Carinthia
| The Carinthian Empire | |||||||||
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The Carinthian Empire encompasses all of the territories acquired by the House of Scheyern over the three centuries that have passed since Conrad Scheyern and his allies ousted the Alfar and their legions from Kyrenia Province. While originally a rapidly rising power, the Empire was devastated during the Necromantic Wars and to this day has not fully recovered.
History
War of Independence
As the Alfar Empire fell further and further into internal political turmoil during the late imperial period, its once complete control over its outer provinces began to erode. Corruption and incompetence left the provincial administrations ill-equipped to properly manage or maintain order, and Alfar governors increasingly turned to local notables for assistance. While humans and other races had in the past been promoted into the imperial aristocracy, in the late period what had been a rarity became almost commonplace as non-Alfar rose to the highest ranks of the provincial governments and frontier legions.
The meteoric rise of members of marginalized populations within what was still very much an Empire dominated by the Alfar ended with predictable results. As the Alfar turned on each other their subject races turned on them, raising banners of rebellion across the frontier and in many cases succeeding against an Empire now generally unable or unwilling to respond with the force necessary to restore order and maintain its outer borders. Long lived Alfar nobles fighting and intriguing against each other in the Imperial Heartland were almost universally of a single mind in thinking that dealing with the frontier was a simple task to be taken care of after claiming the Imperial Throne. The loss of Kyrenia Province was just one of many blows to the Empire caused by the combination of these factors.
During the early days of Alfar expansion, the Empire waged a number of wars against the Kyrenian League, a collection of city states ruled by a band of god-blooded sorcerer kings. The last of the Kyrenian Wars saw the sorcerer aristocracy wiped out and the Kyrenian cities destroyed by the vengeful Alfar. Scantly populated for most of the Empire's history, the region was eventually colonized largely by human immigrants from the Empire's central provinces. Kyrenia Province, or Carinthia as it was called by its human population, was a model frontier region that proved to be both peaceful and productive.
But as Alfar power waned the human aristocrats of Carinthia increasingly saw themselves as being needlessly shacked to a decrepit and incapable distant power. They would find a leader in Conrad Scheyern, a minor aristocrat who had risen through the ranks in the legions before returning to his homeland. Having traveled extensively, Conrad took an exceptionally dim view of the Empire and eventually organized his like-minded counterparts amongst the provincial aristocracy. Careful planning and the almost criminally negligent actions of the Alfar Governor allowed for the secret formation of rebel military forces. In 4989 of the Imperial Era the Carinthians rose their banners in rebellion against the Alfar.
The Carinthian War of Independence was short and decisive. The Provincial Government's garrison units collapsed in the opening weeks of the rebellion, many of their troop were already rebel sympathizers and others simply deserted. The few units of Alfar regulars in the region were quickly routed by Conrad's well-trained regiments. An army dispatched by the Alfar Imperial Government was destroyed, crushed in an unequal contest that proved how deeply the decay within the old empire ran. The advantages still maintained by the Alfar in their superior magic and powerful warstriders was absent in these contests, as the bulk of those forces were kept close to the various competing factions in the heartlands. And in a contest of pike and shot their poorly maintained frontier legions proved no match for the rebels. No further expeditions were launched to recover the province, and another crack had appeared in the myth of Alfar invincibility.
The Formation of the Empire
With the defeat of the Alfar, the next task facing Conrad and his victorious coalition was the job of organizing their new nation while maintaining the ability to defend it against what they believed was inevitable further conflict with the still overwhelming might of the Alfar. The constant threat of an outside force eventually led to the decision that the new state would need a strong central authority, rather than leaving affairs to the individual noble estates. In 4995 of the Imperial Era, Conrad Scheyern was crowned Conrad I, Emperor of Carinthia. Most of a working government had already been inherited from the old Alfar provincial administration, and the work of converting it to serve the needs of the new Dynasty was relatively easy.
Ever mindful of his precarious strategic situation, Conrad turned his attention to regions of the Alfar Empire frontier on his border that had been largely isolated by the creation of his own empire. Carefully weighing the risk of attracting Alfar attention against the benefits that might come with new conquests, over the course of his reign Conrad made a number of additions to his realm. Although he never again made the daring actions that had led to his creation of an Empire, Conrad I was an effective ruler who founded a nation as well organized and prosperous as the Alfar Empire had been at its height.
His successors would continue his policy of expansion, each adding additional territory and exploiting new resources. As the decline of the Alfar Empire accelerated, Carinthian expansion increased as successive Scheyern Emperors saw less threat in risking the attention of the region's increasingly distant and impotent former masters. The largely unchecked expansion of the Carinthian Empire into often abandoned and lightly populated border lands would last for nearly two hundred years, ending only in the sudden outbreak of the Necromantic Wars.
The Necromantic Wars
Although the series of conflicts that would later be known as the Necromantic Wars had been ongoing for some decades, the sudden arrival of a vast Necromancer led host on the borders of Carinthia came as an unpleasant surprise to Emperor Ferdinand I, who promptly led his standing army into battle. Ferdinand's impetuous charge headlong against one of the most terrifying forces the world has ever seen cost him his army as well as his life. The Necromancers overran a number of cities and were only narrowly driven back from the gates of Pressburg. While Pressburg was saved, and with it a fighting chance for Carinthia, the war would drag on for over two horrific decades.
The invading necromancers were amongst the most extreme of the various factions in the greater necromantic armies, and they were more than willing to fight the Carinthians with every horror they could unleash. Plague ravaged the land as the dead rose to do battle with the beleaguered survivors. Entire towns and cities were lost, their dead populations marching into battle as the Imperial Army stubbornly continued to fight on. Ferdinand's son, now Emperor Conrad III, proved to be an exceptionally capable general and under his leadership the advance of the necromancers further into Carinthia was for a time checked.
It seemed however, that final victory remained an impossibility. As the war dragged on for year after apocalyptic year with no end in sight it was very much apparent to the Emperor and his advisors that in the end, their nation faced extinction. While on the defensive and behind its fortifications the Imperial Army hold its ground, there was no way to take to the offensive against the seemingly limitless arcane powers and undead armies of the necromancers. As Carinthia's soldiers grimly prepared to fight to the last, however, the situation changed.
Twenty three years after the initial invasion, Carinthia stood on the edge of defeat only to find that the final blow never came. Patrols roaming the countryside and scouts into occupied territory reported that the number of undead seemed to be decreasing, as if the power that had fueled the invasion had begun to run out. Several more years of hard fighting would follow as the Imperial Army marched back into the field in force and began to purge the land of the invaders. Hardened soldiers who had grown up in an age of horrors took hold of the opportunity for revenge and drove the necromancers from every ruined city and stronghold they could find hint of them at.
It became increasingly apparent as enemy papers were captured by the advancing Carinthians that the conquest of their land had not even been the objective of the invaders. The necromancers had come in search of the lost relics of the Kyrenian Sorcerer-Kings, buried for five thousand years beneath the ground in forgotten ruined cities and sealed tombs. If they had succeeded, there was no indication of it found by the Imperial Army, although as they marched on through the dead countryside rumors persisted of worse things than the necromancers and their undead minions lurking in the forests.
Although the war had been won, the price had been staggering. Nearly thirty years of war had left Carinthia in ruins with much of its population slain or starved. The peaceful and prosperous land before the war had been destroyed utterly and in its place was a kingdom of the dead, its haunted lands and ruined towns largely empty. The remnants of the necromantic army still lurked in remote places and the monstrosities they left behind were a constant danger outside the walls of the cities. The task of rebuilding was one that would take generations, and is scarcely complete even eighty years later.
Early in the reign of the current Emperor, Ferdinand II, it had seemed that the peace and prosperity from before the war had finally returned. But as he has aged the shadows have seemingly closed back in around Carinthia. Rumors abound that the Emperor and his realm are cursed, and Ferdinand has taken ill it seems likely that further hardships are ahead for an already damaged land.