A
Asuras
Guest
Original poster
"A war of sizes unfamiliar to the people of the realm is starting. It will set the pace for international politics for centuries to come, but I am not so sure my nation will live to see such an atmosphere."
--Ollasian Minister
Themes: War and Politics
Status: Currently a work in progress! This interest check is being continually updated!
Status: Currently a work in progress! This interest check is being continually updated!
Introduction
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Welcome to "The First of Many", a wartime fantasy setting based around the mainland region of Acrid, home to several large and powerful nations. In this roleplay you will have the opportunity to take up one of two positions: that of a "General", or as a "Hero". As a General, your task is to manage the troops given to you by your superiors (generally the monarch of your nation), and lead them into battle towards a particular goal. You will have full control over their movements, deciding when and where to move them, and what to attack or defend. While there will be some luck involved with whether or not your decisions succeed, the logic behind your actions will be taken into account. Good decisions will merit better luck on the battlefield. There is much more to being a General, but that will be described later.
Should you choose instead to play the part of a Hero, you will serve under a player's General, following their orders (possibly disobeying them!) on the battlefield and elsewhere. Your gifted nature bestows you with a level of expertise and success in various ways that the common man could not hope to attain. Where you go and what you do will have significant consequences on the outcomes of war.
Posts in this roleplay will be fairly controlled in terms of content. Expect to produce either large posts or participate in collaborative posts frequently. Posts will often need to contain details of an entire day or week's events, though need not be so detailed they describe the act of waking and sleeping and everything in between for every day. Only the important or interesting stuff matters here!
Note, too, that participating in this roleplay should be taken seriously. Should you leave or make a bad decision, it will have definite consequences on those who continue to participate. There will be a lot of scrutiny in this roleplay. Join at your own discretion!
[roleplay=#705faf]Hi there! Name's Tiel Dyarre, ambassador from the Eastern Empires, a neutral nation in this war. I realize the following can contain quite a bit of information, so I'll be helping you out! If there's ever a section that's got a lot of stuff and you'd rather get to the point, look for me! I'll also be pointing out any specifics that might not have been mentioned.[/roleplay]
The Acrid Region
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The Acrid Region is a large peninsula stemming off of what is called the "Eastern Empire", though due to their self-centric nature, the people of the Acrid Region tend to call themselves a part of the "mainland". In real-world terms, the Acrid Region is approximately the size of Mongolia. While home to the descendants of the Acridian peoples, after many centuries of national division, the region has become populated by 3 distinct ethnicities.
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The Verdan are considered the most ancient ethnicity of the Acrid Region, having settled in the northern regions of Acrid several thousand years ago as the Acridians. The Verdan originated from the Acridians that had split from the Eastern groups who settled in what is now Eastern Mecrundyr.
The Verdan remain the most populous of ethnicities as well, being the primary ethnicity of Verdigris, Baelwill, and Mecrundyr. Though split between three nations, the Verdan all hold special regard for the Verdigris lands, considering it their birthplace.
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The Calso are the Southern peoples, having colonized Acrid's south peninsula after the Verdan established themselves in Acrid. Already a part of an larger empire far south of Acrid, the Calso had a greater grasp of their colonization process, quickly creating the city-state of Ollas long before the formation of the three mainland nations.
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The Alkrisians are the natives of the Alkrisian island region just south of Acrid. Like the Acridians, the Alkrisians had migrated into their respective region thousands of years ago, hailing originally from Southern peoples attached to the land that the Calso also came from. The Alkrisians are still the primary ethnicity of the Alkrisian island, though have undergone a large amount of racial integration in the East with the Calso.
[roleplay=#705faf]Essentially you've got the Verdan, the mainland peoples who first showed up, the Calso who came from the South and quickly established a nation, and the Alkrisians who are natives of their south island.[/roleplay]
Though these three ethnicities exist, the majority of the peoples living in Acrid speak a single language, albeit with particular dialects; that of the Calso's original language ("Calsonese"). The only exception is the people living in the Alkrisia nation, who still adhere to their native Alkrisian tongue. Chances are, if you can speak Calsonese, you can speak to anyone on the Acrid mainland. The religious spread of Calso customs also integrated their language into the various cultures that existed.
The Acrid Region is split into 6 distinct nations, one of them technically being a colony of another. To the East (unmarked) lies the Eastern Empire, bordered by Mecrundyr. The Yismel Ocean to the North eventually stops at the Arctic circle, while the Acrid Ocean stretches far out into an unexplored region of the world. The Immacel Ocean at the south of Acrid stretches to the Southlands. While large, it is the smallest of the three oceans, known for its warmer, calmer waters.
The history of the Acrid nations stretches back several centuries, but is currently marked by its soon-to-be violent relations and swift religious changes.
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Baelwill is the monarchical kingdom of Acrid's centremost mainland region. Currently ruled by King Dolbun III, Baelwill's heavily feudalistic and nationalist society continues on, stronger than ever. While the surrounding nations of Acrid's mainland edge closer and closer to governments disposing of feudalism entirely, Baelwill sticks by the historically tested method of kings, lords, and knights presiding over the lands.
With the King as the absolute ruler over Baelwill, rights are granted in a hierarchical structure based upon land holdings. Those who are subservient to the king and possess noble backgrounds are given plots of land in Baelwill, within which each Lord attains their own rulership. Knights act as the Lords most trusted warriors. Due to its strong disposition towards chivalry and knighthood, the Baelwill standing military is notably large, composed of a number of trained knights far exceeding that of other nations.
However, due to the immensity of their military, Baelwill taxes are higher than other Acridian nations, with a large portion of the income being poured into military funding. Such spending can be easily identified by the preposterous number of castles and fortresses scattered about the nation. Though the populace is largely supportive of the militaristic culture in terms of nationalism, Baelwill suffers from growing unrest as the years tick on and taxes continue to remain high.
Baelwill, being a part of the Mainland Three (Verdigris, Baelwill, Mecrundyr), is considered to be a part of the Ollasian religious sphere of influence, though this idea is quickly crumbling. Prior to the most recent few dozen years, Baelwill was largely adherent to the Ollasian religion known as Melity. Citizens and nobles alike practiced the worship of its singular deity and considered the Ollasian city-state to be their spiritual center. The Church's power, as in other Acridian nations, was easily seen in Baelwill because of this. Nobles effectively swore fealty to the Melity Supreme Priesthood, considering their actions directly in line with that of the Church's.
Despite the strong gravitation towards Melity, Baelwill and Mecrundyr citizens faced increasingly more violent events due to the presence of Eastern-borne religions. Mecrundyr especially suffered from spiritual shifts, as monks from the Eastern Empires spread their influence into regions of Mecrundyr. Extremist variants of the Eastern religion were born in Mecrundyr, and their influence began to spread to Baelwill's borders.
Heavy amounts of infighting between Baelwill provinces resulted from these religious shifts in the populace, until eventually Mecrundyr instantiated a harsh and unbending policy against religious extremism, effectively rooting out those factions plaguing their Baelwill ally. Still, the damage had been done in Baelwill, and much of the nobility presiding in the Western provinces looked poorly upon the events.
As King Dolbun III's father died and he took the throne, a swift and surprisingly blunt set of policies were quickly put into effect, essentially placing a great deal of scrutiny on the Melity religion within Baelwill. Ollas responded relatively quickly, denouncing the anti-religious policies, though their requests went unheard. Over the following years, Dolbun continued to create newer laws resricting the influence of Melity on Baelwill's populace, as well as utilizing a massive propaganda campaign to lower opinions on the Church.
The campaign worked quite well, and in the last two months, Dolbun announced to the Acridian region that it was no longer adherent of Melity practices, nor subservient to Ollas.
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Ollas is the religious capital of the Acridian region, being the land from which Melity practices started and spread. The "Church", as it is simply called, bases its operations from within Ollas singular city. Due to the church's dominating presence, Olass is considered a theocracy, though it possesses a notable royal family. A single spiritual leader, the Grand Priestess (or Priest, in the case of former leaders), heads the Church, and subsequently the Ollas city-state, deemed the final word when it comes to interpreting the Melity scriptures.
For a majority of Acrid's civilized history, Melity was considered the main religion, with all of the region's young nations adopting it (and sometimes variants of it) up until recent years. The overwhelming presence of Melity in citizens' lives across nations allowed Ollas an informal control over politics of all sorts. As nobles far and wide adhered to the teachings and to the Church, a certain level of obedience was expected and trained into their way of life.
It is thus that Ollas has been thought of as the superpower of the Acrid region, holding sway over all others in ways that could not be reciprocated. However, as time passed, multiple events (mainly due to interference from the East) worked to degrade the Ollasian grip over Acrid.
Prior to the ascension of Seraph Coleti, the Church was headed by a notably well-liked Priestess by the name of Seraph Eppien. The rule of Eppien was considered particularly peaceful due to her involvement in a majority of the conflicts that had stemmed between former split nations that now make of Mecrundyr. A frequent belief of Eppien's was that the Church was an organization with the power to ensure stability in Acrid; a belief she exercised readily.
After Coleti became Grand Priest, Ollas was spurred into a suddenly imperialistic stance, with the unified nation of Alkrisia in their sights. Rhetoric of safety was used often by Coleti, who believed that the predisposition towards violence in the Mainland nations was a direct threat to Ollasia. While the Church maintained significant control over the Acrid region, the majority of Ollasians agreed with Coleti that danger was always near.
Campaigns to cement further military and economic power for Ollasia were seen in the conquest of Eastern Alkrisia, eventually turning the land into a colonial subservient to Ollasia. While successful, the sudden violent behavior of the Ollasian's worried the Mecrundyr nations (at the time they were still split). The works of Eppien dissolved within months of Ollasia invading Alkrisia, as Mecrundyr began its own campaign to unite the smaller nations around it.
Increasing tensions of fears between the united Mecrundyr and Ollasia were halted only by the efforts of Verdigris and Baelwill, both of whom disliked the idea of joining in a war with their allies. The potential for war subsided, eventually. Ollasia maintained its control over what is now Complies, but returned to its former non-imperialistic nature when the next Grand Priest rose. The quarrels with Mecrundyr set in motion its eventual distancing from the Church. Compliens, while still an ally of Ollas, also "split" from the nation, becoming independent to a degree (though many would disagree).
Today, as Baelwill proclaims complete separation from the Church, Ollas faces even further degradation of power. The current Grand Priestess, Seraph Zolli, is often considered a strange fusion of both harsh protocol and the saintliness of Seraph Eppien; her current outlook is that the Church of Melity serves moreso as an "enforcer" of Acrid, rather than a peacekeeper as Eppien would call it. Further evaporation of Melity in Acrid would spell doom in the future.
Ollas, alongside Verdigris, proclaimed war on Baelwill, branding the nation as a traitor to the peace of Acrid. Its troops currently seek to travel across Mecrundyr and to Baelwill's south, though have been granted no such access.
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[roleplay=#705faf]As a neutral onlooker here, I'd say I've got a pretty good grasp on what is objectively happening. The Baelwill Kingdom separated itself from the Church in Ollas, prompting the Church to try and retain its interests -that is, holding onto power in the region. Verdigris, a strong ally of Ollas, attacks Baelwill when they refuse to return to normal. Mecrundyr, an ally of Baelwill, refuses to allow Ollasian troops to pass peacefully through and attack Baelwill at its southern borders. On the Alkrisian island, you've got the Alkrisians seeing an opportunity to retake their lands in Complies, as Ollas becomes occupied with the mainland war.
So then you've got two important factions here; the defending faction, made up of Baelwill and Mecrundyr, and the attacking faction made up of Verdigris and Ollas. Where Alkrisia fits into the mainland dealings, we have yet to see.[/roleplay]
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