[center][h1]The Unbroken Host[/h1]
[img]https://img.roleplayerguild.com/prod/users/a248f38a-6727-4e5a-b3d3-d053abbf7909.png[/img]

[b]Motto:[/b] [i]From dusk we bring the Golden Dawn[/i][/center]

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[b]Type of Government:[/b] Martial theocratic monarchy.

[b]Head of Government:[/b] The God-Seer.

[b]Economy:[/b] Diverse, but largely primitive; most exports have historically been pastoral, agricultural or artisanal produce, while relatively more mechanically advanced tools and weapons were imported from regions closer to Amrea. Currently, virtually all commerce has been choked by constant warfare.

[b]Primary Species:[/b] Humans, with the majority being of Üarim and Tzücomen descent.

[b]Population:[/b] Constantly fluctuating due to the Host’s military activity and rapid expansion, broadly hovers around 20 million. Comprised mostly of humans, Karaniü and northerner Saahra, with minorities of Gnülonar, Monurchen, Zhuxi and others.

[b]Culture:[/b] A number of factors contribute to making the Unbroken Host’s cultural constitution a fragmentary, roiling maelstrom. Not only has the Innečerj, the region that it occupies, never historically been entirely unified, but its swelling progress of forced assimilation, driving socio-religious imperative and tremendous degree of militarization, along with the widespread change, not all of it for the best, that has overtaken the territory within the last century, have shattered what unstable equilibrium existed there into a state of chaos unlikely to be fully resolved for ages to come.

In some aspects, the roots of the pre-existing status quo are still reflected in the present situation. A sizeable part of the Innečerj has ever been a land of transition, vast, empty plains and path-beaten deserts, whose main feature of interest was its role as passage between the lands of the Fararuals and adjacent steppes to the north and the territories of Al Baqi to the south. As a result, sedentary societies within it have for long been scarce. Their peoples, having few stable points of reference, have developed cosmopolitan, opportunistic attitudes, refined by one of their main sources of income having been, since time immemorial, mercantile activity. Perhaps paradoxically, this has made their transition into the Host’s new order perhaps the smoothest of all, as the adaptable folk are by no means unaccustomed to sudden political shifts.

The achievements of these folk over past times, however, pale in comparison to the abundant heritage of the northwestern riverlands. Formerly the satrapy of Umar-Jahan, these territories were historically and ethnically a part of Transtulania, and the origin of Innečerj’s now-widespread Üarim population. Before the ruling Fararual dynasty was usurped and extinguished, the Umarites were in many ways alike to their kinsmen in the heartlands of the Luminescence. Just as belligerent, they made themselves known for several attempts, of varying success, to expand into the Innečerj heartlands, which contributed to the spread of their blood around the region.

The third group within the Host’s domain, and the more numerous by a good margin, is composed by the tribal hordes of the flatlands, collectively known as the Newhayé, or Plains Folk. There has scarce ever been a time when these nomads, made up of unruly, aggressive peoples like Tzücomen, gnolls and dire Saahra, far removed from their sedate southern cousins, have not been in conflict with each other or gone on marauding incursions into the holdings of their neighbours. The coming of the Host has brought their warlike ways to a new fever pitch, either under the banners of the Unbroken or driven ahead of it.

Indeed, the rise of the God-Seer has brought about a most radical change throughout both these populations. At his command, all but a minimal necessary fraction of the people of every city, with few exceptions in the cases of key strategic locations, have been driven forth to war if they are capable of bearing arms. Those who join the Host’s ranks willingly do so as eager would-be conquerors, raiders or champions of the divine; those who do not are made into battle-thralls who may only eat what they can tear away from the enemy. That such a state of things is far from sustainable and destined to eventually collapse from overextension if not opposition seems to concern its master little, though his interest in solidifying his hold over captured cities indicates that he cannot be fully unaware of this.

[b]Religious and Other Beliefs:[/b] Once, the peoples inhabiting what is now the Domain were as varied in their spiritual beliefs as in everything else. The Umarites, naturally, followed the religion of Axbak Camen, as did a number of heartlanders and even Newhayé who began to take after them, while other peoples either maintained the creeds they had brought with themselves from their homelands, or adopted the southern ones that trickled up to them through trade or migration.

This came to an end with the accession to power of the God-Seer and his Unbroken Host. Proclaiming himself a deity on earth, fated to bring all the world under his sway, and cementing his boasts with demonstrations of supernatural might, the mysterious warlord turned tyrant abolished all religions that were not congenial to his supreme authority, putting their followers to the sword or forcing them into the servitude of his thrall armies. His teachings, known as the Golden Dawn or simply the Faith of the Unbroken, take their root in certain prophecies of the Luminescence, proclaiming the coming of the end times when the Fararuals will fade from the world; they foretell the advent of a new order under a divine ruler, who will scour the earth with holy war.

The air of dread born of such thunderous omens is perhaps the greatest weapon at the God-Seer’s disposal, more even than his fearsome magic or his armies. So broad are his words and so cryptic his figure that many a people in his path have glimpsed in him a prophesied forerunner of the end times detailed by their faith. Thus, for example, the worshippers of the Radiant Sun may see him as a spawn of the god Kagu-susi, broken free of his imprisonment and come to visit his wrath upon the earth. For his own part, the usurper seems all too glad to fan the flames of these rumours, shrouding himself in the dread mystique that grows from them and letting them sow doubt and fear among his foes before even his hordes appear on the horizon.

[b]Location/Territories:[/b] The ends of the Domain of the Unbroken Host are as inconstant as the numbers of its population, being constantly pushed outwards by its progress and determined by the successes, or lack thereof, of its campaign. Presently, it extends across the region known as Innečerj, lodged between the Baqi northern reaches of Samermek and the portion of Transtulania held by the warlord Miran, and creeps slightly further south.

[b]Climate:[/b] Temperate to subtropical, with the latter being mostly in the liminal zones to the south. Can be surprisingly dry the further away one goes from the western riverlands.

[b]Military:[/b] As its name belies, it may almost be said that the entirety of the Unbroken Host is part of its army. Wherever it passes, farmers are torn away from their fields, city-dwellers from their slums and palaces, nomads from their travelling-paths, and made to march to war for the glory of the God-Seer. The exponential growth of this practice as the Domain’s boundaries are pushed further has resulted in the Unbroken’s front being an innumerable mass of what can only be described as chaotic rabble, maddened and reduced to near-stolidity by hunger and the fear of what comes behind.

For, in effect, the main strength of the Host is not this malnourished and barely armed mass, however numerous, but rather the forces that have pledged themselves to their new overlord and serve him willingly, out of either fanatical zeal or opportunism. Those include the legions of the Umarites, generally fairly well equipped, trained and organised, and the savage hordes of the Newhayé, who compensate for roughness through numbers and sheer ferocity. They are supported by what siege machinery the Host has been able to seize in battle, a motley assembly where bombards and mortars are pushed alongside primitive battering rams, as well as many beasts of the plainslands tamed by the mastery of the Üarim.

[b]Magic Prevalence/Usage and Elemental Alignment:[/b] More so than in other lands, mages are exceedingly rare in the Domain, to the point of being almost nonexistent. This is because wherever they are discovered, they are imprisoned and slaved to the will of the God-Seer, who is said to exploit and drain their power and vitality until they are left as lifeless husks. The sole exceptions are the tyrant himself, an archimage so mighty that most are ready to believe his claims of divinity after seeing him in action, who has been known to perform supernal miracles of all imaginable kinds; as well as some of his lieutenants, among whom number even a few Transtulanian Magi.

[b]History:[/b] The beginnings of the history of Innečerj, since fallen under the yoke of the Unbroken Host, are lost to time, with few records, written or otherwise, surviving of its origins. Some tales say that it once was the site of a mighty empire, called Akk’nun, which reigned during a legendary time and fell a time immemorial ago, and indeed now and again one finds, scattered over the plains, islets of corroded ruins of incredible antiquity, sometimes still holding the discernable remains of what might once have been priceless artefacts. But most hold those to be nothing but myths, and in truth it makes little difference whether they are truly such.

What is better known is that this land has always been first and foremost a connection between more thriving locales, and thus itself existed in a sort of uncertain limbo. With the exception of Umar-Jahan, which was to all effects an outcropping of Transtulania, ruled by its own minor Fararual bloodline, few powers of any note thought it expedient to lay claim to it. It was distant, liable to be contested, infested by restless nomads and not rich enough to be worth the while. Although the occasional campaigns of the Umarites provided some impulse for the formation of organised societies, their growth in the plainslands was largely slow and gradual. As those were the roaming grounds of the Newhayé, few settlements managed to take hold, albeit those who did soon found themselves burgeoning as the main steps of passage through the plains. Ever still, no true dominant power arose to unify them - until recently.

It is not known whence it was that the man, if man indeed he was, who became known as the God-Seer first came. Some whisper that he was a scion of the northern Fararuals, exiled for his ungodly sorcery, but there is no sure way of substantiating these rumours. It is known, however, that in the days of uncertainty that accompanied the decline of the last Luminescents, he appeared at the gates of the great city of Letyeh in Umar-Jahan with a large warband behind him that he named his Unbroken Host, wearing a perfectly smooth and blank mask of pure gold and surrounded by a flickering halo of light, and stormed it after breaching open its walls by conjuring a powerful groundquake. The flame-blooded rulers of the Umarites were usurped, and the conqueror soon drained them of life to fuel his mystical puissance.

Proclaiming himself the bringer of the dawn of a new world, even as the old one was doomed to crumble, the God-Seer went on campaigning at the head of his Host through the mightiest and most opulent holds of the region, his raiment growing richer and his halo brighter every time until he shone like a walking sun. Thrown into disarray by the demise of their rulers both spiritual and worldly, one after another cities fell under his sway, either in awe of his power or under the arms of his swelling Host. Others yet were deceived to his side by cunning, as time and again he went to meet exalted Magi in theological escrimailles and convinced a number of them that he was a true being of prophecy, who alone could give them salvation amid the decay of the fading old world.

Once his dominion had grown, in but some decades, vaster than the Umarites had managed to build it in centuries, the God-Seer brought his plans to culmination. He persuaded the Hierophant of the elder city of Kand, who had become allegiant to him, that the last of the Luminescent bloodline had to be immolated in order to spark the fires of rebirth in the Fararuals’ domain. Though their plot was momentarily thwarted by Miran and his fellow Holy Defenders of Aranagh, his agent Husayim the Grey ultimately managed to slay the Fararual Grand Magus and ritually sacrifice his daughter in Kand, though he himself was defeated and put to death soon afterwards.

With the last legitimate rulers of the north gone, the God-Seer issued a proclamation that he would reclaim all their dominion by fire and sword, and lead it to a new golden age. Thus was laid the foundation of the scourge that would become the latter-day form of the Host; the unworthy were driven as chattel before his marching ranks, spilling out into the outer plains. For some time, the God-Seer led his armies in person through southern Innečerj, swaying the wandering hordes of the locals with displays of power. After some time, however, he drew away to the north, where his armies had encountered the resurgent Miran and already been beaten back from Kand, leaving his masked lieutenants to act in his stead. Yet the fear of his name and the vastness of his legions had by then gained enough impetus, and still their advance continues to all sides, spreading over the land like a stain of oil over the sea.


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