The Origins of the Elosian Empire In 700 b.c. the city-states around the sea of Enat formed a permanent alliance in order to promote their common culture in the face of widespread rivalries troughout the civilized world. The alliance carried out joint ventures against the peoples of Manultulia and the Tigils, a people living inland along the Elos river. The success of such campaigns ensured dominance by the members of the alliance in inter-city trade. In 652 b.c., the alliance was strenghtened and cemented by the establishment of a "confederation of states". The leaders of the various states, or often delegates sent by such leaders, met alternately in each city at five times each year. All the member states recieved an equal vote in this assembly, and it's decisions were binding to all of them. A state could technically leave the confederation, but in practice this would most likely have brought war with all the other states. The democratic nature of the assembly was in contrast to the governments of the city-states, most of which were dynastic monarchies with a landed aristocracy, a large under-class that were virtually slaves, and a sizable number of true slaves that were mostly prisoners taken from wars with foreign states. A few, like Raton had military governments, and only one, Enat, was a republic. Even in Enat the upper-class was in control of the government, with a whole array of restrictions on voting and office-holding rights. From about 500 b.c. the ambitious kings of the city-state of Elos began to carry out, through a series of arranged marriages and claiming of kinship with the monarchs of other states, to gain control of other states within the confederation, and hence have increased influence in the assembly. Simultaneously, they built up their own military strength, thus becoming the major power in dealing with foreign states. During the fifth century b.c. they gained enough power so that in 432 king Nelanon was able to have the confederation changed in his favor. The assembly was moved permanently to Elos, and within the assembly executive power would be wielded by an elected council of 5 members, one of whom had much more say in matters than the others. This council controlled a new army of the confederation, which was to exist along with the several independant armies of the states. Nelanon himself became the head of the new council, and when his son Binalon I suceeded him as as king of Elos in 423 the assembly agreed that the king of Elos would always head the council. Binalon proposed a plan for the gradual assimilation of the state armies into the confederate army, and it passed the assembly by a narrow majority. Several of the city-states claimed that the assembly had gone too far, and that their armies would resist assimilation by force if necessary. There was really very little substance to such claims, but they provided the powerful Manultulians to the south with just the distraction needed to bring down the confederation. Soon the dissident states forgot their quarrels with the assembly as they found themselves attacked by a powerful coalition of Manultulian city-states. The Tigils, too, saw the opportunity to strike and took it. Binalon hesitated not a moment in assuming command of all the forces of the confederation to combat the invaders. The Manaltulians had sent fleets into the sea of Enat which began to ravage the coastline. The first order of battle for Binalon was to destroy these fleets and prevent more from getting into the sea of Enat. He succeeded in destroying many of the ships, but it took more than a year before a strong naval blockade was able to reliably guard the coast. On land the Manultulians sent forces to take the major cities, but all of them were forced to retreat by the winter of 422 b.c. The Tigils sieged the city of Elos for the entire year of 422, but eventually gave up and retreated. Following the success of the confederate forces, Binalon's plans for centralization continued with little resistence. In 420 a confederate treasury was established, to be filled with war reparations bargained from the defeated enemies. In 414, as this money was nearly all spent on maintaining a standing conferate army, the assembly decided that the member city-states would contribute money to the treasury. The states, however, would not vote for a proposal to set a fixed amount that each would pay, and hence money went into the treasury in a strictly case-by-case manner. Binalon was forced to cut back more and more on the army. By 410 it was little more than half the size it had beem in 420, and now there were not any state forces to make up the difference. Once again, the enemies of the confederation took advantage of it's weaknesses. Their strategy was basically the same as before, but this time there was coordination between the Manultuliams in the south and the Tigils in the west. The invaders were more difficult to drive away this time, and they actually succeeded in taking several major cities from the spring of 410 b.c. to the summer of 409. Binalon concentrated his forces on the occupied lands along the coast, and upon reagining the city of Ckaltan proceeded to appropriate whatever he could find for the war effort, arming conscripted men with weapons abandoned by the Manultulians in their retreat and buying more weapons and supplies with money from the city treasury. This was still not enough to hope to win the war with, and in 408 Binalon threatened to similarly "plunder" the cities of the confederation if they would not contribute. Seeing themselves caught between the proverbial rock and hard place, all the member states contributed substantial amounts of money, weapons, and supplies. Within his own city-state Elos, where he had absolute authority in any case, Binalon undertook a program to get the materials of war by passing laws restricting craftsmen to sell their goods to no one but the government. These craftsmen were paid very little, if at all, for their work. Many of them simply changed professions in order to avoid this dilemma, and so in 407 b.c. Binalon began to draft men with the skills to make weapons and other equipment and compell them to manufacture goods for the war. Other states adopted this sort of program in order to meet the quotas demanded of them by Binalon. All the while, Binalon's forces were locked in a deadly stalemate with the would-be conquerers of the confederation. Finally, in 405 b.c. four years of bloody fighting finally began to pay off. The tide turned as the army, now better equiped than ever, thanks to Binalon's program, won major victories in the west. In the south, real progress did not begin until very late in the year. The army's ranks swelled hugely in 404 and 403 as more and more men could now be trained and equiped. In 402 the war reached the point where a decade earlier the fighting had stopped. But this time, Binalon and the other leaders decided to push on into enemy territory. The Tigils were driven farther and farther back, until, being pushed into the territory of their unfriendly neighbors, the Vians, huge numbers of them crossed the mountains to the north and resettled there. By 401 there were more Tigils living north of the mountains than in their former home terriory. Meanwhile, the Manultulian forces were defeated again and again, with Binalon's forces sieging their main cities during the year 400 b.c. One by one the city states of the Manultulian coalition fell into occupation by the confederate army. Manultulia, Abina , and in 399, Binulul surrendered. The fighting finally stopped in the fall of 399 when the last ragged band of Manultulian soldiers surrendered. The big question for the assembly that convened in Elos at the end of the war was what do with the new territory. The enemy city-states had surrendered under the condition that they would eventually be represented in the assembly as members of the confederation, but no one was sure when that should be allowed to happen. A plan was worked out (without the consent of the conquered states) whereby they would be ruled by military occupation for at least ten years, and after that until a government loyal to the alliance could take control. The new members of the assembly would be inducted one by one on a yearly basis. Thus after a period that could last as long as twenty years, the conquered states would be equal members of the confederation. During this period, Binalon's power remained great. He was popular with the aristocratic members of the assmembly and the wealthy in general. The poor simply accepted things as was usual in that time. Most of the assembly members were representatives of the states and not leaders as had once been true. In 397 the assembly passed a resolution (submitted by Binalon) that membership be barred to anyone who held another political position, including the rulers of all the city-states except Elos itself, which was exempted because it was the capitol. Those members made ineligible by this resolution ( a minority anyway) were to serve for one more yearly term before being replaced. Thus in 396 b.c. the assembly was made up of mostly lower aristocrats and sometimes even servants of the leaders. These men had little actual stake in the states they represented and could thus be easily persuaded to vote this way or that by Binalon. In 395 Binalon set up a central system of law enforcement, and in 394 a central system of courts. These had jurisdiction over the existing systems of the states. Codes of law bound all people in any of the states. Then, in 393 b.c., the assembly (acting under the virtual dictation of Binalon) proclaimed the "ELOCKAN" or "Empire of Elos". Binalon was crowned as Emporer Binalon I. He was to rule the entire confederation (now the empire) with the authority of a monarch. The assembly continued to exist, but it was now powerless beside the Emporer, who could override it's authority in any case and who did not actually need it to pass laws. The title of "Elockantan" or Emporer, was substantiated by three more specific titles. "Atricksantan" literally translates to "dictator" or "autocrat", though in elosian it does not carry the negative connotations of those english words. In any case, it signified the absolute supremacy of the Emoporer over the government and the army. "Parspimantan" means "first priest" and the emporer was exactly the - the final authority in matters of religion, akin to the pope in Roman Catholicism on earth. "Renogladantan" is a difficult-to-translate word that meant that the Emporer was the most honourable and respectable man in the Empire, though it was not always true. All the emporers after Binalon held all these titles, though for the Empress Andria (the only female to sit on the throne, though there were several male eunuchs in the later days of the empire) they were modified slightly - replacing "Renogladantan" with "Gamanta" which connotates beauty rather than "honour" which was considered masculine. From that time until the death of the emporer Nikalanon in 196 b.c., the throne passed from father to son within the Alon family. The areas conquered by Binalon had all become "states" by 300 b.c. All the states had separate governments, each with a slightly different local system. The Emporer had authority over them all. The economy of the empire was based mostly on large estates worked by tenant farmers and slaves. The peasants had little chance of advancement. Even in the army positions of command were reserved for the aristocracy. These nobles acknowledged the Emporer as their rightful head, and thus the system was quite stable. The assembly ceased to have any power at all, but the Emporers often preferred to have their ideas backed up by a vote in order to ensure legality. In 196 b.c. the transition from one ruling family was made peacefully, and relative stability continued for a thousand years. During these eleven centuries, the people of the entire empire came to feel themselves part of a single nation, not merely a group of terriories under the same ruler. At the beginning of this period, the Empire extended along the Elos river from Altikch to Elos, and around the northern shore of the Gulf of Enat. In the south, the border eastward along the shore of the "Sea of Elos" ( named for the city many miles away ) from Abina, and also included Binulul (an island). All the land between these two lines was the Empire. The immediate successors of Binalon did not add to the Empire, but instead took steps to insure order within. Among the most important was the establishment of a universal, Empire-wide religious system. The god Ristkon, who had been the special protector of the City state of Elos, was elevated to a higher level, as the God of the Empire itself. The old myths were re-written in line with this new superiority, and for many centuries the origional function of Ristkon was lost. He is now known to have been commonly accepted as the god of rivers and the sea, and was then taken by the Elosians as their patron god. He was the son of Parkep (Parkep = "first"), the sky god, and the brother of Sor the god of fire and Namckon, god of sin and death. The other gods were all made less important in one way or another. Parkep took less of a part in earthly affairs. The sun was held to be his good eye, while the moon, his other eye, had been blinded with a hot fire poker by Namckon. Sor, along with a number of minor gods, was held to be another identity of Ristkon. All the others were made servants of either Ristkon or Namkon. Among these were Partan and Parta, the couple who had been the ancestors of humanity. The new doctrines held them to have been servants of Ristckon who had been forced to live an earthly existence as punishment for disobedience. Ristckon, in various guises, had created the land, the sea, and the plants and animals. He also created lower supernatural beings, Partan (first man), Parta (first woman), Atan (great man), and Ata (great woman). Atan and Ata were the progenitors of myriad good beings who are serve as utopian counterparts to fallen humanity, and who are helpful to the faithful the battle against Namckon, who sadistically seeks to bring to torment to mankind, both by encouraging acts of evil in the world and by torturing the souls of the dead. The way to avoid this fate is, of course, to so please Ristckon that he bestows the reward of an afterlife with the good Gods. In the Elosian scheme of things, pleasing Ristckon meant propogating His worship over all other gods. The Emporer was the representative of His will in this world, and the empire was maintained partly in the name of religion.