdoms would rise up in campaign for a year. This lead to the Second and Third Nerathi Wars, both of which left Nerath with only its colonial cities. Those cities grew rich with trade, but not was not enough for Nerath.
Unable to expand into the Thousand Kingdoms or Evernia, the Nerathi Empire lost its momentum and turned inwards. A series of uprisings were successfully suppressed by the ageless Imperial Family, but this showed their vulnerability. Their subjects could not be trusted...
...and so the Imperial Family found a new source of power.
The Emperor was assassinated by his own family, sacrificed to dark spirits, and the Imperial Family sold the souls of its entire bloodline for raw demonic power, and a treaty with the netherworld forces.
(The bloodline, of course, was by no means restricted to the Imperial Family itself - as could be said by many a royal house, the Imperial Family left no shortage of bastards throughout the Empire, and all of these were transformed by the Infernal Pact as well.)
Those affected by the pact had their bodies warped into something no longer human, becoming the first Tieflings.
Once again, the Empire was engulfed in turmoil, as local magistrates either sold their souls and the souls of their family, or were deemed disloyal to the new ways and forcibly put down. Soon, there were those with Power, and those without.
The rest of the world watched in horror and trepidation during this infernal orgy of blood and sacrifice. Evernia strengthened its borders, while the colonists on the other side of the Sea of Tranquility disavowed their former kinfolk, and sought common cause with the Thousand Kingdoms.
War started again with the Nerathi Empire turning its newfound power against Evernia, smashing Evernia's mountain defenses, and waging war deep within the heartlands of Evernia itself like never before, steadily gaining ground, steadily sacrificing the citizenry of Evernia to the darkest of powers.
The colonial cities renamed themselves "The Pure Cities" to differentiate themselves from the Nerathi Empire, and opened their coffers to buy mercenaries from the Thousand Kingdoms. The largest single fighting force in recorded history set sail from the Pure Cities, and opened a second front, attacking the heartlands of the Empire in a bid to deprive Nerath of food.
What they found, however, horrified them - the rich fields and riverlands of Nerath were tainted and poisoned. Corpses rotted in the fields while stray demons preyed on the surviving peasantry. Even the sky was the wrong color, and soldiers reported seeing frightful faces twisting into existence overhead.
By this point Evernia had been pushed back to the Sisters: Evernia City and Roothome, its two capital cities. Overcrowded with refugees, the Sisters could not survive a siege for any amount of time, assuming they survived the initial assault at all.
Instead, the High Lords of Evernia, elven and dwarven, cast a mighty spell that froze the two capital cities of Evernia in time.
Cheated of their prize, the demonic armies of Nerath pushed back north and fought the Purity Alliance. In a massive battle that lasted for days, the two mightiest armies in recorded history spilled so much blood that sailors on the Sea of Tranquility reported the sea itself turning red, a current that stretched from the shores of Nerath to the Teeth and beyond.
Maybe it was the tainted blood flowing south to the Isles. Maybe it was the diplomatic connections made by the Alliance during their visit to Leximundi. Maybe it was that the dragons saw in Nerath a threat that they could not abide.
Accounts speak of the sky darkening with dragons, of lightning and of fire, and of storms on the Sea of Tranquility.
In the end, the dragons burned their way from the coast to the capital of the empire, and then onwards to the demonic Nerathi army. The result was the two hundred league long Dragonscar, a thousand demons sealed by draconic magic throughout the land, and the utter obliteration of the Imperial Family and those who had gathered around it.
--------
Since then, Nerath has been in a slow process of recovery. Most of Nerath has returned to normal, particularly now with the help of the templars of Saint Orianna, but the Nerathi have not regained anything close to their former glory. Even the geography has not recovered - the Dragonscar and the Swamp of Souls are the two most obvious blights, but many other areas were permanently transformed during the dark days of the Great War.
Nerath is now theoretically ruled by the Republic of New Nerath, originally a puppet government created by the Pure Cities after the war, and now the only organized governance over most of Nerath. The Republic benefits from its trade with the Pure Cities and Evernia, but is prevented by its constitution from building the armies necessary to assert control over all of Nerath.
Nerathi was once dominated by humans, but after the Great War, many of the humans perished. Between the creation of the Tieflings by the Infernal Pact and the post-war influx of non-humans from the Thousand Kingdoms, less than half of Nerath's population is human. But perhaps this is for the better - the world has seen the unrestrained ambition of humans once, and once was more than enough.
No comments:
Post a Comment