Introduction
The Alteian Empire (in one word Alteia) was the largest and most powerful state on Kélas from the year 27 to 1095 of the Old (Keassa's) Era, controlling mainly the southeastern regions of the continent. The official language was Standard Imperial Alteian, from which the modern languages Kalish and Sennic Rasan, Rashari and Suteiran developed, but which is still marginally used in Lynirosan universities as the language of science and in Rasharia serves as the liturgical language of Keassítism. The capital and largest city was Yáirími’á (literally "river delta"), which is known today as An Sorania.
Throughout its existence, Alteia ruled over the following regions (listed with their current names): Astaria, parts of the Amari Steppes, most of Orayen, parts of Sentia, most of Yisénia, the Karra Desert, the Red Peninsula, and the northern part of the Southern Islands.
The direct successor to the empire is Rasharia, currently under the rule of the Southern Empire.
Formation of the empire and Keassa's rise
Alteia was preceded by dozens to hundreds of small kingdoms scattered aroune the Ákeyada River (today's Ákeir) basin, reaching as far as the Lúnian Lake at its peak. This era, called the "era of the archaic Alteian kingdoms", may have lasted up to two thousand years. Disputes and wars between individual kings were common at the time, and alliances often dissolved faster than they had ever formed.
One day, Keassa became such king, who ascended the throne of his small kingdom after the death of his father when he was very young. His ideal, which his father had nurtured in him since childhood, was to unite all the kingdoms and put an end to unnecessary wars, the results of which would be forgotten within one's lifetime. Many kings considered him a fool, but a handful were charmed by the young man's charisma and determination and united their kingdoms into the germ of the future Alteian Empire. Keassa fought and negotiated for the next almost ten years, during which he proved to be no foolish prince, but an excellent strategist and diplomat, who managed to win over to his side nearly anyone he wanted. Rumors began to spread that the young man was blessed by a god, or is even a god himself in disguise, who had come to earth with the aim of bringing peace to the people. Keassa denied none of this and always answered questions about whether he was a god with a mysterious smile.
He was crowned king of the new Alteian Empire in the year 27. A new calendar was created in his honor, starting with the day of his birth. He did not idle away and set about building his dream, which he had been promising to his people for the last decade or so – he had the royal palace Keassadráyma built in the heart of Yáirími’á, he commissioned infrastructure outside the cities and raised new settlements. He set out to hunt down the last rebellious kings and began to expand the empire to all corners of the world – in the north he conquered the neighboring empire of Myartai and in the south he pushed the borders far into the regions where until now lived only the nomadic nations of the old Chytari, Yisénians and other peoples, whom the Alteians had either exterminated or assimilated.
Keassa was not the only one who rose to fame during the birth of Alteia, of course. Another prominent figure was Lian, who was born into a commoner as a girl, but during the war he rose from an ordinary infantryman to the supreme general of Keassa's army and, among other things, became Keassa's closest friend and lover. However, luck was not on their side, and Keassa's fame took its toll on them when the newly crowned king was tasked with securing an heir so that the new empire would not fall before it had time to flourish. His choice ultimately fell on the military healer Tuguu, and together they laid the foundations of a dynasty called Keassít. Tuguu was aware of who Keassa's heart truly belonged to, but she was determined to serve Alteia as he did, no matter the cost. She herself maintained relationships with women outside of her marriage, and she and Keassa considered themselves friends rather than a royal couple.
An important milestone in early Alteian history, which still affects Kélas today, was the first and last attempt to assassinate Keassa. This happened shortly after the conquest of the Myartaian Empire, and so it was not surprising that the attacker was one of the members of the Myartaian court, the personal wizard of the former ruler. He acted on his own, out of dissatisfaction with the fall of his empire and the new order within Alteia, but above all out of hatred for Keassa and his boundless power. Although he attacked with magic, Keassa escaped almost unharmed, and Lian, who rarely left Keassa's side, quickly neutralized the assassin.
Where others would have succumbed to fear, Keassa, himself a wizard, saw an opportunity. He took advantage of his lack of public use of magic which he did to gain the respect of his non-wizard subjects, the vast majority of Alteians, and after the execution of the Myartaian assassin, he declared a complete ban on magic throughout the empire, under penalty of death – he justified this by saying that the wizards stole their abilities from the god in order to turn against him. This new law allowed for the creation of special bounty hunters that operated for several decades, focusing exclusively on hunting wizards. Immediately after the assassination, book burnings were also recorded, but the Yáirími’a Library, at that time the most important and largest library in Alteia, strongly opposed this, describing any destruction of books and texts as heresy. Other libraries took the same position, and it was eventually agreed that, in the interests of preserving knowledge, books on magic would simply be removed from public sections and kept under lock and key.
Surviving the assassination attempt, led by a wizard no less, only helped Keassa solidify the cult of personality and the deification of his name and lineage. The ban on magic itself then guaranteed that no one dared to oppose Keassa or his dynasty for another thousand years.
Life in Alteia
As for the state structure and the division of state power, the Alteian rulers understood in the first centuries that they had to invent an ingenious system reaching into all corners of the empire in order to keep it together. In the very beginning, power was concentrated exclusively in Yáirími’á and held exclusively in the hands of the king, who maintained his position with the help of the army and his most loyal followers and allies. In addition, Keassa's cult of personality played a significant role, which influenced not only the ethnically Alteian population of the empire. After Keassa's death, this system was kept in place until approximately the year 200 of Keassa's Era, when the Alteian conquerors first encountered strong resistance on their way south, unable to repel it with the only thing they had relied on so far – their superiority in numbers and relatively disciplined army motivated by their god Keassa.
Although they eventually managed to annex all the problem areas, namely the Gulf Land (present-day Sennia), the Karra Desert, and parts of the Sentian Mountains, these lands proved to be highly unstable, and one king was no longer enough to maintain order in the empire. He was forced to select one confidant from among his most loyal, ethnically Alteian followers for each region to maintain order there. This involved both suppressing resistance by military force and negotiating with the local population on terms that would outwardly benefit both sides, but secretly primarily the Alteian side. This system proved to be highly reliable, and with a few improvements it lasted until the early 8th century, when a Suteiran confidant was murdered in Keykika, Suteira's largest city. Within a few years, the Suteirans were able to repel all Alteian attempts to re-establish dominance and formed their own government, the Supreme Council composed of the most influential Suteirans. This incident foreshadowed the gradual collapse of Alteia, which was exploited not only by Rasanians, but also by outside invaders.
Alteian society was mostly patriarchal. Although only a man could rule the empire and the soldiers in the army were overwhelmingly male, women played an important role in diplomacy and in universities, where they made up the majority of scholars. Art and architecture also flourished under Alteia – a huge number of buildings in today's Lynirosan cities date back to the Alteian Empire. Alteians were, among other things, excellent seafarers – an art that the people of Rasan practice to this day.
The Alteians founded a number of cities that are now important parts of the Southern Empire. In addition to the aforementioned Yáirími’á, these include Kyyulugu (today's Kjustram, the capital of the Middleland Alliance), Gellea, Litea (home to the largest Kélasian university), Perana (a military camp during the time of Alteia, nowadays an important crossroads of trade routes and a military training grounds), and many others.
Religion
Keassa had already become a living god during his lifetime, for people firmly believed that an ordinary man could not unite hundreds of kings and give people a vast, rich empire. He never denied or confirmed the stories and gossip about himself, and rather used them for his own gain and building of even greater fame. Over the following decades, a new religion developed around his personality and dynasty, which came to be called Keassítism and whose followers believed in the divinity of both Keassa and his entire lineage. By the second century of Keasss's Era, Keassítism had almost completely replaced the original faith.
The pre-Keassítian faith worshipped a single god, called The First (Han Kin Isá in Standard Imperial Alteian). It was monotheism that apparently facilitated Keassa's rise and canonization, as people explained his abilities by the fact that The First had incarnated in him. Skeptics came mostly from the lower social classes and Keassítians labeled them heretics, exiling them from their communities. These people preferred to move altogether, mostly to the south, where new opportunities and uninhabited land opened up to them with the Alteian expansion. However, it was the expansion of the empire that forced them to retreat further and further with each year, and they only found relative peace in the Red Desert and the Southern Islands – until the Alteian army arrived there too. However, skeptics abandoned their belief in the process of this endless migration, for they saw The First as a traitor who had come to earth with the desire to dominate his people and show kindness only to those who believed in his mortal reincarnation. The descendants of these skeptics are the present-day Kalish and Sennic Rasanians and Suteirans, who have adopted the faith in the god of day and the god of night.
Keassítism was fundamentally shaken by the death of the last king of the Keassít dynasty, who fell by the sword of the Lísic raider Soran Hikaria of Lyniros at the Battle of Yáirími’á, as with his death the entire holy lineage of the dynasty died out. Many Keassíts interpreted this as Keassa's spirit leaving the earth, and therefore renounced their faith, but many anxiously preserved it in the hope that Keassa would lead them even from the absolute afterlife and protect them from the Lísic conquerors. It is thanks to them that Keassítism survives to this day in today's Rasharia, where the vast majority of the population still believes in their first king Keassa, despite the Lynirosan domination and the close proximity of The Order spreading faith in the one god Leiki.
Although Keassítism became the state religion, it was practiced overwhelmingly only by ethnic Alteians. In the rest of the empire, the second most common religion was the belief in the god of day and the god of night, which spread from Kíhia throughout the Red Peninsula and much of the Southern Islands. On the western border, Motranism predominated, and in the north, it was the belief in The Higher Ones.
The Decline and The Fall
The year 623 of the Keassa's Era is considered to be the beginning of the decline, as since then Alteia was no longer able to take control of any new territories. The empire then began to experience pressure from both outside and inside. The first internal disputes concerned Suteira, which successfully seceded in 743, and a century later the Red Peninsula, becoming independent and forming the Rasanian Kingdom. The external disputes began to manifest themselves with the neighbouring nations of Sentians and Yisénians whose newly formed state Greater Yisénia claimed part of the Alteian territory. However, what definitely marked the beginning of the end for the powerful empire were the first Lisic raids around the city of Kyyulugu in 956.
Since this year, the so-called Alteian-Lísic Wars began, which initially only consisted of sporadic raids of the Lísic tribes, however, these gradually turned into powerful conquests and the Old Lísans advanced deeper and deeper into Alteia's territory with each passing year. Until then, the Lísans had lived in their own Lísic Empire, but wizardry disputes and wars between the tribes caused the empire to crumble and its inhabitants to seek new homes outside the Damsétian Steppe. The Old Lísans were mostly nomadic and excellent horsemen and warriors, which the mainly foot-soldiered and naval Alteian army was simply not made for. The Amari Kingdom also took advantage of the situation and began to attack Alteia from the north, conquering Astaria in the following century.
The first major city to fall was Kyyulugu in 975, allowing the Orayenish and Lynirosan tribes to easily take control of the area around Lúnian Lake. It was here that the Lynirosans first encountered Sentians and Yisénians who would later become their greatest allies, and thanks to them they conquered the Alteian capital in 1095. The invaders massacred all who did not submit to them, and Alteia, which had been crumbling from all sides for over a century, finally fell with the death of the last Alteian king of the Keassíte dynasty, Irítuguu V., who was killed by Soran Hikaria of Lyniros, the future ruler of the new Lynirosan Kingdom built on the ruins of the thousand-year-old empire.
