Sraiyag Vacan

For two centuries Sraiyag Vacan has stood, to keep the darkness at bay. Founded by Yenatar Malkerian in the land which he had first saved during the Great Orc-Wars, Sraiyag Vacan is a militaristic and devout nation which treats its founder with near-worshipful respect, and which is today one of the great powers of Kerlonna. While the founding of Drecitou saw the overwhelming of its native Elutapi population by Marnic settlers, in Sraiyag Vacan the Marnics and the native Janhlira live side-by-side as fellow servants of House Malkerian. Sitting upon a fair plain, Sraiyag Vacan is prosperous, trading its exquisite wines across the continent. Religion is vital to the Vacani society, and Marnic polytheism is more devoutly practiced here than anywhere else in modern Kerlonna. The government is firmly controlled by the monarchy, which rests solely in House Malkerian. However, the true stability of Vacani society comes from its mighty army, which is the finest in Kerlonna, and a direct descendant of the great hosts with which Yenatar ended the Great Orc-Wars.

=Founding Year=

Free Year 19

=Capital City=

Oksyrs.

=Geography=

Sraiyag Vacan sits in central northern Kerlonna, a broad peninsula projecting westward from the Kruvates Plains bounded by the Rajimtar Sea to the west, the Akulap Sea to the south, and the Last Seas to the north. The nation extends 700 kilometres north to south and 500 kilometres west to east, giving it an approximate area of 350,000 square kilometres. The axis of the nation is the Owamtu River, which flows southwestward for some seven hundred kilometres from its headwaters upon the Kruvates Plains and the northern foothills of the Vrotispal Range. At its upper reaches the river is little more than streams flowing through the grasslands, but it eventually swells to a swift flow cutting through the eastern frontiers of Sraiyag Vacan. The Vacani highroad cuts across it fifty kilometres northeast of Oksyrs, just after the river spills thunderously over a waterfall. Oksyrs itself sits on an island at about the second third of the river’s length. About a hundred kilometres after passing beyond Oksyrs, the river takes a sudden turn due south. At its mouth sits the city of Eonrig, where the river flows into the Akulap Sea. The valley of the Owamtu, and the land lying between it and the city of Navyš, is the breadbasket of the nation, with great fields of grain fed by the rain that rolls up from the Akulap Sea. The regions between Navyš and Oksyrs are home to the bulk of the rural Vacani population, being a fair realm of mixed forests and vast meadows with mild seasons and lush greenery. The landscape is greatly quilted by fields, which are designed in the traditional Janhlira style: a walled village of several extended families at the centre, with the fields radiating outwards. Almost all major roads in the south are paved, and the highroad between Oksyrs and Navyš is one of the broadest, safest, and most used in Kerlonna. Besides cultivating fields, the people of southern Sraiyag Vacan are also cowherds, and the cheeses which they produce travel to Idroslekh and Drecitou, where they supply the banquets of the foreign nobility. Eonrig and Navyš are both bustling, young cities, having been founded only around FY 30 in order to facilitate trade with Najivano and central Idroslekh. Eonrig in particular is currently experiencing a period of major economic revitalisation, as its trade had long been harried by pirates in the Akulap Sea, and these pirates were only driven out for good about two years ago.

West of the Owamtu River, the land is somewhat thinner, with more limestone and less fertility. The population is somewhat sparser, and the wilderness proportionately larger. However, the southwestern regions of Sraiyag Vacan are also very wealthy, due to the vineyards that are cultivated there. The wine grapes of the Vacani achieve their finest flavour in the rough soil of the west rather than in the rich loam of the south, and so the southwestern regions produce the vast majority of the nation’s famed wines. Wine growing and production is controlled by the nobility there, and so there, instead of farming villages, one usually finds vast estates with a noble manor at the centre, vineyards and vegetable gardens surrounding, and small clusters of homes for the serf labourers. Despite its sparser population than the central south, the southwest is in fact even safer than that region, because the southwest is so distant from the northeastern frontier where the orcs prowl. The coastline of the southwest is craggy, with occasional cliffs and juts of land, and caves are easily found deep below the vineyards and fields. The port of Cirthwaen, which can be considered the northern limit of the wine-cultivating region of Sraiyag Vacan, trades mainly with the city of Kemret in northern Idroslekh, and is not so bustling or prosperous as Eonrig and Navyš. The landscape of the southwest, despite perhaps being safer than the central south, is not so tamed: the forests are darker and deeper, and long, foggy coves mark the western coast. Noting the latter feature, it should not be too surprising that smuggling is a recurring problem throughout the southwest.

The lands north of the Owamtu River are even more desolate, and they are more dangerous than either southern region. The most isolated part of Sraiyag Vacan is the northwest, which is dominated by the Lisredvo Hills. The landscape mainly consists of dim evergreen forests and outcroppings of rock with seemingly no end. Communities here are sparsely scattered and heavily defended: for the last fifteen years, a black wyrm has haunted those hills, and the natives live in absolute terror of her, for all attempts to slay her have failed. She spends most of her time in the immediate environs of her lair, in the eastern regions of the hills, but she occasionally goes on rampages of destruction through the woodlands, assaulting any habitations that she may stumble across during these rages. Rather than fire, she spews some sort of caustic liquid, which burns all living things, and even the earth below. Soil that is thus poisoned by her vile spittle is rendered dead and barren for years. Her Draconic name is unknown, but the Usiytak natives refer to her as Gezhiraken, “the lady who kills the land.” Despite her presence, however, the Usiytak of the hills have no desire to leave, and instead regard her presence with a sort of patient endurance. The one fortunate aspect of Gezhiraken’s presence is that due to her fearsome reputation, no orcs have dared wander into the hills. Besides the Lisredvo Hills, another notable feature of the northwest is the one major elven forest that lies within Sraiyag Vacan, known as the Forest of the Gift: unique among the elven forests of Kerlonna, it has not been inhabited by elves for millennia since the arrival of humans in the continent. Rather, it was bequeathed by royal proclamation to elven and half-elven veterans of the Great Orc-Wars whose own communities had been destroyed by the raiders. Since this forest was thus established only less than two hundred years ago, the elves dwelling there are mostly in their middle years, and are fiercely loyal to the Vacani crown, since they regard the Lord-Commander of Sraiyag Vacan as the successor to their original military leader, Yenatar Malkerian. In the marginal regions of the northwest beyond the Forest of the Gift and the Lisredvo Hills, there are scattered rural communities, some of which are Usiytak and some of which are Janhlira, but there are very few settlements large enough to merit even the title of “town.”

Northeastern Sraiyag Vacan is the frontier of the realm, where valiant Vacani knights and proud Parumya horsemen do battle with slavering orcish savages constantly to protect the innocent and the weak. The Kalensi River, flowing from the Lisredvo Hills, makes its way down to the coast of the Last Seas, and at its mouth sits the lonely city of the north, Kaleon. The regions west of the Kalensi River are inhabited exclusively by Janhlira tribes: their culture and languages are purer there than anywhere else in the nation. East of the Kalensi River, the Janhlira are still numerous, but they mingle with the Parumya, who wander across and then back beyond the Vacani border with the seasonal migrations of their great herds. Kaleon itself is a city inhabited and ruled by the Janhlira: Marnics there are usually temporarily stationed soldiers or travelling merchants. The northeast is a lonely and proud land, scarred by a heritage of war, and its Janhlira people are tough-minded and independent. The landscape is rough, with patches of evergreen forest and peat bogs among the cultivable Janhlira farms. Winter here is long and incredibly snowy due to the storms that roll in from the Last Seas to the north, and the summers are rainy and unpleasantly cool to the sensibilities of visiting southerners. In the far northeast, the land becomes almost uninhabited: the only humans to be found in that frontier are soldiers and orc-hunters, who wage their endless war in defence of Sraiyag Vacan against the orcs that wander across the Posrati Gulf.

The heart of Sraiyag Vacan is the great fortress-city of Oksyrs. Due to its unique architectural design, the city deserves its own specific description in this text. Like Olea in Drecitou, it was only built after the Great Orc-Wars around one hundred and eighty years ago, but whereas Olea was designed for beauty and the sake of its own architecture, Oksyrs was built as the mighty citadel of House Malkerian. Originally, the Isle of Oksyrs was an inhospitable, rocky island in the middle of the Owamtu River, home only to a Janhlira tribe’s traditional burying grounds. During Yenatar Malkerian’s early campaigns in the region, however, he established a fortress in the rocks of Oksyrs, where he gave refuge to over three thousand Janhlira refugees fleeing the destruction of their villages by the raiders. This fortress never fell throughout the Great Orc-Wars, slowly expanding as Yenatar’s forces grew and he found an ever-increasing need for an administrative centre for the Janhlira lands. After the Orc-Wars had finally ended, Yenatar, rather than electing one of the already well-established Janhlira cities as a capital of his new nation, chose to create a city out of Oksyrs. In FY 20, swarms of soldiers-turned-labourers, architects, and masons came to the Isle, where for two years they feverishly created the new city. In FY 22, upon its completion, it was declared the “city of brotherhood” where the Janhlira and the Marnics would at last put their differences aside and stand together as the people of Sraiyag Vacan. It is uniquely designed for fortification in that its design is that of a spiral. A central avenue, the King’s Way, winds slowly from the harbours of the Owamtu, up through the market districts, the residential districts, the temple district, the royal district, and terminating at the Rook (being a modern colloquialism). The Rook is, in fact, the old fortress that Yenatar had originally established, now a magnificent military stronghold at the peak of the city, several hundred feet above the river. The actual shape of the spiral is manifested by the formidable walls of Oksyrs, which coil up the hill until they merge with the fortifications at the Rook. Construction is strictly regulated in Oksyrs, and every building, even the High Temple, in some way serves as a part of the city’s sophisticated fortifications. Consequently, the city has an impregnable, intimidating appearance, both soaring and unyielding. The great number of soldiers stationed in the city compounds this aura quite effectively.

=Population & Demographics=

Sraiyag Vacan, even considering its geographic size, is remarkably diverse, and one of the most varied regions of Kerlonna. Unlike other areas of Kerlonna, humans and nonhumans live easily with one another, and even the different ethnicities of humans cooperate peacefully and equitably under the rule of House Malkerian. There are three major human ethnicities in Sraiyag Vacan: the two indigenous populations of the Usiytak and the Janhlira, and a segment of the diasporan Marnics. Whereas in Drecitou, the great majority of native humans were culturally subsumed by the massive immigration of Marnics, in Sraiyag Vacan the Janhlira and Usiytak have remained independent and thriving cultures, united with the Marnics in one nation. Sraiyag Vacan is home to six million humans, somewhat more than a quarter of the continent’s human population. Of these six million, the census reports that approximately one and a half million are pure or nearly pure Marnic. Two million and three hundred thousand are pure or nearly pure Janhlira. Four hundred thousand are pure or nearly pure Usiytak. The remaining one million and eight hundred thousand are “of multiple bloods,” with Janhlira-Marnic mixture being considerably more common than Janhlira-Usiytak and Marnic-Usiytak. There are also nomadic Parumya populations that wander through northeastern Sraiyag Vacan along their traditional migration routes, but the Parumya clans are considered independent nations and their members are not counted in the Vacani census. Nonhuman populations are remarkably high within Sraiyag Vacan, due to the multiracial nature of Yenatar Malkerian’s united armies that ended the Great Orc-Wars. While the only elven forest of truly noteworthy extent is the Forest of the Gift in the northwest, there are smaller stands of old forest scattered across the nation where elven villages may be found. The elves of Sraiyag Vacan are remarkably friendly to outsiders, perhaps the most so of their race in Kerlonna: they only rarely take to shooting arrows at unexpected intruders, and they will even deign to speak to a human in Vacani Marnic rather than Ghiñêsraf. Saighes within Sraiyag Vacan are considered autonomous city-state governments, yet still subordinate to the reign of the Malkerian monarch. Almost all saighes are comfortable with this state of affairs: they feel that a surrender of some of their racial pride is a fair price for safety against orcish assault. Halflings are strictly protected by royal law against persecution, so the Nheawyrsen pacifist caravans flock to southern Sraiyag Vacan: it is one of the safest places in the world for one who refuses to harm anyone. There are twenty-one saighes within Sraiyag Vacan, home to seven hundred thousand dwarves and six hundred and forty thousand gnomes. There are eleven thousand forest-dwelling elves, seven thousand of whom dwell within the Forest of the Gift. Halfling populations are uncertain: they migrate frequently between the southern Vacani plains and the vast elven forest of the Heiśêglu. Half-elven populations are very high: during the Great Orc-Wars, many elves whose forest communities had been destroyed chose to integrate into the human population rather than rebuild a new elven society in the Forest of the Gift. These elven men and women married humans, producing half-elven children. Due to human customs of high birth rates compared to those of elves, many children were produced from these unions. However, half-elves are much more resistant to disease than their human parent, and so only a small percentage of these infants died in childbirth. This led to an explosion of half-elven births: and since they matured more rapidly than elves, after only thirty years they began to wed and have children of their own. Half-elves usually chose to marry half-elves: they did not wish to have children that aged more or less rapidly than themselves, for they saw that ultimately this caused great stress in their parents. By the modern period, there are over eighty thousand half-elves in Sraiyag Vacan, almost all of whom dwell in the Owamtu River valley.

=Government & Foreign Relations=

Sraiyag Vacan’s government, beyond any trace of doubt, is founded upon the personage of Yenatar Malkerian. Referred to as the Father of the Realm and as the Exalt-General, his personality dominates Vacani history and identity. Indeed, after Yenatar’s death in FY 73, his son Talvenat said, “Whoever sees the Lord sees the Realm; whoever sees the Realm sees the Lord.” This devotion goes beyond mere fanaticism or hero worship: the personality of Yenatar Malkerian is embedded in the cultural consciousness of all Vacani humans. As such, the governance of Sraiyag Vacan necessarily is predicated upon House Malkerian. For anyone but the Malkerian bloodline to rule Sraiyag Vacan is inconceivable: they are the very flesh and blood of the Exalt-General, and are beyond any criticism or reproach. Consequently, their hold on power is absolute. In any other realm, such an absolute authority would lead to excesses and corruption of the rulers, and would inspire the resentment of the lower nobility, leading eventually to the nation’s destabilisation and fall. However, in Sraiyag Vacan, the noble lineage of the royal family has continued unbroken from Yenatar: each ruler has reflected in his or her own way the same perfection of merciful righteousness that characterised the Exalt-General himself. As such, each Malkerian proceeding from Yenatar can be considered to be subject to (albeit to a lesser extent) the same cultic devotion as is expressed towards their forefather.

When Yenatar was, with the aid of a plethora of advisors, designing the internal structure of the new nation of Sraiyag Vacan, he quickly chose to abandon the provincial system that had been used by the Marnic Federation (still maintained as a technicality within Drecitou). The nation was first divided into three overarching ethnic territories, or thedes: the Marnic Thede in the south, the Usiytak Thede in the northwest, and the Janhlira Thede in the northeast. Each thede was ruled not by a Senate-elected Governor, but instead by a Shield-Lord, each a banner-general of the New Legion. The leadership of the Janhlira Thede was entrusted to the line of Yenatar’s Janhlira lieutenant, Shepyarin, which was named as House Aðunrav; that of the Marnic Thede to the House Norsayen, among the strongest early supporters of Yenatar during the Marnic Exodus. At the time, nobody came forward to lead the Usiytak Thede, as the Usiytak lack nobility in their culture. Instead, after negotiations with Yenatar, the Usiytak agreed to instead establish a system of Usiytak rulers, elected by the village councils, who would be named as Shield-Lord. During the betrothal of Aġrali Sakvaru to Lorkañe Malkerian in FY 116, however, this state of affairs was abruptly changed by pressures exerted upon Lord-Commander Vauduyat by House Sakvaru. The House, seeking to regain some of the prominence of its elder days, demanded that it be named the ruling bloodline of the Usiytak Thede, in which it had dwelt for a hundred years. After long considerations, it was agreed, and now the Usiytak Thede is ruled by a Marnic House, which, despite its prestige, still rules the least populous region of the nation.

Within the thedes, the territories are further divided into three classifications: fiefdom, military district, and Spear-land. Fiefdoms are the most common, spread across the majority of the Janhlira and Marnic Thedes and along the coastline of the Usiytak Thede. Fiefdoms are sections of land beholden to specific bloodlines of Janhlira and Marnic nobility, and the size of a fiefdom tends to reflect the status of the house that rules it. The House ruling a fiefdom also has military authority over the area, and is beholden to summon their forces when the Shield-Lord demands it. The cities of Navyš, Cirthwaen, and Kaleon are all fiefdoms: famously, the rulers of the fiefdom of Navyš, House Navgarst, are the same bloodline as the first Queen of Sraiyag Vacan, Daniira.

Military districts are directly ruled by an officer appointed to the task by the Shield-Lord of the thede, and within them, the presence of soldiers is pervasive. There are three main regions within Sraiyag Vacan where military districts are common. The first is along the borders of the thedes, where Yenatar believed that otherwise ethnic conflicts could come into play. The second is around the perimeter of the Lisredvo Hills, as no noblemen claimed fiefdoms in a land without nobles (excepting House Sakvaru). The third is in the northeast of the Janhlira Thede, where orcish attacks are so frequent that direct military rule is necessary to protect the territory. The city of Eonrig is part of a military district meant to protect the mouths of the Owamtu River, such that attackers cannot sail upriver to Oksyrs.

Spear-lands are the most various of the three, for they cover areas such as: elven forests; saighes; the city of Oksyrs; the deep interior of the Lisredvo Hills; and the eastern border, among others. The Spear-lands are directly administered by the authority of the monarch, although this only truly applies in Oksyrs. The status of the saighes, forests, and eastern border being Spear-lands is meant only to protect these areas from being brought under the sway of unscrupulous noblemen or power-hungry soldiers who care not for the customs of dwarves, gnomes, elves, and the Parumya. The Usiytak of the Lisredvo Hills, too, with their lack of nobility, are protected from cultural incursions by the Marnics and Janhlira by the direct authority of the Malkerian White-Spear.

The government of Sraiyag Vacan is strongly centralised due to the military heritage of the nation. To question one’s superiors is unusual, and to defy them unthinkable. However, at the same time, it functions on a meritocratic basis: one does not become a superior through bloodline merely, but through proven competence. Yenatar himself was a radical insofar as he considered the “nobility of bloodline” idea to be a fiction. However, he would never have been able to overturn the systems of nobility of either the Janhlira or the Marnics without completely destroying the social structure of both cultures.

As one of the Three Nations, Sraiyag Vacan, by necessity, has diplomatic relations with all human peoples across the former Marnic Federation, even to the Injili. In part, one can trace this back to the legacy of the New Legions: all peoples of Kerlonna remember that Sraiyag Vacan’s people are descendants of that mighty force. As such, when the Parumya clans cross the border into Sraiyag Vacan, they are simply entering the territory of their old comrades-in-arms. The dour zealots of Eädreñ remember full well that it was Yenatar Malkerian who drove back the orcs and allowed them to retake the lost city. The brutal and conniving people of Varpus stop to pay heed when the Malkerians address them. Both the Qãnvilu and the Döz-Idros of Idroslekh know which man was responsible for rallying their forces and driving the orcs back into the northern wilds. A notable exception is with the city of Amvidra: since the Hymnal Queen has brought that city under her fell dominion, the Malkerians have steadfastly refused to acknowledge her as anything other than a cruel and unnatural tyrant.

With Ishkula, Sraiyag Vacan has a sense of kinship and perhaps a slight sense of concern for their spiritual health. The Vacani respect that the Ishkula are a people of great military strength, and the wiser of the Vacani military commanders agree with the (universal) Ishkula argument that the drow are a future threat and will attack Kerlonna again one day. Furthermore, it was due to the persuasiveness of the Ishkula people that Yenatar Malkerian came to see the depravity of the institution of slavery and abolished it within his nation, which earned him a place of honour among the Ishkula as great as those of any of the heroes of the Marches of Smoke. However, at the same time, the grimness of the people of Ishkula is off-putting to the optimistic Vacani: the black folk seem entirely convinced that their nation is headed towards a cataclysmic confrontation which it will not survive. The Vacani cannot quite understand why a people should be so convinced of its own inevitable fate, for Yenatar Malkerian had never implied that such a destiny was foreordained for his own subjects. Perhaps, the average Vacani citizen might reason, the gloom and fog in the mires of the south have simply given the Ishkula a tendency towards sombreness.

Drecitou and Sraiyag Vacan, on the other hand, are like brothers that can agree upon almost nothing. For the Vacani, Marnoz is dead and lost, and its legacy must make way for the new generations. For the Drecitouns, Marnoz was the Mother of the World, and though the city itself is lost, its deathless memories are the greatest inheritance of mankind. For the Vacani, Yenatar Malkerian is nothing less than the saviour of the world, the shining Exalt-General whose name is counted by many as equal to those of the gods. For the Drecitouns, the Exalt-General was certainly among the greatest men of history, but he remains a man, with flaws and weaknesses, who was ultimately unable to save the Marnic Federation from destruction, or the human race in Kerlonna from the greatest loss of life in its history. The Drecitouns, meanwhile, treat Glebaryuv Zenali as something akin to a sage-king, who was able to save the Marnic culture from total extinction and give it a new refuge, a wise defender of tradition and, simultaneously, of the rights of the individual. The Vacani, in turn, see him as a noble and brilliant man who was misguided into thinking that the ages could be halted in their turning, and who did not actually bring war against the orcs until he had been inspired by Yenatar’s triumphant example. In general, the Vacani find the Drecitouns to be a people who are constantly trying to keep one foot in the past and one in the present, ignoring the ever-widening gulf beneath their feet. Yet at the same time, Drecitou is a righteous and worthy nation that has held its own against the orcs with vigour, and which continues to bear the torch of civilisation aloft in a darkened world. When the Little Orc-War brought Sraiyag Vacan perilously close to the brink of destruction, it was the Drecitoun lancers who first broke the siege on Oksyrs. When the Interregnum raged in Drecitou and House Zenali fought tooth and nail for its very survival, it was the New Legion that rebuilt the shell of Jalyonne and fed its starving people. The two brothers, even in their worst quarrels, do not forget that they are of the same Mother.

=Economy=

Sraiyag Vacan, as one of the three great nations of mankind in Kerlonna, naturally occupies a position of supreme economic importance in trade throughout Kerlonna. It is the nexus of trade in the north of the continent, for its eastern roads lead across the Kruvates Plains, to distant Cil Adasiga and Drecitou (and, via Drecitou, Taresani, the Twelve Isles, and the Sea of Injil). To the west and south, the Akulap and Rajimtar Seas provide natural highways to Idroslekh and Najivano. Sraiyag Vacan is further a productive land in its own right. Owing to the centralised authority of government found in the kingdom of the Malkerians, the coinage is naturally standardised and well distributed throughout the nation: all coins are stamped with the likeness of Yenatar Malkerian on one side, and the Royal Sigil of Sraiyag Vacan on the other. In lands beyond Vacani borders, Vacani-wrought coins are universally accepted by merchants due to their purity and consistent weights, and are found as far afield as the markets of the Utempi city of Tsrin in Taresani.

The ubiquitous Vacani export is fine wine. The southwestern regions, from the Saalid Peninsula up to Cirthwaen, are not particularly productive of grain, but the grapes that grow there are as flavourful as those found about the Sea of Injil, and the wine is correspondingly delicious. Indeed, almost all wine of good quality to be found in Kerlonna can be traced back to either Sraiyag Vacan or the Sea of Injil, and the Drecitoun nobility benefit from this the most, for the two regions are about equidistant from the Zenali kingdom. Vacani wine travels even beyond Kerlonna, carried by Qãnvilu traders into the Dahlimi Steppes.

The agriculture of Sraiyag Vacan is concentrated in the Marnic Thede, particularly in the Owamtu Valley. Massive storehouses are situated within the cities, to prepare them for any number of sieges, and great barges regularly float grain to Oksyrs to feed its stationed soldiers. The fields of southern Sraiyag Vacan are among the most fertile in the known world, and since the rulers make a point of storing grain rather than squandering it, famines, when they come at all, are of only minor severity. Besides grain, the fields of the south also support great herds of cattle, whose milk produces Vacani cheeses, and whose meat is eaten even by low people, so plentiful are they. The northern regions of Sraiyag Vacan are less hospitable to farming, and during hungry periods, it is to the Janhlira Thede that much of the stored grain goes, for their winters are longer. The Usiytak, for their part, are not even an entirely agrarian society in their hills, but still supplement a large part of their diet with hunting and gathering as well as grown grain. The Janhlira lands of the north mainly support sheep rather than cattle, and Janhlira customarily wear wool over-clothes rather than linen.

The smiths of Sraiyag Vacan are the most skilled of their craft among the humans of Kerlonna, largely due to the unique history of Vacani cooperation with nonhuman races. In the aftermath of Yenatar’s victory, when the heroism of men was still fresh in the minds of the other races, the dwarves whose saighes lay within the new nation offered to impart some of their knowledge. The Vacani smiths were trained to create fine steel, reinforced swords, and plate armour, which were largely undeveloped within the Marnic Federation. As such, despite the loss of the design of old Marnic weapons (such as the arcuballista and the fire-spout), the Vacani nonetheless have a superior arsenal compared to that of any other human nation. Only within Sraiyag Vacan is plate armour created: it is akin to the design of Marnic breastplates, but adapted for the entire body from head to foot, providing the highest degree of protection (although it can get hatefully warm inside the metal after a while). This plate armour is incredibly expensive, to be sure, but the fact that it can be produced at all is a testament to the expertise of Vacani blacksmiths.

After Najivano, Sraiyag Vacan is perhaps the most important area for traders in Kerlonna, in part due to its central location, but, even more importantly, because of the safety within the nation. Bandits are almost unknown, and piracy in the Akulap Sea has recently been completely eradicated. Traders are eager to come to Sraiyag Vacan, for here they may bring their wares without fear of human or orcish agency working against them. In particular, land caravans from Drecitou come to Sraiyag Vacan before they come to Najivano, in part because it is closer and in part because the threat of orcish attack is so great once one has left the Heiśêglu for the southern plains. Though the military atmospheres of the Vacani cities are intimidating, they are also quite comforting: common pickpockets are considerably less common in Oksyrs than they are in another city of comparable size.

=Culture=

The human Vacani culture is a heady and heterogeneous brew, and is rather composed of three cultures united by a national ideology and government. Unlike the Drecitouns, who assimilated the native Elutapi into their Marnic culture and fused the two to create a homogeneous “Drecitoun Marnic” identity, the Janhlira, Usiytak, and Vacani Marnic have retained separate identities, languages, and religions. One of the most remarkable aspects of Vacani life is that these three cultures coexist with ease and comfort. In most nations, one particular ethnicity eventually becomes oppressively dominant (as happened in the Marnic Federation, and still happens in Idroslekh), eventually sparking rebellions and further repression, destabilising the nation. In Sraiyag Vacan, the relations between the three peoples are equable and amicable: the Usiytak are perhaps seen as curiously introverted and rustic, but they are not treated with the superstitious contempt that most Drecitouns feel for the Telvyurt in their lands.

One of the more curious features of Vacani life is how different customs can be transmitted from one human culture to another, with a concrete example given here. Among the Janhlira of the Federal Era, a widespread custom in battle was, after a victory, to shave the sides of the head while leaving a strip of long hair in the middle, which was spiked with the blood of the fallen foe. The Marnics found it to be a barbaric and unnerving custom, but when Yenatar Malkerian became leader of a united Marnic and Janhlira force, his legionaries began adopting the practice. As the years passed to the present era, it became highly common among Vacani soldiers to create such a “war-crest”, although the length of the hair was shortened somewhat. Furthermore, they no longer use human or orcish blood, but instead the grease of animal meat. Such is the popularity of the war-crest that many now stereotypically associate it with the image of the Vacani soldier (when not wearing his helmet). Another example is among the Janhlira nobility, who have picked up the custom, from the Marnics, of the Lord of a House wearing steel ear-pendants that are engraved with the name of his line, rendered calligraphically.

The Marnics of Sraiyag Vacan do not differ greatly from their cousins dispersed by the Exodus. They preserve the same distinct customs: earrings for both sexes; highly braided beards; the propitiation of the Eleven Gods of Ronosai; the literary tradition of the Five Sagas of Marnoz; and so on. Perhaps the only difference to be noted among the Vacani Marnics is that their emphasis on hierarchy and authority is less focused upon the family than upon the military and the state. Filial piety, while deeply valued in their culture, has to some extent been subverted by patriotism and hero-worship for Yenatar Malkerian. When, during lunar festivals, the Marnics of Sraiyag Vacan enter their family temples and begin making offerings to their ancestors, the ceremony always includes thanksgiving to the Exalt-General, their national and racial saviour. It is a curious inversion of the state of affairs to have been found in old Marnoz that the most bloodcurdling punishments, once inflicted upon patricides and matricides, have now instead been relegated to serve as punishment for treason, while the punishments for the murder of parents have been slightly lessened. In a way, Yenatar Malkerian is the ultimate patriarchal figure: he is quite openly referred to by the Vacani as “the Father.”

The Janhlira have withstood Marnic conquest, attempts at cultural assimilation during the Federal Era, the Great Orc-Wars, and the Little Orc-War with patient endurance. They are famous for their stubbornness: the Vacani Marnic lord Italkus Norsayen was once heard to say, “Give me ten thousand Janhlira and a ship to the heavens, and they will stop the sun!” During the Federal Era, they were among the most successful resistances to the Marnic conquests, not because of geographical advantage as with the Parumya or terrorist warfare as with the Elutapi, but because of their formidable discipline. A Marnic idiom, “To break Janhlira ranks,” means, “To achieve a surprising success.” Unlike the Marnic custom of wearing leggings under a flowing, robe-like coat, the Janhlira wear kilts and leather jackets that are usually brightly coloured. Their culture was considered brutish and primitive by their Marnic conquerors, their nobility a band of warlords and their language harsh and unpronounceable. The worst aspect of the Janhlira culture, in antique Marnic eyes, was their insistence on raising spirited rebellions against anyone they found oppressive: short-lived was the Marnic Governor of a Janhlira province that treated his subjects with disdain. Yet it was precisely their “primitive” contentiousness that made them, among the peoples of Kerlonna, particularly prepared for the advent of the Great Orc-Wars. The Janhlira did not buckle under the orcish attack as did the Elutapi, but instead began fighting back quite spiritedly, drawing the attention of the invaders. While it was Yenatar’s genius and the devotion of his legionaries that truly repelled the orcish forces, they could never have done it without the fighting spirit of the Janhlira at their side. They are also notable for the robust nature of their politics: when there are family feuds, they are usually resolved by a feisty fistfight. Among the Janhlira, honesty is paramount and wry compliments unmanly. They are generally seen as a healthy counterbalance to the refined and subtle Marnics, but Drecitouns find them rather rude. The Janhlira are broad of chest, short and fair-skinned, with round, long-nosed faces, blonde or red hair, and blue or grey eyes.

The Usiytak are little known outside of the nation of Sraiyag Vacan, for they are the smallest human population there and, in some respects, they deliberately avoid excessive contact with the outside world. They are perhaps most succinctly characterised by their name in the Janhlira tongues, Seivkrait-zi, “the Shadow People.” Due to their habitation in the misty Lisredvo Hills, where summer is little hotter than an Injili winter, they wear thick, warm clothing, especially furs and thick boots. They are known especially for the wearing of hoods that often obscure their features in shadow, and long cloaks to ward off rain. They are reticent and, unlike the Janhlira, in no way a boisterous folk. Their culture is curious among the civilised humans of Kerlonna in that it lacks noble bloodlines. Rule in an Usiytak community is determined by the ždalvrim, the “folk-meet” of community members, which is guided by the elders and which reaches decisions democratically. While once they were dispersed across all of what is now northern Sraiyag Vacan, when the Great Orc-Wars came they naturally withdrew to their strongholds in the Lisredvo, where the orcs had no chance of besting them on the field of battle. As a result, even accounting that their population was very small compared to those of the Janhlira and the Marnics, they suffered the least proportion of casualties of the three peoples. They are an austere people with little interest in the outside world beyond their hilly homeland. If the Marnic people seeks to shine as a glittering jewel, then the Usiytak nation is content to be as rugged and common as stone. They thrive best when they are not interfered with, as their customs and language are very remote from those of the Janhlira and the Marnics. They are notable for their remarkable physical and linguistic similarities to the Telvyurt, the indigenous peoples of the Burtajao Hills in southern Drecitou, such that there is speculation that they are remnants of a more ancient human race that once dwelt across all of northern Kerlonna, but is now confined to the most remote regions therein. They are tall and usually brown-haired and green or blue eyed, with large eyes, small noses, and skin that tends to freckle in the sun rather than tan.

<p style="text-indent:.5in">If there is a common culture that the Vacani present when they travel abroad, it can best be described as “sincere.” They are known for their honesty, both as a moral virtue and as a bluntness of language, and for their peculiar proselytising in the name of Yenatar Malkerian as their liege lord and Exalt-General. While the individual faith of a Vacani can vary tremendously as regards the Father of their nation, all of them keenly feel his honour as their own. If it is insulted, they will fight readily. The Vacani may be seen as overly strict and warlike by the other peoples, but they are also known for their steadfastness as warriors and as traders. If Vacani traders have made a promise to cross the Kruvates Plains to Drecitou every year, they will do it even if a screaming storm should howl down upon them from the north for a month. Their seeming rigidity is not so pervasive as the Drecitouns like to depict, but it is certainly true that the Vacani prefer to work within a system of order and simplicity rather than a confusing welter of things. This can even be seen in their arts: they tend towards a minimalism and forcefulness of style, such that the central theme of the artwork “leaps out” at the viewer.

<p style="text-indent:.5in">The spirit of the Vacani is something in the way of defiant optimism. Their nation was born from the horror and devastation of the Great Orc-Wars, when Yenatar Malkerian and his warriors struggled against all odds to guard what was left of their world. Stories of the Wars are told throughout Sraiyag Vacan both to illustrate the darkness that has fallen on the world, and to glorify the example of Yenatar and his New Legions. Though all was black as night, mankind survived, and indeed drove the orcs back to the sea and drowned them in their own blood. The Vacani thus tend to look at the world with sober hope. They know how dreadful Kerlonna has become since the fall of the Federation, but they also firmly believe that they can raise a beacon of their own, and that as long as there are those who do not despair, the world will survive. Thus, in their perpetual war against the orcs, the Vacani do not grow grim and defeated in spirit, but relish the battle, going after their foe time and time again, and celebrating those who fall as heroes of the realm. They are perhaps one of the only peoples in Kerlonna who have come to truly enjoy war, for in it they may prove their loyalty to Yenatar Malkerian. They are not barbaric or savage in their pursuance of it, however, but are moderate, strategic, and willing to give quarter to any non-orc who truthfully requests it. The propagation of religious fervour among the ranks of military officers and professional (as opposed to conscript) soldiers contributes greatly to this. They fight for their High Priestess the Queen, for their people, and for the love of Ganrelka and Stomġuñ, and not for coin merely, as their predecessors in the Federal Legions came to do in the final days of the Marnic Era.

<p style="text-indent:.5in">One of the cruxes of Yenatar’s “new society” was that nonhumans are only different from mankind in negligible ways, and that their commonalities were far greater. As a result, racial prejudices in Sraiyag Vacan are generally far milder than are found elsewhere in the world. Halflings elsewhere are often distrusted as cheats, thieves, and sneaks, but they fought with distinction upon the backs of their Madradh dogs in times of old, and nowadays they are treated fairly and trustfully by the merchants and low people of Sraiyag Vacan. The presence of stiff legal punishments, up to execution, for anyone who molests a caravan may have something to do with this. The elves, dwarves, and gnomes, too, are seen with more trust among the Vacani than among other humans. Their worlds remain puzzlingly remote, of course, but the Vacani accept the nonhumans as simply following different customs, and not as being “fiendish” or “savage.” Amazingly, some Vacani humans have even earned enough respect among the elves as to trade with them, which is extremely profitable due to the perfection of elvish craftwork, which these merchants can sell among human markets. As noted above, half-elves are very common in Sraiyag Vacan, to such an extent that they have established extended family lineages and rural communities of their own people, and are seen with neighbourly respect by the local humans. Half-orcs, naturally, have something of a tougher time of it, but really, the half-orcs in Sraiyag Vacan are better off than those to be found anywhere else. While perhaps the lancers of Drecitou are well treated and respected in their own way, they are slaves nonetheless, and the low people are terrified of them. Half-orcs in the uncivilised lands of Kerlonna are commonly subjected to the treatment of animals, or simply driven out into the wilds. The Vacani half-orcs, on the other hand, are free citizens of the kingdom, mainly dwelling in farming communities in the Janhlira Thede, where they have adopted the languages and customs of the Janhlira humans (whose psyche is perhaps closer to that of a half-orc than the psyche of a Marnic). Half-orc villagers remember well whom they have to thank for their good fortune, and half-orcish members of the New Legion are among its most fanatical.

=Religion=

When the nation of Sraiyag Vacan was being founded, one of the most unusual events that took place was during the death of Father Nauzra, empowered in the line of Akuerdi, in FY 18 from old age. The former Temple-Master in the city of Herarzä, he had fled the city shortly before the most devastating orcish attack led to the desecration of the fane there in FY 9, several months before the Ruin of Marnoz. For nine years in the Janhlira provinces, Nauzra had become venerated as the highest-empowered Ronosai priest, with limited clerical healing magic and an encyclopaedic knowledge of both ritual and spiritual teaching. As the Great Orc-Wars drew to a close, the octogenarian Father Nauzra obviously began to decline in health. His sorrowful followers, who had envisioned him being named to the highest office of a new Vacani Ronosai, besought his disclosure as to whom would next be empowered in the line of Akuerdi. The line of Akuerdi was one of only seven lines to have survived unbroken from the establishment of the Temple in Marnoz to the end of the Great Orc-Wars, and of these the second-most senior after the line of Oleansar, which has since relocated to Eädreñ. However, Father Nauzra demurred for two years, always informing his disciples that he was divining the intent of the gods. Finally, in the spring of FY 18, as his heart slowly failed him, the eighty-seven year old priest met with Yenatar Malkerian secretly in the inner sanctuary of the newly built Great Temple at Oksyrs, where he empowered the soon-to-be Lord-Commander of Sraiyag Vacan as the next Scion in the line, and anointed him as the Temple-Master of Oksyrs. Father Nauzra announced the news to his followers a week later, and died four hours later. Yenatar Malkerian was now not only the Lord-Commander of the gestating nation, but its High Priest as well.

<p style="text-indent:.5in">Naturally, there were a few rumours in what would soon become Drecitou that the Exalt-General had ordered Father Nauzra to empower him, but these soon faded in light of how astonished Yenatar was by the news as everyone else. He said in honest perplexity, “How on earth am I to be sworn in as the Lord-Commander if I am also officiating the ceremony? Do I use a mirror?” Priests in Oksyrs eventually puzzled out a ceremony wherein the Eparch of the Cult of Ganrelka would grant Yenatar Malkerian the White-Spear in his secular authority as Lord-Commander, while all eleven of the Cultic Eparches would name him as the High Priest of Sraiyag Vacan. The two coronations were attended by hundreds of thousands of people due to its twofold significance, and the bells of the Great Temple of Oksyrs rang all night in celebration. However, Yenatar always felt privately uncomfortable with his authority as the High Priest, and tried to leave the matter of day-to-day clerical governance to the lower ranks of the priesthood. Nonetheless, he saw that it was greatly beneficial to hold the highest temporal and spiritual offices at the same time, for it rendered his authority that much more concrete among the low people. Furthermore, Yenatar Malkerian sincerely believed that he was indeed a Scion of Akuerdi. Upon his deathbed in FY 73, he made an important decision to keep the highest spiritual office within his House, when he named his daughter Gilraen as the next Scion of Akuerdi and thus the High Priestess. When she, in turn, lay dying in 125, she named her nephew Vauduyat, already three years the Lord-Commander of the Realm, as the next High Priest. He empowered his sister Selladanzi seventy years later as the High Priestess a few days before his death. Which of the twin brothers Drasven and Karnutel will be named as the next High Priest of Sraiyag Vacan, however, remains to be seen.

<p style="text-indent:.5in">Naturally, the Marnics practice an orthodox variety of Ronosai with not much to distinguish it from Ronosai practised elsewhere, aside from the notable position of a member of the royal family as High Priest or Priestess. What are more unusual about religion in Sraiyag Vacan are the practices of the Janhlira, who have hybridised Ronosai with their native beliefs. When the Marnic Federation was first establishing control over the Janhlira, its policy of all subjugated peoples was to require that they both accept the worldly authority of Marnoz, and pay reverence to its gods. The Janhlira, adopting this new polytheistic practice, did not simply discard their own deities, but rather adapted them to fit Marnic expectations, and eventually conflated the two. The Janhlira adopted the worship of the eleven gods, but gave them the names, idols, and myths of Janhlira deities: Lüvesser, the goddess of healing; Jealda, the King of the Sky; and so forth. They clung on tenaciously to human sacrifice until the early sixth century of the Marnic Era, and still practice animal sacrifice far more frequently than is done in Marnic Ronosai. The most important sacrifice takes place during harvest season, when the throats of bulls are cut and their blood is sprinkled upon wheat fields to thank the gods for the year’s crop. The Janhlira of Sraiyag Vacan are somewhat more moderate than their cousins in Kivlepra, who have revived the practices of human sacrifice upon the solstice nights. The Janhlira tend to be extremely superstitious, insisting that priests rub their saliva on their swords to keep them sharp in battle, having a terror of any dog that has blue eyes, and other such foibles.

<p style="text-indent:.5in">The Usiytak are a monotheistic people, admitting the existence of other gods but only paying homage to their tribal deity, Ezbarri, who is their cultural hero and ancestor. According to the Usiytak, Ezbarri walked out of the northern sky and adopted the first humans he encountered as his people, and he taught them how to hunt, farm, and speak. There are no records of the historicity of this character whatsoever, but he is honoured among all Usiytak, and it is interesting to note that until recent times their seeming cousins, the Telvyurt, also maintained a hero-cult vaguely reminiscent of that of the Usiytak. The Usiytak tend to worship Ezbarri not so much by rites and rituals as by their deeds and by recitation of the sagas that recount his innumerable exploits. The Usiytak are also animistic, and have many shrines throughout their lands propitiating various spirits of river, rock, and tree, much as the elves and primitive humans of Kerlonna also do.

<p style="text-indent:.5in">One of the most curious features of Vacani religious life is the cult of Yenatar Malkerian, which first emerged while he was still alive around the year FY 40, when rustic Janhlira priests in the far southwest of Sraiyag Vacan began creating crude statues of the “Eastern Lord” and adorning them with garlands of flowers. When the news emerged that people were worshipping Yenatar as a god, he took an official journey to this remote area of his kingdom, where he declared (in the local Janhlira dialect, no less) that he was no divinity, and that the people were better off revering the eleven gods as they had always done. The humbled Janhlira agreed, but reports began filtering from the most rural corners of the kingdom that more “cults of the Exalt-General” were emerging with each passing year. Eventually, Yenatar gave up on attempting dissuading these people, who were illiterate and simply grateful for what he had done for them. However, in the cities of Sraiyag Vacan, it was a fined offence to worship the king. After Yenatar’s death, the fine was dropped, because the newly enthroned Talvenat Malkerian assumed that as the years passed, the religious fervour would fade away. However, it was not so. The practice became increasingly common with every decade, until eventually, the reports stopped occurring, for nobody found it remarkable any longer to report on such a widespread practice among the low people of rural Sraiyag Vacan. The cult has continued to spread since that time, with most rural communities now keeping a statue of the Exalt-General among the other eleven, and praying to him whenever it is heard that orcs are attacking. Indeed, during the Little Orc-War, many soldiers from the rural districts took to growing out their beard in the same exact style as Yenatar had done, and attempted to “call down” his favour as they fought. In modern times, the practice is even gaining credence among the poor folk of cities, and among the rural nobility of Sraiyag Vacan. In worship, he is commonly called by the name Orfgengr, which is a corruption of the Janhlira Orkefgängr, “orc’s-blight”. Though no official cult or Eparch has emerged to proclaim him, the worship of Orfgengr still spreads.

=Language=

The primary languages of Sraiyag Vacan are the Janhlira tongues and what is known as the Vacani Marnic language. The Vacani Marnic language is, of course, one of the two primary branches of Vulgar Marnic in the modern world, and is found among both the Marnics and the Janhlira of Sraiyag Vacan. Vacani Marnic is still primarily similar to its Vulgar Marnic taproot, but its pronunciation has been altered due to its adoption by the Janhlira, and words from the native lexicon have slowly made their way into the language. The result is a language with the sophistication of the Marnic, but some of the elemental strength of the Janhlira. Vacani Marnic is among the most important languages of the modern era, and is still mutually intelligible with Drecitoun Marnic. However, as the years have passed, it has become clear that the two languages are growing farther and farther apart, and eventually they will lose all intelligibility to one another, becoming simply Vacani and Drecitoun, respectively. As the standard language of communication, therefore, Old Marnic is more popular, for it is far more resistant to the vagaries of history. All royal functions and proclamations are done in Old Marnic, as is almost all poetry and historical record keeping. The Vacani Marnic language is spoken as a first language by all Marnics of the nation, as well as about a third of its Janhlira and perhaps fifteen percent of its Usiytak. The rest of the Janhlira and Usiytak continue to speak their native languages at home, and most of these do not know the Vacani Marnic language due to the lack of formal education in the rural districts. Those people who live within regions where Vacani Marnic is spoken are unusual among the humans of Kerlonna in that male literacy is almost universal. This stems from a fundamentally military purpose: some men are perfectly capable foot-runners, but are stupid and forgetful as stones. Therefore, to solve the problem, all men are taught to read and to write so as to be able to carry messages amongst one another on the field of battle. The rural folk of Sraiyag Vacan thus treat books and scrolls far more reverently than folk to be found elsewhere, because they are aware of just how precious such objects are. The main style of writing in Sraiyag Vacan is far simpler than the ornate calligraphy common among the Drecitouns, and is instead a “squared-off” style, clearly legible and standardised throughout the nation. The Janhlira-speaking low people are largely illiterate, but their nobility are not, and the Janhlira have largely codified their myths and histories into writing since the beginning of the Free Era. The nobilities, both Marnic and Janhlira, cherish a more elegant style of writing than is the common mode, with swoops, curls, and illuminated letters depicting various fanciful creatures.

=History=

For millennia, the land that is now Sraiyag Vacan was a forested wilderness inhabited only by tribes of Usiytak and the ancestral Janhlira, where the fogs lay thick and wolves ran free. It was peaceful and lonely, untouched by the cares to be found in the more civilised environs of Idroslekh and the Tlankuram. The Janhlira fought amongst each other valiantly and truly, and it was an age of heroes and of myth. As with all such things, it came to an end, mainly through the influence of the Marnics. Those records that tell of the “Janhlira lands” say that it was wild and uncharted territory where the native tribes knew nothing of writing, mathematics, or philosophy. As the Marnic Federation began to expand throughout the second century, they sent many traders to this strange country, for it had plentiful and productive mines, broad forests full of furred creatures, and other such attractions for civilised men. However, the Janhlira were temperamental traders, for their tribal warfare often made them hostile to all outsiders and migratory, leaving behind their former trading posts. They were, however, drawn by the promise of gold in the Marches of Smoke to contribute several thousand of their soldiers. Those few hundreds that returned reported of a world of amazing sights far beyond what they had ever expected, and provided the first connection between the Janhlira and the outside world that would lead to their eventual defeat by the Marnics. These rural and doughty warriors had seen an army that was far beyond their own strength, the Marnic Federal Legions, and they keenly understood that the Marnics would not simply stop at the defeat of the drow, but would continue until they had subjugated all of the world that they could. Therefore, when the Janhlira veterans of the Marches of Smoke had returned to their homeland, they spent a great deal of time rallying different tribes to their cause, restructuring the very nature of Janhlira society as they began to form powerful kingdoms, all with the purpose of fending off the impending Marnic invasion. Great armies were raised where once there had been disunited tribal bands and swords and helmets of iron were crafted for the first time. They awaited the coming war.

<p style="text-indent:.5in">Yet all the preparation of the Janhlira tribes came too early. For decades the Marnics paid no attention to the land of the Owamtu, for their attention was occupied with the defeat of more immediate opponents: the K’usar in the south, the Parumya in the north, and particularly the Elutapi in the northeast. After the Marnic Federation had successfully defeated the Elutapi and conquered Drecitou in MY 268, its attention turned then northward. After only a year of fighting, however, the Marnics realised that the reason the Parumya were so entrenched was that they were able to migrate to and take refuge within Janhlira territories. Therefore, the Marnics chose to invade the land of the Janhlira at last in MY 270.

<p style="text-indent:.5in">Compared to the resistance raised by the Elutapi, the Janhlira Wars were far more straightforward, but deadly, for the Marnics. The discipline and cohesiveness of the defending forces only spurred the Marnic generals onward, for they knew that if they left this people alone, it would eventually become a powerful group of kingdoms that could seriously challenge the Federation’s position in the middle-north of Kerlonna. The battle was pressed onwards despite mounting losses, and for thirteen years, the legionaries pressed deep into the Janhlira lands. The Janhlira, unlike the K’usar of the south, did not defect to the invading force at any time, but continued raising formidable resistance until their forces were completely defeated. They were, however, honourable foes, and once they signed their treaties of surrender, they made no further trouble for the Marnic invaders, who, after all, did not seek to destroy them, but merely to anneal them to a greater whole. By MY 283, the last of the Janhlira forces had been driven to the shores of the Rajimtar Sea by the Legions. During this entire period of war, the Usiytak had had nothing to do with it, but had quietly met with the Marnics and steadily made concessions to the conquering southern men, until, by the time that the Janhlira were defeated, the Usiytak had allowed themselves to become subjects of Marnoz in full. Thus ended the Janhlira Wars.

<p style="text-indent:.5in">During the more than three centuries that followed, the Janhlira territories became something of a backwater. The highroads of the south were far more well-frequented, the seaways between Owamdüss (the land of Owamtu, the traditional Janhlira name for their lands) and Idroslekh too full of pirates and fog to merit establishing them as regular trade routes to northern Idroslekh. Owamdüss remained secluded and underdeveloped while the other regions of the Federation blossomed with wealth. Mostly the Janhlira were content with this state of affairs, as it allowed their culture to remain independent of Marnic influences. However, they tolerated no interference from meddling outlander Governors. The Janhlira territories eventually became something of a conundrum with the Federal government in Marnoz: profitable in resources, but useless for trade; obedient taxpayers, but incorrigible nationalists. It was generally decided that the best approach was to deliberately keep the place quiet, for if its native folk were so restive, then if they were to become wealthy they might well turn upon their masters. Rebellion was ever a recurrent problem in the Owamdüss, but it never approached the degree of outright secession. In time, the underdevelopment of the Janhlira provinces worked to the advantage of the Marnics: as the Tlankuram became overcrowded, some of the wealthiest Marnic noblemen established estates in the Owamdüss, which was charmingly secluded and rural. The whole place eventually gained a reputation for pastoral beauty, becoming a stock landscape in latter-day Marnic art for rural retreats and noble shepherds. Though the Janhlira never fully settled down under the Marnic regime, they eventually grew less openly seditious, instead choosing to simply avoid these Marnic estates.

<p style="text-indent:.5in">When the orcs began their cataclysmic invasion of Kerlonna, as they sailed down from Taresani, they first struck the Drecitoun coast and then radiated out along the shorelines from there. As the Kruvates Plains and the Northern Highlands were generally unsatisfying targets with few sedentary human villages to attack, the orcs quickly skipped over these regions and soon came to the Kalensi River. Their assault on the Janhlira, in early 605, was both rapid and devastating, but they found, to their annoyance, that the local humans were far tougher than the Elutapi whom they had terrorised in Drecitou. The native resistance was ferocious (it soon became a rite of passage for Janhlira boys to bring home an orcish head on a spear), and the orcish forces were growing more dispersed and thus their penetration of enemy lines was not as quick as it had been in the east. To compound the unfortunate circumstances for the orcs, due to political manoeuvring among hostile factions in the Marnic military, Yenatar Malkerian was relocated from his post in the Àŋerwoi, east of Cil Adasiga, to Owamdüss, to aid the local resistance to the orcs.

<p style="text-indent:.5in">While his rivals had sought to simply put the man far beyond influencing the Senates by relocating him to one of the most rural and unimportant regions of the Federation, Yenatar instead began to quickly show himself to be nothing short of a genius. He was the first Marnic commander to realise the guerrilla, rather than conventional, nature of orcish attacks, and how to counteract them by forcing the orcs into conventional military battles. He struck up alliances with the Janhlira chieftains, and bulled through any that tried to manipulate the situation for their own benefit, informing them flatly that they were fighting for the very survival of their people. Indeed, part of Yenatar’s success seems to have been that he intimately understood cultural differences, and when he was among the Janhlira, he learned to speak their language and, more importantly, to act just as they did. Furthermore, he made his armies highly mobile, so that they would be able to pursue the orcs far beyond the reach of his stronghold at the Rook (in what is now Oksyrs), and push back the orcs in a wide radius about the city. In this way, he became famed throughout Owamdüss, and respected by all.

<p style="text-indent:.5in">As the months of Yenatar’s stationing in the Janhlira provinces turned to years, the original provincial system of governance in the Federation began to fall apart. In the case of Owamdüss, the Governors of the several provinces there left their old estates and came to the Rook, where they generally deferred their decision-making (unofficially, of course) to the Malkerian general. The Janhlira chieftains, too, began to consult Yenatar, finding that he was not only a brilliant military leader, but possessed of all the instincts and common sense needed in a statesman, even though he had no political experience. Here one can begin to observe the gestation of what would become Sraiyag Vacan: both Marnics and Janhlira found themselves at an equal footing, for the first time in centuries, before the authority of this strange general who, though born of Marnoz, seemed to be of every culture rather than the Marnics alone. Indeed, after his original lieutenant was killed in battle, Yenatar did not name another Marnic to the position, but instead chose a Janhlira commoner, by the name of Shepyarin.

<p style="text-indent:.5in">When, in Marnic Year 610 (what would later be reckoned as Free Year 5), Yenatar Malkerian was told by the Senates to surrender all “deserters” to Marnoz and sign an oath of loyalty to the Federation, he reacted in incredulous rage, refusing to do both. He was labelled a traitor to the Federation, as were all those under his command who did not defect back to the authority of Marnoz. The Marnics of Owamdüss, horrified at the blindness of their government, agonised somewhat over the decision, but almost all of them, and certainly all of Yenatar’s close advisors, chose to remain with their commander. The Janhlira, on the other hand, regarded the whole thing as rather hilarious, and happily declared the secession of their people from the Federation and named Yenatar Malkerian as their liege lord. At about this same time, the Usiytak began sending messengers to the Rook from the Lisredvo Hills, offering soldiers and military outposts in their region in exchange for help with the orcish threat. Thus, even though Yenatar was shunned by the highest echelons of power, his influence only grew.

<p style="text-indent:.5in">For three years, the struggle continued. Yenatar repeatedly refrained from summoning his family to Owamdüss, thinking them safer back home near Marnoz. However, the Federation was failing, slowly fragmenting into its constituent territories as Idroslekh, the Sea of Injil, and the Twelve Isles seceded. The reputation of the “Exile General” had spread across the continent, and despite desperate attempts by the government to demean his character, he was becoming something of a living myth among the people of Marnoz. Yenatar came to realise that he now probably exerted more influence over Kerlonna than did any other single person alive, and so, he sent out a message to the Tlankuram: any Marnics that chose to come to his realm in Owamdüss would be received as friends and allies in the Great Orc-Wars. Several months later, as Marnic Year 614 (Free Year 9) began, and a flood of Marnic refugees had already made a treacherous winter journey to the Janhlira territories, one of the Twelve High Houses of Marnoz, Sakvaru, defected. This was the final blow to the sovereignty of the Senates, and everything erupted. The patriarch of Sakvaru was assassinated; open battle broke out in the streets of Marnoz between the two factions; and Yenatar contemplated summoning his family to Owamdüss. However, a vicious orcish attack in the northern lands convinced him that, for the while, his children, wife, and parents were safe in Marnoz. He also greeted a noblewoman named Daniira Navgarst in Free Year 9, but paid little heed to a prophetic nightmare of hers.

<p style="text-indent:.5in">When Marnoz fell in Free Year 10, and the news reached Yenatar, he left his post to the control of Shepyarin, and thus began a long period in Owamdüss where Yenatar was only sporadically in the Janhlira territories where he had built his reputation. At first Shepyarin felt optimistic, that Yenatar would return before the year was done and he would bring news that the destruction of Marnoz had not been as severe as the despairing reports had told. However, the weeks lengthened, and Shepyarin struggled to hold the forces together: the orcish attacks were growing worse than ever, and though he was almost as genius a commander as Yenatar, the Janhliran lieutenant simply did not have enough men to drive the orcs back. They had grown entrenched on the Kalensi River and driven the Janhlira out of the region, turning it into a fortress of their own. Eventually, terrible news came from the soldiers who had accompanied Yenatar: the general had received a blow to the head and begun ranting about how he had to go to Ezluthai, the near-mythical and unreachable city of the Nyadegtaan. Shepyarin was horrified, for his leader had gone mad and been lost in the wilds. There was nothing left but bloody struggle, the lieutenant decided. He would keep this news from his men, for they would die soon, and better to die thinking that there was still hope.

<p style="text-indent:.5in">Yet, only a week before Shepyarin planned his suicidal assault on the Kalensi River, the impossible occurred: Yenatar teleported to the Rook with a group of Nyadegtaan sorcerers. Shepyarin could not have been more surprised if the orcs had begun wearing lady’s dresses and flirting with his troops. Such a miracle was beyond anything that the Last Legion, as it had become known, thought it could have hoped. So it came to pass that although Shepyarin did pursue his attack upon the Kalensi River, it was not anything near suicidal, but an overwhelming success: eight hundred Nyadegtaan sorcerers and paladins teleported directly to the field of battle and helped destroy the orcish forces there utterly. The Slaughter of the Kalensi was a cause for rejoicing across Owamdüss, and several months later, in the winter of FY 11, the orcs were entirely eradicated from the Janhlira provinces at last. How strange, said the people, that only less than a year after Marnoz fell, such triumph and blessings should come upon them.

<p style="text-indent:.5in">However, Yenatar did not choose to stop with the salvation of Owamdüss, but instead began his greatest journey. The Last Legion had become the New Legions with the aid of the Nyadegtaan, and, having achieved what everyone else thought was only a wild fantasy by winning such an alliance, Yenatar now sought to exceed even that and win the alliances of every people in Kerlonna. He envisioned a new alliance that would sweep the orcs out of the world and rebuild a new and better Federation from the ashes of Marnoz. To this end, he named Shepyarin the interim ruler of Owamdüss, and declared that he would be absent for several years as he travelled the continent, gaining allies. That very winter, Yenatar said farewell to the land that he had saved from destruction, and left for Idroslekh.

<p style="text-indent:.5in">With the end of the local orcish threat, Owamdüss prospered under Shepyarin’s leadership. He was not so great a statesman as Yenatar, but he was successful enough that no real problems arose: anyone that seriously objected to his leadership, he offered to expel into the orcish wilds, and that was the end of their objections. His most important decision was to begin granting the refugee Marnic nobility estates in the Owamtu River Valley and southern plains, where vast tracts of territory had been left empty after their inhabitants were killed or driven off by the orcs. In effect, Shepyarin established the multi-ethnic nature of the nation to come by fairly treating Marnics, Usiytak, and Janhlira, despite himself being pure Janhlira. When he received great praise for his work, he humbly deferred all of the laudation to his absent lord, who was always out on some epic quest somewhere in Kerlonna. Controversially, Shepyarin followed the example of Yenatar in not discriminating against the creatures produced by orcish rapes of human women, the half-orcs, instead naming them equal to any man and recruiting them to his nation.

<p style="text-indent:.5in">The history of Owamdüss during the rest of the Great Orc-Wars is surprisingly negligible. Most of the major battles fought during the Reclamation took place in the Tlankuram Basin and in Drecitou, and there was virtually no fighting in what is now Sraiyag Vacan at all. What is important for the history of the nation is how, when the Reclamation ended with the Second Battle of Serlau and the destruction of the orcish armies in Free Year 16, Yenatar was rebuffed by his allies. They were proud, they said, to have defeated the orcs at his side, and they named him Exalt-General, but the Federation could not be restored. Too many lives were destroyed; too many links had been broken. The nonhumans had little interest in establishing an alliance with humans; the different nations of mankind trusted one another little in the wake of the secessions that had helped defeat Marnoz. In monumental frustration and sadness, Yenatar realised that the Federation was lost forever. He announced that he would be returning to his territories, and that anyone who wished to follow him would be granted citizenship. He then returned to his fortress at the Rook.

<p style="text-indent:.5in">For the next three years, Yenatar began structuring his new nation. The Rook was transformed from the fortress and refugee camp it had been before into a mighty castle-city, complete with a Great Temple of Ronosai. The land was divided into the ethnic territories of thedes, and the surviving remnants of his New Legion were established as the new nation’s military. He claimed most of Owamdüss, Kalensidüss (land of Kalensi), and the Lisredvo Hills as part of his realm, which he named Sraiyag Vacan, after the Saruyg-Väc that had established Marnoz in centuries past. In Free Year 17, he married the noblewoman Daniira Navgarst, and, as mentioned above, he was surprisingly anointed as the future High Priest of Sraiyag Vacan by Father Nauzra. In Free Year 19, after two decades of having bled, wept, and triumphed with the people of the Janhlira territories, Yenatar Malkerian was crowned as the Lord Malkerian, the Exalt-General, the Father of the Realm, Lord-Commander of Sraiyag Vacan. Most of the nation was hung over the next morning.

<p style="text-indent:.5in">So began the proper history of Sraiyag Vacan. In Free Year 22, the crown prince was born to national celebration, and was named Talvenat after Yenatar’s military tutor from High House Uñkices (by that time extinct). There had been some controversy among the ranks of the nobility as to when the king would get about to begetting an heir, an issue that would be recurrent with House Malkerian. Its members have always seemed peculiarly unproductive when it comes to children, though nobody knows quite why, and almost none have had the offensive temerity to ask in public. However, in the case of Daniira Malkerian, three years after Talvenat she brought forth a second son, Kutielrig, and in FY 27 a daughter, Gilraen. There was great concern among the higher nobility of Sraiyag Vacan and the governments of foreign powers such as Drecitou that the nation of Sraiyag Vacan relied too heavily on the personality of Yenatar Malkerian, and that in the wake of his death, the kingdom would rapidly fall apart before an orcish onslaught. However, this concern was soon observed to be false, as the children grew older. Talvenat proved to have his father’s near-genius intellect and benevolence, Kutielrig his military skill and force of will, and Gilraen his charisma and courteous diplomatic skill. At the same time, Yenatar and Daniira moulded their children into the roles most appropriate for them. Kutielrig was enlisted into the ranks of military officers as soon as he was of age, Talvenat was inundated with legal codes and sent to travel around his father’s kingdom, and Gilraen was sent to the Drecitoun royal court at Olea when she was only ten years old.

<p style="text-indent:.5in">In FY 30, trade across the Rajimtar and Akulap Seas had become far more brisk than it had in the Marnic Era, due mainly to the danger of using overland routes in the south. To handle this trade, the cities of Cirthwaen and Eonrig were founded along the nation’s coast. At this time, the ethnic populations of Sraiyag Vacan finally began to settle into their modern format. In FY 33, Yenatar declared that a great stretch of forest in the northwestern region of the nation, bordering the Lisredvo Hills, would be entrusted to those displaced elves that still dwelt scattered amidst the rural communities of the kingdom. This was a particular brilliant proposition of his, for the elves had been agitating for a forest somewhere, and most at the time had dwelt in central Sraiyag Vacan, which had caused much conflict with the native humans. With the establishment of the Forest of the Gift, Yenatar won fierce loyalty from the elves within the nation. There were some Usiytak communities dwelling within that forest, but Yenatar knew that the elves would not be willing to share the forest with the “axe-folk,” and so Yenatar paid to have these Usiytak relocated to the Lisredvo Hills, complete with new villages being built for them by Vacani soldiers. Despite the creation of the Forest of the Gift, however, Yenatar also declared that the various smaller elven forests scattered about the rest of the kingdom were under the personal protection of the monarch as Spear-lands, and that the intrusion of unwanted non-elves into such forests would be treated as an offence against the king’s property and person.

<p style="text-indent:.5in">Although the potential succession crisis of Yenatar’s lack of children had been averted, the overall controversy of marriage among the children of Yenatar Malkerian did not abate. The 30s and 40s of the Free Era were mostly a peaceful time in Sraiyag Vacan, aside from frequent orcish attacks upon the northeastern Marches, but there was a major point of debate amongst the people over the future marriage of the Crown Prince and, to a lesser extent, those of his younger siblings. The controversy was strongest among the Janhlira, who were deeply concerned about the possibility that the young Prince might wed a Marnic and therefore marginalise their people. Although House Aðunrav remained unfailingly loyal to Yenatar, grave doubts arose among certain elements of the Janhlira nobility about whether or not the Lord-Commander, in the absence of the orcs, was truly prepared to keep the separate cultures of Sraiyag Vacan equal to one another. These elements began to consolidate around a particular nobleman, Buldreht of House Garsfaun that had been banished from Kivlepra thirteen years before for corruption. Lord Garsfaun argued vociferously that the Marnics had won control of the most fertile regions of the Janhlira and dictated to their people that they could either share the wealth and forget their culture, or preserve their ways and hide in the hinterlands. He was perhaps the first man who had directly and unstintingly challenged Yenatar since the time of the Great Orc-Wars. Lord Garsfaun argued that the only way to remedy this was a simple one: that the Princes and Princess of the Realm promise betroth Janhlira suitors only. Buldreht imagined himself married to Gilraen, personally.

<p style="text-indent:.5in">The answer was that Talvenat, Kutielrig, and Gilraen were free to marry whomsoever that they and their parents found to be appropriate matches, and that the Lord Malkerian would not be forcing any choices upon his children. This bizarre sentiment was controversial enough among the Marnics of Sraiyag Vacan that rumours came forth like a flood, but for the restive Janhlira, it was sheer insult. The Lord Garsfaun himself was so angry that he began forming a dissident society that was known as the Grey Sons, meant to agitate for an independence movement among the Janhlira of Kalensidüss. His strongest allies came in the form of House Nuvrein, a prominent family in the city of Kaleon that had been purged by the Exalt-General thirty-five years before for dereliction of duty during the height of the Great Orc-Wars. In FY 48, Buldreht Garsfaun married Seijali Nuvrein, and the Grey Sons began organising a militia force.

<p style="text-indent:.5in">After a series of terrorist attacks against the Marnics of Kaleon a year later, the Janhlira rebels rose up in force, and began the Rebellion of Kaleon. The rebellion lasted for two years, during which Shepyarin Aðunrav, the Lord Garsfaun, and several thousand Janhlira (both loyalist and rebel) died, House Nuvrein was abolished, and Kutielrig Malkerian destroyed any remaining seditious sentiment through an act of incredible heroism disclosed elsewhere. In the aftermath of the rebellion, the razed city of Kaleon was rebuilt, and Kalensidüss recovered quickly thanks to the timely intervention of the royal authority.

<p style="text-indent:.5in">On Second Rigvarneu of Ñuedotei, 73rd Free Year, Yenatar Malkerian died at one hundred and one years, shortly after empowering his daughter Gilraen to succeed him as the High Priestess of the Realm. The mourning of the realm was surprisingly muted considering the devotion rendered to the Exalt-General. However, it is more reasonable when one considers that the King had spent the two decades since the end of the Rebellion of Kaleon slowly withdrawing from the affairs of the realm, spending more and more time at the estate of the Kutyätr and turning more responsibilities to his son. The Kingdom had not forgotten its Lord-Commander, but it had learned to exist without his constant oversight, and thus it would survive him, and not crumble to pieces without him.

<p style="text-indent:.5in">It was most curious to the people of Sraiyag Vacan that their Crown Prince was now at fifty-one years and still had taken no wife and fathered no child. However, there was no criticism to him for it, because by this point such speech had become impossible towards any member of House Malkerian, so mighty and just. When Talvenat Malkerian was crowned, he announced to the kingdom that his father’s bones would be divided and buried in several locations: his skull in Oksyrs, his ribs in Kaleon, his legs in Navyš, and so on. Within a few months of his crowning, Talvenat announced to the realm that he would be taking a wife named Varcäye. There was a great outcry almost immediately: this was not the name of any Marnic or Janhlira noblewoman. It was the name, rather, of a serf. Several families that had been optimistic of wedding their daughters to the King attempted to raise a formal protest in court, but the Houses Norsayen, Navgarst, Aðunrav, and Sleiyav, being the most powerful of the Marnic and Janhlira bloodlines, closed ranks in support of Talvenat. The uniformity of their decision was remarkable: there seemed to be no dissent in their ranks. Many years later, after the death of both Talvenat and his wife, it was revealed that a prophecy had been given to the Prince during his youth by an oracle of the goddess Zemnei. According to that prophecy, “the blood of the Land must be married to land-blood”; that is, the bloodline of the king must be entwined with that of a serf, who are bound in perpetuity to the land. Why this must be so was not revealed by those confidantes of Talvenat.

<p style="text-indent:.5in">The courtly controversy and complaints concerning the marriage of Varcäye and Talvenat continued for another two years after their marriage in 74, until Talvenat took a diplomatic voyage to Kemret and spoke with the Daprakhos there. Upon his return, the Lord-Commander declared that the jade caravans, which had sealed fast in the Great Western Dakylsthas near the end of the Great Orc-Wars, would be reopened, largely due to his negotiations. Vacani cargo ships began sailing up the Dezbuj and taking great loads of jade and silk from the Ancient West, and the Akulap and Rajimtar Seas began to fairly teem with trade. The coffers of Cirthwaen and Eonrig swelled, and no new orcish assaults were coming upon the realm, for Talvenat had ordered the construction of a mighty wall to cut across the Orcish Marches and ward off attack. As one might expect, the complaints withered shortly thereafter.

<p style="text-indent:.5in">The following four decades was a time of peace in Sraiyag Vacan, but it was not comprised of the days of plenty and wonders that had marked the Great Peace of old. It was a quiet, restful peace of relief for all the land. The grandson of Yenatar Malkerian was born in 98, and named Vauduyat. Nine years later came a daughter, Selladanzi. Those who read may find it almost impossible to believe once the dates are calculated: a son born to Talvenat when he was seventy-six, and a daughter when he was eighty-five? That is one of the mysteries of Yenatar’s bloodline: ageing may steal the colour from their hair and line their skin, but their vitality and presence of mind are eternally youthful, though inevitably tempered with the wisdom of years. They do not stoop with arthritis nor go blind with cataracts, and when they die, it is as gentle and easy as a child’s slumber. The Exalt-General himself said he might have lived ten years longer than he did, but for the battle wounds that he had received when he was a young man. Where this blessing has originated, the Father never said, not even to his wife and children, and so the enigma will likely never be explained.

<p style="text-indent:.5in">In time, the long prosperity had its end, with Talvenat’s death in 115. Kutielrig, starved of his native profession during the peace, had been spending his days abroad, involving himself in various military affairs of foreign lands, teaching foreigners how to fight orcs, and hammering together armies in such disparate districts as the Freehold of Davnost and the Blue Coast to protect the several realms of men. He had stubbornly remained a bachelor into the days of his eld, and when he returned to his homeland at ninety years, he avowed to the Inner Court that the only reason he took the White-Spear was because his nephew Vauduyat was too young (at seventeen years) to be named Lord-Commander. A year later, Vauduyat married Aġrali Sakvaru. Though he was celebrated throughout Sraiyag Vacan as the third King, in private Kutielrig only ever called himself “Steward-Regent”. For six years, he noted a strange thing: a slow but steady decline in the number of orcish attacks upon the Marches. Rather than enjoy the newfound silence, Kutielrig relentlessly drilled the soldiers of the front, even forcing them to hunt down orcish bands that were retreating rather than let their skills get rusty. Any company that did not aid the rest in driving back the remnants of the orcs was immediately decimated for dereliction of duty. Vast stands of forest were logged to provide lumber to bolster the Bulwark against a vanished enemy. Grumblings soon arose in the New Legion that their King was mad for blood and paranoid.

<p style="text-indent:.5in">And if he had not been, the Realm would have died. We need not recount here all the catastrophes, triumphs, tragedies, and heroes of the Little Orc-War, for they are recounted elsewhere. The many fables of that war are well known, and the facts of them are quite nearly as fantastic as the telling: Kutielrig Malkerian was crippled by the orcish warrior-lord known as the Skinned Boar, but took the fiend’s eye and bled him half to death. Vauduyat Malkerian rode into the High Wild and ventured into the bowels of an obscene orcish temple to banish a magical plague that afflicted his Parumya allies. The Father’s Men, a brotherhood of zealous Yenatar-cultists of various races, made an impossible last stand in the Battle of the Old Ford, holding the entire orcish force back for hours while the rest of the Vacani forces withdrew to the defences at Oksyrs. A yearlong siege of Oksyrs was broken by the howling charge of thousands of Drecitoun lancers, and a bronze great wyrm fell from the heavens and slaughtered the orcs with thunder, tooth, and claw, departing before the Vacani could thank—or even identify—their miraculous benefactor. And at the place where the war began, upon the ruins of the Bulwark in the Orcish Marches, the Skinned Boar duelled the half-orc paladin Barrzak the Blessed, and the hero sacrificed himself to the gods, consuming both himself and his howling foe with holy fire. For ten years, the Little Orc-War raged in Sraiyag Vacan, and when it was done, the Realm and the House Malkerian had both survived.

<p style="text-indent:.5in">Yet despite the Vacani victory in that war, the damage done by the orcs had been nonetheless considerable. A fifth of the population had died or disappeared, and more still were going hungry due to the vast number of farms that had been destroyed or abandoned in the wake of the orcish forces. The outer districts of Oksyrs were in ruins from bombardment during the siege, and Janhlira refugees wandered across southern Sraiyag Vacan, afraid to return to the north despite the utter destruction of the orcish forces. During the war, Gilraen Malkerian had died of old age, and so Vauduyat, like Yenatar before him, held the dual authorities of High Priest and Lord-Commander. The war had lasted from 121 to 131, but the era of reconstruction and restoration did not end until some time around 167. One old fortress in Oksyrs still today remains in ruins as a memorial of the Little Orc-War, seventy years after it was hammered to pieces by orcish magic.

<p style="text-indent:.5in">The reconstruction of Sraiyag Vacan was a dark period in recent history: piracy, banditry, and general crime became far more common throughout the middle-north due to the drastic fall in the number of soldiers, and famines broke out despite the best efforts of the King and the nobility. In FY 140, Vauduyat’s son, Lorkañe, was born, and in FY 150, he was kidnapped by a group of bandits who had been driven mad by an Old Injili amulet of evil power. The Recovery of the Prince was one of the most shining moments in Kerlonnic history for adventurers. A band of illiterate mercenaries led by a Parumya bard pursued the bandits all the way to an island in the Rajimtar Sea, where the amulet was destroyed, the bandits were slain, and the prince was rescued with no more injuries than a scar on his left hand. These adventurers were named Friends of the Realm, and two of them still dwell in Sraiyag Vacan, working as commanders of the forces in the Orcish Marches. The whereabouts of the island were not disclosed by the adventurers, who felt that such a place would be better off forgotten.

<p style="text-indent:.5in">Throughout the Reconstruction, Vauduyat invested an enormous amount of effort into restoring order to the war-shaken Realm. Eventually, he managed to subdue the rampant banditry that had been troubling the nation’s trade routes, but the pirates of the Akulap Sea lingered so tenaciously that it became common practice for Vacani naval vessels to provide an escort for merchant ships. The most important event in Sraiyag Vacan’s history after the Little Orc-War took place in FY 163, while the Reconstruction at last began to draw to a close. In the city-state of Kivlepra, the White Prince of the city, Besamku, was spiralling down into madness. Obsessed with human sacrifice, Besamku had ordered that every day, a warrior in the prime of his life be butchered so that the blood could be drunk to impart strength. Although at first the Vacani endured this with silent disgust, the matter was transformed when a Vacani Janhliran officer on leave to visit his family was captured and sacrificed. As soon as word reached the King, Vauduyat left Oksyrs at the head of two thousand paladins. They attacked Kivlepra in late spring, and rebellious Kivleprans joined the Vacani forces, eventually gaining control of the city and killing Besamku on his own sacrificial altars. After the remnants of his depraved loyalists were captured or killed, the nobility of the city assembled before Vauduyat and genuflected before him, offering up the bloodstained crown of the White Prince. That is, they were preparing to surrender the independence that Kivlepra had preserved for a century and a half. The Lord Malkerian, however, declined, stating that he meant to honour the promise that his grandfather had made to the people of the city. The result was that while perhaps the realm lost some potential territory, the word of Vauduyat’s integrity spread across the breadth of Kerlonna, giving him the title “the Just.”

<p style="text-indent:.5in">The Reconstruction ended with that most exciting of political gestures, an assassination attempt. During a feast, as Vauduyat was eating, he realised abruptly that a flagon of wine that he was drinking was poisoned, and dashed it to the floor before he finished. A cleric was rushed in to cleanse the poison from the King, who suffered no real injury, but was enraged by the possibility that his wife or son could have drunk that same wine. After thorough investigation, it was discovered that the poison could be traced back to Taur’Sutij. Why a nation more than a thousand miles away would wish the Malkerians ill, however, was unknown. When an inquiry was sent to Nevaiallan, it was discovered that the Sutiji had just suffered a crushing military defeat. The victorious Nevaiallani soldiers had been armed with Vacani-forged weapons. However, the Sutiji had retreated deep into the desert, beyond any accessibility to enemy soldiers. Though the Vacani remained alert for years to come, no further assassination attempts surfaced. At the same time, Reconstruction was formally announced to have ended, with the martial law in Janhlira Thede being lifted as the local bandit threat was announced to have been exterminated.

<p style="text-indent:.5in">In the early 170s, the orcs began to attack the Bulwark in significant numbers once again, pervading the Orcish Marches in numbers not seen since before the Little Orc-War. Although the Vacani prepared for the very worst, another assault like that led by the Skinned Boar did not occur. Adventurers and soldiers alike were recruited once more to guard the northeast, and the current state of war has continued to the present day. In 176, Vauduyat’s wife, Aġrali, died of old age, and after the funeral, Vauduyat mostly vanished from public knowledge, reigning from isolation. Lorkañe, meanwhile, had become famed as a philosopher-prince, authoring books read both by scholars and noblemen and establishing him as one of the intellectual authorities of the modern age. Four years after his mother’s death, Lorkañe’s twin sons were born, Drasven and Karnutel. Now, at this time, succession crises began to emerge in distant Kemret concerning the election of the successor to the current Daprakhos. Concerned by this, Lorkañe made a habit of travelling to Kemret to advise the Daprakhos, who was a friend of his, and to navigate the web of Idroslekhi politics. In 194, when the Daprakhos died, the crisis erupted into true pandemonium, with assassinations in the street, arsons, and a general political insurrection. Against the advice of his father, wife, and adolescent sons, the heir-apparent of Sraiyag Vacan travelled to Kemret to rally support for House Tvaľenas, whom he considered to consist of the proper successors to the late Daprakhos. This earned him the dire hostility of House Kailan, which sought the seat of the Daprakhos for its own patriarch. In 195, Lorkañe was viciously stabbed in the street by a boy the age of his own sons, and died within the hour.

<p style="text-indent:.5in">Sraiyag Vacan reacted in horror and grief, its prince’s body carried across the sea for a burial with his mother and ancestors. At first, the mourning Lord Malkerian contemplated a full invasion of Kemret, but his younger sister, the paladin Selladanzi, pre-empted this by travelling with a handful of her Sisters in her order to the city. She called the nobility of Kemret into a gathering, which the paladins then locked from the outside. Within, the patriarch of House Kailan was executed by Selladanzi’s axe, the assassin was crippled, and Selladanzi delivered a blistering ultimatum, declaring that if House Kailan was not abolished, the city would fall before the New Legion. That resolved the succession crisis with ease: House Kailan was banished from Kemret two months later. In the aftermath of his son’s death, Vauduyat could not survive the grief, and he died at ninety-six years only a few weeks later. Selladanzi was enthroned as the first Queen of the Realm, the Lady Malkerian, and the High Priestess. In 197, Lorkañe’s wife, Ilrana, followed him to the grave, her health ruined since his death.

<p style="text-indent:.5in">In the aftermath of this latest melancholy blow, House Malkerian only has three members: Queen Selladanzi, and her twin nephews, Drasven and Karnutel. This is a succession crisis in the making itself: legally, there cannot be two Kings at once, and neither is old enough to succeed before the other. Selladanzi has refused to name one above the other as the heir-apparent. However, neither will be eligible for the White-Spear until 200, when they will turn twenty. What will become of Sraiyag Vacan is uncertain, but it is extremely unlikely that the two will tear the Realm apart in their bids for the throne: they are not power-hungry fools, for they live in the shadow of the Exalt-General and all that he and his bloodline have accomplished. Sraiyag Vacan will endure, but the precise manner of its endurance is yet to be determined.

=Military=

The Vacani military is known formally as “The New Legions of the Ever-Victorious Exalt-General Yenatar and his all hallowed bloodline of Malkerian and of his Realm of Sraiyag Vacan.” However, that artifice is only employed in the most formal of occasions. In moderately formal situations, it is “the New Legions of Yenatar Malkerian and Sraiyag Vacan,” but to every individual in Kerlonna who has at least a modicum of awareness of the outside world, it is “the New Legion”. Technically, the New Legion is a direct continuation, through appointment of military offices, from the first Federal Legions of the Marnic Federation and by extent all the way back to the warriors of the Rauprig-mut. However, practically speaking, the New Legion is not even very similar to its namesake, the New Legions that Yenatar commanded during the Great Orc-Wars. Those New Legions were a united force of almost all peoples of Kerlonna, from the Duhumor to the Ishkula to the krolgashi, and more, and was of staggeringly colossal size. In the aftermath of his impossible victory over the orcs in Drecitou in FY 16, most of the members of the New Legions saw little to no reason for its continued existence: the Marnic Federation was irretrievably lost, and they wished to return to their homelands and be at peace. Yenatar saw that he could not contest their choices, and so instead he declared that any within the New Legions who still wished to stand by him could come to his realm in the Janhlira provinces, where they could still serve their Exalt-General. Indeed, a startling variety of people did come to what would become Sraiyag Vacan under his leadership: elves, halflings, Qãnvilu, and even a wayward son of the Elthorian bloodline who later became a celebrated Vacani historian of the Great Orc-Wars.

<p style="text-indent:.5in">However, Yenatar saw that the structure of the old Marnic Legions had eventually led to their decline: the legionaries had become more interested in their wages than in advancing the glory of Marnoz, due to a fundamentally mercenary nature of their employment. The legionaries worked for money, and had no opportunity for social advancement outside the most stunning feats of heroism. Therefore, rather than allow the New Legion to go down the same slow road to eventual mediocrity, the Lord Malkerian built an entirely military system, almost from the ground up. All Marnic and Janhlira nobility in Sraiyag Vacan were required to contribute at the least one son to be trained as a military officer. If he could not withstand the training in mild conditions, he would be sent to the Orcish Marches, where the near-constant state of warfare would either reshape him into an upstanding officer, or lead to his death. All lowborn villages across the nation, during the summer, were commanded to train their young men as militiamen, and to impress upon them the very real continued threat of orcish attack. Furthermore, any lowborn man who felt the desire to recruit into the army permanently could do so. He would be given better training and equipment than a militiaman would, and, crucially, he had the opportunity, while still young, to become an officer if he showed the competence, and would thus be considered eligible to be ennobled if he showed consistent ability.

<p style="text-indent:.5in">While the commander-in-chief would always be the Lord Malkerian, the lower-ranking generals were to be handpicked based on evaluation by the monarch, rather than based on consanguinity. The generals, too, would elect their subordinates from the ranks of officers not based upon bloodlines. Yenatar wished to avoid the possibility of families becoming corrupt through their unquestioned control of elements of the New Legion, and so instead, he assured that only those who were deemed competent by their superiors could be raised to higher positions of military importance. Certain families, of course, did establish reputations for being particularly involved in the military, but this was due to simply a certain shared aptitude for military matters rather than favouritism. Yenatar even wrote into law that favouritism could be grounds for summary dismissal from any rank. Yenatar took the matter exquisitely seriously, for he wished to keep the New Legion a strong force against the orcs for many long generations to come.

<p style="text-indent:.5in">Unlike the Drecitoun and Ishkula armies, the New Legion is not comprised of solely the human race. Any humans or nonhumans that dwell permanently within the borders of Sraiyag Vacan are candidates for military recruitment. This can easily be attributed to the plurality of the New Legions when they were still under the leadership of Yenatar during the Great Orc-Wars. Although divisions of nonhumans tend to be rare, they are also some of the most famous: few can match “the Night Arrows”, a full battalion of elves, for courageous tenacity and skill in tracking orcs. Nonhumans rarely tend to climb high in the ranks of officers, however, although this is more based on preference than on any discrimination by Vacani humans: elves, for example, are rarely comfortable with being responsible for the command of humans, who they find to be so fiery and difficult to understand.

<p style="text-indent:.5in">The New Legion does not often wage full, proper wars against another people, due to the intimidating reputation that it has established for itself. However, there is one war that it is constantly waging, and that is the struggle upon the Orcish Marches. As the orcs are always crossing the Posrati Gulf and pushing against the northeastern Vacani frontier, the Vacani forces are constantly bringing fresh troops, hired adventurers, and the like to this region, where glorious combat is not impeded by the interfering presence of civilians. The Orcish Marches are, despite their violent reputation, a great blessing for Sraiyag Vacan in two respects. First, they serve as a magnet to which the orcs seem inexorably drawn, preventing them from wandering into the nation from other areas and thus confining the violence to a single concentrated location. Second, the Marches mean that the New Legion never goes out of practice, for if a group of soldiers is beginning to feel restless and insufficiently exerted, they can apply to relocate to the borderland, where real combat awaits them.

<p style="text-indent:.5in">The New Legion is among the finest militaries in the known world, due to a high standard of training, excellent equipment, and the meritocratic rather than inherited nature of rank. Particularly famous are the knights of Sraiyag Vacan (secular individuals, to be contrasted with the holy militant orders of the paladins), who are trained in the Parumya style of mounted sword combat, and don plate armour. However, most Vacani would say that it is not merely that their soldiers are well trained that is important, but also that they be faithful to the nation and to House Malkerian. Therefore, Vacani military training is not simply a matter of drills, practice combat, and duty, but also of religious devotion and of being taught the stories of Yenatar’s countless epic deeds. Indeed, the informal hero-cult of the Exalt-General is at its strongest among the ranks of the common Vacani soldiers, who have, from time to time, openly counted Yenatar not merely as an incarnation of Ganrelka but as a twelfth member of the pantheon. Although in the early days of Sraiyag Vacan Yenatar discouraged the cult, as the years have passed the cult has become increasingly widespread and the criticism of it by the members of House Malkerian less and less pronounced. In fact, the worship of Yenatar has recently become common among many officers, and it seems altogether likely that in years to come, the cult will slowly spread up the chain of command even to the generals. Whether the Malkerians will ever come to believe that they are descended from a god is uncertain.

<p style="text-indent:.5in">One of the most unusual features of the New Legion is that, unlike the case as in Marnoz before them or Drecitou of the modern era, the paladin orders are not separated from the secular military but are incorporated into it. Paladins and clerics in Sraiyag Vacan are expected to not only serve their particular cult or temple, but to also pledge themselves as soldiers of the monarch. Since the highest office in the priesthood is simultaneously held by the monarch, this is simply logical. Of course, when fighting against the fearsome orcish droknul, it is useful to have holy men at one’s side to repel black magic. Part of Sraiyag Vacan’s heroic reputation comes from the presence of such combatants in its forces: their influence moderates the bloodlust of the soldiers, and their healing magic is dispensed upon both ally and foe alike (unless they have been fighting against orcs). They are also highly intimidating when marching to war: few sights can match the paladins of Sraiyag Vacan, their swords aflame with blessed light, their white armour glowing in the midmorning sun.