[center][h1][b]Faith Ascendant[/b][/h1]
230.2-389.2
(201AE-300AE)[/center]
The third century was, for Yossod, mostly an era of peace and prosperity. Yossod had no major threats to them, only simple raiders from the border regions, and trade would continue to develop and Yossodites would travel even farther from their homes. And with them they brought the word of their God. At first it was not official attempts at proselytizing, but rather individual preachers going out on their own. But as word of these preachers' efforts to the Ayelic Council their minds began to change, as time went on more and more began to favour peaceful expansion over isolationism. And so they started officially sanctioned missions to spread preachers outside of Yossod and into the lands of their neighbours. 

The first successful target for these were the tribes of Ashat in the hills to the North. Relations between the Yossodites and Ashatites had been ambivalent for most of their history; there were both instances of peaceful trade and contact as well as vicious raiding. And in 140.2 (307AE) the first Ashatite chieftain converted to the God of Yossod. And as a result of this development the Prophet, with the sanction of the Ayelic Council, passed a series of laws that gave precedence to those of the same religion when it came to trade. And over time Yossod's influence began to grow over Ashat; within a decade all of the Ashatite chieftains had converted though the common Ashatites would take many more decades to convert. And the Ashat tribes themselves came under the indirect influence of Yossod through their new faith. After all, their new faith stated that the ayel's were the Chosen of God in addition to the Brotherhood of the Covenant expanding into Ashat's settlements, and the Brotherhood was loyal to the Ayelic Council.

And after the expansion into Ashat, the ayels looked even farther to the north to the rich Empire of Idum. Idum itself was situated among the plains north of Yossod along a great river. The Empire was a very decentralized entity, with a series of Kings owing nominal allegiance to their Emperor. Idum was also a great slaver state, with slavery being a common institution among any Idumian who wasn't a simple peasant. And it was this slavery that helped their incorporation into Yossod's religious hegemony, as well as directly lead to Yossod's only war within this period of time.

Yossod began it's same preferential treatment of foreign co-religionists, and it was only a short time before the closest Idumian King, the King of Sumuga, chose to convert. And this was where the troubles began. Because of laws whose origins began with the attempts to exterminate the old faith of Yossod, followers of the Ayelic God were only allowed to enslave heathens. And as a result, many of the slaves in Sumuga desired to convert. However, the King couldn't allow such a thing to pass and passed an edict that prohibited slaves from converting to their faith. Naturally this angered many of the more pious Yossodites, and the Ayelic Council was especially displeased with this fact for even the less pious of them were displeased by the ruler's attempt to control what they viewed as their domain. And as such they made an edict banning any ruler from interfering with the conversion of heathens. This angered the King who promptly converted away, but the damage was done. As word spread throughout Idum, discontent within the Idumian slaves began to rise and it was in 172.2 (336AE) that the first slave rebellion began in Sumuga. Though it was brutally put down, Yossod itself made its move. Armies of the Brotherhood of the Covenant alongside Ashatite tribesmen advanced towards Sumuga. And when the armies of Sumuga went out to meet them, there was another wave of rebellion among the slaves. And this time, with the armies elsewhere they succeeded in storming the palace and the armies of Yossod were met with open arms by the former slaves of Sumuga who had converted and risen up against their master.

And so began to short War of Idum. The armies of Idum were divided and the Kings refused to allow any single one of them to assume control over their armies, and as a result though Idum scored several impressive victories over Yossod every one of their defeats they inflicted back on the Idumians several times over. Eventually the Kings agreed to cede control of the armies temporarily to the Emperor, but it was too late and the first battle afterwards ended with a resounding victory for Yossod. And facing the very real threat of defeat as well as slave revolts back home the Kings agreed to surrender to Yossod and hope for leniency, throwing the Emperor out of the window of his palace when he refused to agree. The Prophet was more than happy to accept their surrender under a number of conditions. They were allowed to stay nominally independent but they were required to convert, allow the Brotherhood of the Covenant to hold garrisons in their territory, and most importantly to free any slaves who agreed to convert as well. Beaten and broken the Kings accepted, and also agreed to dissolve the Empire with each Kingdom owing allegiance to none but the Ayelic Council.

And over time Yossod would sit at the top of their local area, spreading their influences further to the east and west until all of the land between the great jungles belonged to Yossod. It was, however, not a highly centralized nation but rather a hegemonic state bound by a shared religion that saw the Ayelic Council as the voice of God's will. And while it was for the most part peaceful, the borders were once again beset by raiders. In the west the Feinar were growing ever desperate as the stone trolls drove them from their homes and closer to the borders of Yossod's hegemony. But it was a single raid from the north that would have a far greater impact.

In 214.2 (365AE) a small fishing village along the northern coast was raided, with most of the people killed or carried off by raiders. But tales from the few survivors told a strange story; word spread like wildfire of monstrous lizard men arriving by sea to butcher innocents. And when a group of lizard men arrived at the port city of Mashka looking to trade they were quickly captured and their ships ransacked. It was quite obvious from the loot found that they were indeed the ones who had dared to attack Yossod's shores. Though some of them managed to escape and flee the city, the rest were impaled alive and set upon the coastline as a warning to any of their kin who may come again.

But they never did come again. At least, not for several long years. But in Spring, five years later, they arrived once more. Though this time they came not as raiders, and there were no reports of ransacked villages or towns, but to deliver a message. The message was an invitation to a great contest of arms in their home city, after the Yossodites had shown themselves willing to not simply roll over for those who would assault them. Word of the invitation was carried to Qa-Avnel itself and word spread across Yossod like a wildfire. Some desired no contact with these barbarous heathens, while other desired to attend to show them the strength and power of Yossod and her warriors. The ayels were divided as well, but in the end they agreed to send a small group of warriors to these Games of Valour. But one of the ayels, a young warrior who rued the fact that she had been born in a time where the ayels themselves rarely left Qa-Avnel offered to travel alongside the warriors. There was a great debate over whether to allow her to go, but in the end she was allowed. After all, she was very vocal of the fact that she would go one way or the other and she had already given birth to a single son, so the others decided it would be easier to simply allow her to go.

At here, at the first Games of Valour, the Yossodites would do rather well. Though physically outclassed the sheer fanaticism and determination of the human Brothers of the Covenant were impressive, while those scant few hulking Promethean brothers combined the force of will with their prodigious strength. And in the final round combat the ayel warrior herself strode out into the Ring of Valour, facing down against Zaqir's saurian champion. The battle between the two was an impressive one, with neither of the two titans giving an inch to the other as they fought on. The battle did eventually end, but it was in a tie for they both landed killing blows on once another. Though the Saurians enjoyed themselves immensely and loved such a poetic end to combat between two colossuses the Yossodites were less than thrilled. Though they refrained from violence, it was obvious to all present that they were not happy by the result in the slightest. And when they returned to Yossod, there was a great uproar within Yossod.

There were many who wished for retribution against Zaqir and its monstrous lizard men, either through violence or more peaceful means, while other simply desired to cut all contact with the brutal and barbaric people. In addition the death of an ayel so publicly caused the rise of the Millenarian Third Age Sects; small religious groups that cropped up an saw a massive change in Yossodite society akin to the arrival of ayels, they shared no unified belief system and were brutally stamped out by the authorities. And the Ayelic Council for the most part viewed the death of the ayel as a result of her foolhardy actions. And the priests who had traveled to Zaqir had come to an interesting dioscovery: the people there were not pagans, but they only worshiped a single God in many forms. So the ayels announced that Zaqir was not to be shunned or hated, but said that the saurians worshiped the same deity as Yossod but over time their view of him had become twisted and corrupt through isolation from God's true word. And so when Zaqir held more Games of Valour regularly, it became common for Brothers of the Covenant who desired to test their strength to take part. And taking part in such things exposed the people of Yossod to the numerous cultures and peoples of the East; priests and traders from Yossod met with their counterparts from the East and a great number of ideas arrived in Yossod. Combined with the trade routes to the West, this resulted in a numerous advancements occurring within Yossod over the next several decades. Ironworking, advanced irrigation, philosophy, mathematics; all of these things and more arrived in Yossod as the years of peace continued on. And a number of new Schools would be founded to teach more priests in some of the more recently acquired cities of Yossod to teach a new generation of priests. However this would cause some conflict between those who viewed the new philosophies as heretical as well as between those who followed different schools of thought. After all, there were many things that the Edicts of the Ayelic Council did not answer and the ayels themselves didn't agree on all matters of thought and philosophy.

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[b][h3]Major Events of Yossod: Third Century[/h3][/b][/center]

[b]Cultural:[/b] More advanced forms of philosophy are imported from the East, resulting in many schools of thought emerging among the thinkers of Yossod. More schools are founded in more recently acquired areas, and religious instruction has become less and less the focus of the instruction. Millenarian Third Age Sects arise in the more isolated regions of Yossod, though are viewed as heretical and stamped out as soon as they are found.

[b]Technological:[/b] Ideas such a mathematics are brought in from the East, and technologies such as ironworking and advanced irrigation are developed thanks to trade routes to other civilizations.

[b]Military:[/b] The short Idumian War in 172.2 (336AE) sees the dissolving of the Idum Empire into separate Kingdoms within the Yossodite hegemony. 

[b]Diplomacy:[/b] Trade routes to the East and West expand, and with them numerous ideas are brought in Yossod. Yossodite warriors take part in Zaqir's Games of Valour when they occur, and so relations are fostered between Yossod and the religiously misguided Zaqir though many of the human rulers in Yossod proper despise Zaqir and the saurians as worthless barbarians. The tribes of Ahat and the Empire of Idum are brought into the fold through peaceful and violent means, as well as numerous other, smaller polities around Yossod.

[b]Government:[/b] In the more recently conquered areas the theocracy of Yossod is not established. Rather, they are allowed to keep their own power structure presuming they converted to Yossod's faith and thus remained under the nominal thumb of the Ayelic Council. The Ashatite tribes have a form of simple, tribal democracy and the Idumian Kingdoms are ruled over by a rich aristocracy.

[b]Territorial Expansion:[/b]
[img]http://i.imgur.com/dTUE9MD.png[/img]