Dark Years
From Almeopedia
The Dark Years is a term to describe the better part of the 3rd millennium Z.E. where great political instability and intellectual withdrawal marked the civilizations of Eretald.
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Overview (politics, trade, economy)
Caďinas was under the constant threat of barbarians and the military upkeep caused its economy and trade to decline and collapse. Cities were wiped out and regions seceded from the Empire. Peoples mixed, barbarians invaded, education and communications declined. By about 2400 a large portion of the Plain was speaking Caďino, a debased evolution of Caďinor.
The pressure of invasion and military upkeep caused the Caďinorian economy to collapse. Long-term trading started to seem perilous; for most people the economy shrank to no more than their own province. The tenuous trade with Axunai had long dried up. Trade across Eretald declined; cities dwindled as people escaped the ravages of barbarians and taxation by sheltering in the fortifications of local nobles. Provincial governors became independent rulers with self-sufficient economies. Garrisons became regional armies, moved only with difficulty, and more answerable to the local governor than to Ctesifon.
Urban life declined; entire cities simply disappeared, like the ancient Eleisa who was abandoned. Nearly every horde sacked Araunicoros on its way north. Dalmaž declined into little more than a village, nestled amid extensive Caďinorian ruins.
During the Gelyet occupation (2530s), urban life declined all over Eretald: where there were once two dozen cities over 10,000 inhabitants, there were now eight (in declining order of size, Ctesifon, Verduria, Aránicer, Ožnëa, Raizumi, Žrano, Zariaspa, Mituré). And the necessary concentration on war weakened civil institutions and encouraged
Even regions which professed their loyalty to Ctesifon were self-contained economically and culturally; even operations against the barbarians were largely local. There was no enormous difference between near-autonomous regions like the upper Svetla and Verduria, and friendly but independent states like Érenat. Only the middle Svetlan heartland was really directly answerable to the emperor. A typical state was a patchwork of feudal lords, loosely tied together by oaths and family ties; the king was at best the strongest of these, and only his own estates could be counted on to fulfill his will.
As a result, the Empire fell with the capture of Ctesifon by the Curiya, but other kingdoms emerged, like Verduria.
Origins
Around the beginning of the 2000s, Caďinas was brought to the edge of civil war, after the death of every Emperor. A clique of nobles and generals was ostensibly formed to prevent this in 2107 ZE under the name Claetura Rugites (Red Cabal). As things turned out however, their rule saw oppression, intrigue and a weakening of central authority. After much strife, the Cabal's rule disappeared by 2220 and Irun of Banda ascended to the imperial sash.
At the same time, the growing military threat of the šualsannoi, the horse-mounted barbarians of the steppe, pressed on all the agricultural states. Ctesifon’s power grew remote; increasingly it concentrated on fighting barbarians, leaving the provinces to govern themselves.
History
Firstly the Coruo invaded who were pushed back out of Eretald by Irun's grandson Ervëa 2e who even raided deep into barbarian territory— mostly using Naviu mercenaries. There were attempts to shore up Caďinorian culture too: Cuomolondos ordered the compilation of the Aďivro; Suertorion chartered the University of Verduria. (2319). However the imperial capital Ctesifon had fell to the Naviu (2345).
The next centuries were the heyday of the barbarians, whose invention of the stirrup had shifted the military balance in their favor. The Caďinorians had increasing trouble holding their southern frontier; Over the 2300s the Meťelyi under Aččaw occupied almost the whole of the Barbarian Plain
In the 2400s Sarnáe was lost.
Under the Bešbalicu
This pushed the Naviu tribe of the Bešbalicu into Eretald, and in 2435 their king Ädurunz conquered Ctesifon itself; later Western barbarians (perhaps the Somoyi) sacked Erruk (2450) and massacred all of the defenders. Thereafter it was abandoned, considered cursed by the violence of its fall.
The rulers of Verduria were an example of the decentralization; the Mayor of the City, Velto Cänen, became a Lord in 2472, when he recaptured Ctesifon from Bešbalicu. However the Gelyet, a Naviu tribe, were the rising barbarian power and dominated the Barbarian Plain by 2476.
In the 2500s Sereor asserted their independence; Aveilas considered itself loyal but was effectively cut off from what remained of Caďinas. The Emperor declared it a “sovereign loyal province”, which only meant that he could leave it colored yellow on his maps.
Arrival of the Gelyet
The next influx of troublesome barbarians were the Gelyet who beat back the Meťelyi who had dominated the Barbarian Plain; the Gelyet started to look on Eretald (2505) and finally moved against Ctesifon in 2525, further indebting the Emperor to the growing power of Verduria. In 2535 Azedŕes, governor of Ismahi, took the opportunity of the Gelyet invasion to declare himself king
Their chief Länguraz was killed by a Caďinorian archer during the siege of Ctesifon; his successor Aitän rode south to defeat the rebellion among the Coruo and Ctesifon was spared; when he came back north it was to conquer Sarnáe (2536-8).
Unlike the Bešbalicu, the Gelyet were not respectful if alien monarchs; they were looters, contemptuous of the lands they conquered, all too eager to despoil them of their riches and appropriate the peasants' fields as pasturage for their animals. Southern Eretald and Sarnáe were permanently depressed as a result of their depredations.
The Gelyet were weakened by the rise of Xurno; nonetheless, it took decades of hard campaigning for the Caďinorians to recover the upper Svetla. The reconquered territories were ruled by the victorious generals, who quickly became a new class of nobles.
The Kebreni, out of reach of any barbarians, was strong and safe enough to afford an expansive foreign policy. Seeing nothing to stop it, it occupied the northwestern coast of Érenat (2590).
Around after 2605, the Somoyi occupy Šerian, dividing Ctesifon from the sea. Mália fought them and liberated both Aránicer and then (against order) marched back on Ctesifon. Mália occupied the city in 2609 and the people accepted her as empress.
Over the next century Kebri occupied more and more of the seacoast— it still had only a small army, and focused its attention on areas its ships could easily reinforce. In 2730 it occupied Avéla, completing its occupation of the coast and blockading the interior. It had occupied the whole country within a generation.
Caďinas itself disappeared in 2792 with the capture of Ctesifon once again by Meugi, king of Curiya. Remote provinces simply became independent kingdoms.
The Makši invasion of 2850 was devastating but eventually repelled; Verduria doubled its own size by uniting with Zeir in 2850 meanwhile the religion came under challenge from the arrival of the Elenicoi in 2780 and the spread of Eleďat.
In the later Dark Years the population may have been half that of Ervëa's time.
Recovery
Bura rebelled against the Curiyans in 2917 and proclaimed himself emperor, but his son Ertala failed to subjugate Caleon, lord of Verduria who occupied of Ctesifon. Later rulers more wisely spoke of themselves as kings (elorionî) of Ctésifon; at long last, the empire was over.
In Verduria, the Dark Years are taken to end with the ascension of Caleon (2939); in Ctésifon, the successor state to Caďinas, the key event is instead Bura's rebellion (2917); Érenat maintains that it was the emergence of their own state (2840-2950). A more nuanced view would be that the Dark Years faded due to technological progress, the re-emergence of Eretald-wide states and trade, and a new military superiority over the barbarians.
As civilization recovered from the dark ages, classical Caďinor learning was rediscovered and a direct link to classical times was attempted. This is reflected in the evolution of the Caďino language which was ennobled as modern Verdurian. Thousands of words were borrowed from ancient Caďinor, bypassing two milennia of sound changes: e.g. cirabectia 'gymnastics', cuteio 'apoplexy', gués 'power' (from guesos), miura 'wonder', vocet 'summons' (from the first phrase of such documents: Vocet curies 'The court calls').
Religion
Cuomolondos hoped that a codification of Caďinorian ritual and belief would help shore up the Empire and the Caďinorian spirit, and prevent a relapse into the decadence which it was felt had caused this state, and ordered the compilation of the Aďivro in 2290 after the invasion of the Coruo. But Aďivro became an enormous project that was not finished before 2350, and Ctesifon already fell to the Naviu
As prosperity declined and the barbarian threat increased, cults formed and hermits or magicians appeared, seeking supernatural power, whether to restore the empire's might or simply to keep safe for a time.
Even as the secular apparatus of the Caďinorian state began to crumble, the priesthood helped to maintain cultural cohesion. The priestly hierarchy however also became decentralised. A growth of mysticism, monasticism, pilgrimages, cults and holiness movements followed.
Ervëa had given the Arašei free movement, and they took advantage of this to spread throughout the empire. During this period Arašei scholars experimented with numerous numerologies, esoteric doctrines, and eschatological speculations.
Stories of avatars of Eleď increased in the Dark Years; like the Sojourner, but with more explicitly supernatural powers, these would come to solve some crisis and depart suddenly. It was also expected that Eleď would someday return as a figure of vengeance, defeating the oppressors and restoring a larger, perhaps universal holy nation.
Economy and trade
Though there is little direct evidence, it is likely that ecological strain was a major factor in the empire's decline. Eretald had once been covered with rich forests; these were nearly all gone, and the remaining soil subject to rapid erosion. Poorly balanced crops and a shortage of animals for manuring depleted the soil. Crop yields declined in the thinner soil, making it impossible to support the huge populations and large standing armies of the golden age. The lack of wood affected not only construction but metallurgy, as wood and charcoal were the chief fuels.
| Author: So Haleza Grise |
