|
OSSIENIC EMPIRE
Named after King Ossien, who united the various Ithrayan tribes around the Angellenic Sea and founded the city of Irrax approximately 950 BLC (before Lionine Calendar). For two hundred years the Ossienics were a pastoral people who borrowed heavily from their Eptemian neighbours.
However, the political changes that followed the sudden collapse of Haradicoh in the early 800's BLC, combined with the Exclusion War that developed in 780 BLC, between the Eptemian cities of Xios and Delophis, allowed the Ossienics to expand their territories.
Also hired into the armies of the later victorious city of Xios, the Ossienics made a name for themselves for their prowess and bravery, returning rich loot to their homes, and Irrax especially.
However, the Great Eptemian War beginning 510 LBC left both the League of Xios and the Delophian League exhausted militarily, and the Ossienic peoples, already enjoying high population growth in the environmental changes that had collapsed Haradicoh, took advantage of their neighbour's weakness. By 468 LBC, the Ossienics had conquered the whole of Eptemia and formerly assimilated that people into their own fast growing empire. They also annexed Gallerea, southern Lithire, and the Outlying Islands (including Nazimah), as well as smaller kingdoms on the eastern fringes of Alithidel.
The Eptemians, however, were never willing subjects, especially when the newly converted Ossienic Emperor, Taylas, decreed in 269 BLC one empire wide monotheisic faith, based on one set of Iescuan doctrines. This lead to massive uprisings as the Eptemians clung onto their traditional worships, and other Iescuan sects either fought, or fled (as did Vaul of Assus to the small trading settlement of Eiom, where he founded the Church of Omicron, predecessor of the Order of Omicron of Sephas' making).
Combined with weak Ossienic leadership and a thin spread military, the Ossienic Empire fragmented, leaving only their original heartland, now known as Ithraya, intact.
The Ithrayans now deigned to call themselves Emperors, merely kings, and for over two centuries after Eptemian cities combined against the Kingdom of Ithraya in a series of futile wars, namely the 13 year Ambassadors War which was settled with the peace of Nicropis in 113 BLC, and later the Second War, which was formally concluded in treaty in 38 BLC. Neither war led to significant gains for either side.
Ithraya was later resoundly defeated by Sephas, and the region and peoples ceased to exist with an identity of anything other than the Kingdom of Irithia. |
