NationStates Jolt Archive

OOC This took me bloody hours, i felt i had to post it even if it is a bit cliched.

Prehistory

In the beginning there was the Creator.
He/She/It/They looked upon the void, and spoke. “Let there be light.”
And there was light, and it was good.
The Creator spoke unto the lesser spirits it had formed in the void “Go forth, and look upon My/Our works and act as thou wilt.”
The daemons of fire, the zephyrs of the air, the dryads and naiads of the earth and the nymphs of water flew to their chosen aspects and melded with them with ease and joy.
The spirits that remained spoke unto the Creator “What would you ask of us Progenitor of us all?”
The Creator spoke one word and that word was “Wait.”
The spirits obeyed.
Eons passed. Worlds bloomed, the lesser animals formed.
And there was life and it was good.
Still more time passed and a creature looked up at the sky and spoke “Why?”
The spirits that remained uncalled looked at this creature. They had no answer.
They sought out the Creator, who watched all that occurred.
“Why?” They asked.
The Creator smiled and did not speak.
The spirits returned to the creature and found it not alone. Thousands of differing beings had asked the question.
The spirits spoke amongst themselves on what should be done for these questioners.
Some favoured striking them down for their impudence.
Others favoured walking alongside these creatures to discover why themselves.
The first group of spirits, who defined themselves by anger and pride, became Devils and evil deities.
The second group became the Gods and Angels who walked with the questioning species on their journey to the answer.
Gradually all the spirits became defined by their aspects and worked only for their purpose, ignoring all aside from it.
- The Canto of Beginning

A sun lit the void. Matter conglomerated into orbs, spinning aimlessly in worship of the light. Life formed.
Life, following the pattern that the Creator, in it’s/his/her/their omniscience had laid down long before, grew and changed and became wondrous in it’s complexity, forming the ancient races of the elements.
The mighty form of life that called itself ‘ Dragon’ formed and shook the world with their song. The Dragons swooped and hunted and tore precious metals from the earth to make their beds and woo their mates.
Other life formed the question. The shape this life took was the one called “Elf”. It was an odd breed of Elf, strange and proud and not as other elves on other worlds.
A third life formed the question. The pattern wrought them as the “Dwarves” and they burrowed and mined and built and experimented and shaped the earth that had wrought them.
The last form of life to take shape took the fragile form of “Man”.
There was life, and for a time it was good.
- The Canto of Life

The elves walked the woods of their world. They watched the races they called mortal grow and build and thrive. They watched the Dragons soar across the open sky and in the hearts of some jealousy formed. After all, the Dragons had a visible animal as a forebear; the dwarves were nothing more than golems and man? Man had been an ape not so long ago.
In the minds of these jealous ones these words bubbled and frothed. They grew inward and secretive and drew apart even from their kin. One of the spirits called Demons noted this. She travelled to this world and took on the form of an elf maiden and became the constant companion of the leader of these jealous elves.
This partnership fed upon itself. They took unwary dwarves and men and twisted them, forming them as they would. The constant interface between Man and Dwarf had formed another race known to itself as “Hobbits.” These too the jealous elves took and shaped to their own desire.
On the last day of the clean world the leader of these jealous elves, his name to future ages only given as the Breaker, spoke to the conclave of Elf, Dragon, Man and Dwarf.
“For too long the mortal races have spread like a cancer across the face of our Earth. For too long have Dragon kind repressed the aspirations of the Elven peoples. Today we declare this state of affairs ended.” And The Breaker drew a long knife, and smote down the great and wise of the Peoples.
There was war and the world burned.
- The Canto of Grief

The war lasted long ages. The Breaker and his companions unleashed their twisted men, dwarves and hobbits, calling them “Orcs” and “Goblins” and “Trolls” and other barbaric names. These creatures lived for the joy of smashing and killing all that had lit the void with its presence. The forces of Light were smote down and cast into the dust many times in the early days.
However Men and Dwarves and Dragons were powerful fighters when roused. They had the aid of the Gods and Angels who had been attracted by the presence of Life on this world to aid them.
One of these Gods, of the type called Maia, had walked amongst the humans who lived in the northwestern part of the world was known as Olórin to the mortals whom he lived with and walked amongst.
He was cloaked in the form of a young man all suited in grey and was responsible for many human victories, as well as the few Elven assaults on their evil brethren.
Eventually he came to see that the war was destroying the societies of the free peoples in its intensity. He called upon his brethren and in a mighty work of magic the Hobbits were shifted to another world, where they could live in peace for a time.
This act meant that the mortal and dragon armies could conserve the strength they had been expending protecting the hobbits and prepare for a strike with which to end the conflict.
The strike was launched and the armies of the Breaker had no answer to the risen storm of Mortal rage. Their twisted hordes were slaughtered in the thousands and the warriors of the Light sang as they fought.
The war ended and the Breaker and his Captains were thrown down. Olórin was responsible for the destruction of the she-demon called by future ages ‘The Consort’. The Dwarves and Dragons slew the majority of The Breaker’s Captains in battle, and quickly disposed of those few that were taken by brutal means, for the war had weighed heavier perhaps on their shoulders.
The Leader of Men took the Breaker’s castle and threw him down in personal combat, removing his head with a clean blow and placing it on a pole for all to see.
There was peace, and for a time it was good.
The elves watched the celebrating armies and a cold fear grew within their breasts.
- The Canto of War

Man and Dwarf and Dragon celebrated for days after the victory. Olórin however, was worried by the silence of the elven lands and ambassadors to the victory. He travelled to the heart of the elven lands, searching for their leaders. They were no-where to be found.
Olórin searched for many weeks, increasingly worried as to what might be occurring, then the echoes of a mighty work of magic reached him. He travelled swifter than mortal man should know, and found the leaders of the elves duplicating the spell that had sent the hobbits to another world. As he arrived the spell was completed, and he felt a great disturbance, as though millions of voices had cried out and were silenced.
The leaders of the Elves looked at Olórin without remorse. “It was necessary. The mortals would have destroyed us.”
Olórin sighed. “Necessity was the imp that goaded he who you called Breaker. You have cast yourselves out with this act.” He and all his fellows left that cursed world and searched for the mortals the elves had cast into the depths of time and space.
- The Canto of Betrayal

Historical Times

In the Year of Beginning (SF01) our forefathers arrived on the world they named “Sinn Fein” which meant “Ourselves Alone” in the tongue of men in those times. The elves that had cast us out had not explained what was happening, so great was the confusion among the Dwarves, Men and Dragons.
The Dragons were most wroth and attempted many fell magics requiring blood sacrifice to return themselves home, and, due to the lack of prepared foodstuffs, some of their number consumed man and dwarf.
These incidents resulted in the second of the chronicled wars, the five yearlong campaigns to subjugate and dominate the dragons.
At its end the Leader of Men had fallen, along with his opposite numbers in the other races and a disquieting muttering among the remainder of man’s generals had turned into a swift campaign by one of them, subjugating all of the world under his rule within his 25 year reign as Emperor of Sinn Fein.
The Empire of the Lion, as it came to be known, endured for over six hundred years. This time period saw the Dragon’s resume their old habits of solitary hunting, abandoning the squadrons which they had fought the Breaker in, and the colonisation of Suther, the smaller southern continent of Sinn Fein.
However the Empire’s long existence came to an end with the reappearance of Olórin and his successful inspiration of the rebellion against imperial rule.
After the conclusion of the rebellion the world was divided into the Kingdoms of Britmattia, Vikhame, Dalen, Marcédévil and Bathame in the northwest, Leopold and Axeland in the northeast and Lionland, Centure and Leigós in the southern continent.
Olórin, having ensured the stability of the situation, trained a semi mortal successor and vanished from the history of Sinn Fein. Unfortunately his successor, a half-elf named Marchón did not command the respect Olórin had. Thus the situation in the north quickly degenerated into a long-standing campaign of raids and invasions by the eastern nations and punitive expeditions by the western one. This pattern continued for close to five hundred years, the only important global happenings being the death of the last King of Bathame and the marriage of his daughter to the King of Britmattia. Their second son became the Duke of Bathame and that nation ceased to be independent. The other occurrence of note was the establishment of hegemony by Britmattia over its smaller northwestern neighbours and the similar occurrence in the south with Lionland and Leigós in the south.
Marchón’s reign as the Great Mage was marred by this constant pattern of warfare, but also notable for the re-establishment of societies that had been in abeyance since the Betrayal, over a thousand years before.
Marchón was also responsible for the construction of the Isle of Names, where the names of all who’d fallen since the Breaker’s first strike were commemorated.
As Marchón’s tenure drew to a close his chosen apprentice, a Britmattian dwarf by the name of Oldónar noticed that society on Sinn Fein had been locked in a circular pattern for nearly half a millennia and divined that the reason was the echoes of the original transport spell used by the elves to move the populace. Working on this theorem he and his master opened a portal to the original world from whence the inhabitants of Sinn Fein hailed and discovered that after more than a thousand years of inward looking the elves had destroyed their civilisation and people.
Marchón, seeing an opportunity to break the constant cycle of war marring the face of Sinn Fein, asked the various governments if they would wish to return to the more pleasant Eä.
Various groups within the nations of Sinn Fein responded this to with alacrity, and the nations of Vikhame, Dalen, Marcédévil and Centure returned in their entirety. The fleeing of citizenry from the more unpleasant monarchies of Leopold and Axeland, along with a sizeable amount of regional dissidents vanishing from Lionland allowed that nation to swiftly conquer their northern counterpart of Leopold.
The Britmattian monarchy, which had examined Oldónar’s findings the closest, asked if they might be removed to another world entirely, leaving the resurgent empire of the Lion alone with the warlike Axelanders on Sinn Fein.
Marchón, using the very last of his power moved Britmattia to its present location, a reasonably large continent on the world of NS. He then retired from the position of Great Mage.
Oldónar stepped up and served with distinction, especially during the generation long war against the vampires which had inhabited the region before the arrival of the Britmattian inhabitants.
These vampires had been at a steam age level of technology, which the Britmattians quickly adopted, adapted and improved upon, having the resources of a nation with a thousand years of frustrated growth to work off. By the second generation of born on NS citizens the Britmattians had reached the Electronic age.
This generation is currently in power, and it’s tech-base is gradually upgrading to one even more foreign to the first arrivals on NS. Britmattia has exemplified the industriousness and adaptability of Man for all our recorded history, and we intend to keep it that way.
- The Model of a Modern Major Monarchy, Allain Irdónrei, Apprentice to Oldónar

Recent History, Part One

The Kingdom has now endured on Nš for four of our long lived generations, growing all the while. However, the first few decades on this world were not as easy as perhaps we had hoped.
The population of the Kingdom, numbering perhaps ten million when moved, arrived on our continent with technology equivalent to that of the Middle Ages, but without the religious baggage that hindered the Pre-Reality Break West.
The King at the time of the movement was Matthew the IX, but his death from old age swiftly followed the transportation.
The reins of government were taken up by his son Carolus, who would proceed to lead the Britmattian people through the coming storm.
For storm it was. The Kingdom had just buried Matthew, when reports began to filter in of encounters with the inhabitants.
And the reports were not positive.
They spoke of dull, stolid, cattle-like serfs and strangely powerful Lords, who compelled obedience from their dullard populace and went cloaked and masked even on the brightest day.
Oldónar, suspicious of such activities, made use of the powers he weilded, and divined the true nature of the "Lords" of the land.
Vampires.
The only vampires the Kingdom had had contact with had been assassins for the Breaker, generations and hundreds of years beforehand.
However, peaceful overtures were made, and a deputation sent to meet with the Lord of the immediate area, headed by the then Duke of Bathame.
There were two survivors, one of whom was the Duke's heir.
It was war to the knife.
The Vampires would stand for nothing other than a subjugated and docile populace, where as the Kingdom would stand for nothing other than freedom. To people who'd never heard of firearms, supernatural strength and levitation were more threatening then perhaps than now, and the stolid thralls turned out to be so controlled and numerous that they would routinely assault Kingdom forces until they formed ramparts of their own dead.
Still, the Kingdom forces inexorably ground onward, the disunity and arrogance of the Vampires aiding them, along with Oldónar's enchanting of hundreds of weapons to slay vampires and his "insulation" of the minds of the Men, Dwarves and Dwerry fighting for the Kingdom so that mental compulsion rolls off Britmattians to this day.
Eventually, after an on-and-off war that lasted for the best part of thirty years the last vampire stronghold was toppled, and it's inhabitants slaughtered. The war had seen spectacular acts of violence on both sides, most notably the habit of the then Duke of Bathame, the grandfather of the present Duke, of nailing vampires to his drawbridge during the night, lifting the drawbridge and then standing on the gates above waiting for the sun to come up, listening cheerily to the screams of his prisoner.
For all the barbarism of the war, there had been population, technological and cultural growth. The vampires had been a steam age nation and their machines and plans were comprehensible to, and improved upon by, Kingdom engineers, essentially allowing the Kingdom to skip from the Middle Ages to the Steam Age in the course of a generation.
The close of the first generation was marked by the death of Carolus and the inheriting of his throne by his son Magnus the Just.

Recent History, Part Two

Magnus ascended to the throne in a time of dramatic change for Britmattia, both at a societal and technological level.
The war with the vampires had been fought in a schizophrenic manner, one day the forces clashing would be Britmattian peasants defending settlements with unfamiliar muskets versus sabre and carbine armed vampires, the next would find a charge of armoured Kingdom knights forced home into the midst of a thrall square.
With the war's end, this pattern vanished as Magnus despatched his most trusted vassal, the then Duke of Edinburgh, overseas to study the methods and tools of war in other nations, in addition to learning all else he could of this new world.
Horatius, the Duke, must have cut a strange sight, mounted a-dragonback, armed to the teeth in the finest medieval style and backed by dwarves, elves and on occasion the dragons themselves. However, his journey was ultimately successful, returning from the outside world with new machines, techniques and ideas.
On his return, after querying with his King, Horatius immediately went to work on the construction of the Kingdom's armed forces in their present form.
Gone were the old House troops, replaced by a centralised, government controlled, army and navy. The loss of the feudal powers associated with the troops were forced home by Horatius, himself commander of the second largest army after the King, being first to combine his forces with those of the government. This laid the foundations for the historic role of the Dukes of Edinburgh becoming head of the armed forces.
However, this accession is not automatic, due in a large part to the King Horatius served, the aptly titled Magnus the Just.
Magnus, armed with the new ideas and techniques brought back to the Kingdom by Horatius, began a comprehensive overhaul of the bureacracy and legal system, creating many areas from scratch as the people and gentry dealt with a flood of new opportunities and problems.
He was also responsible for the present district borders and the decision to turn the vacant position of the Earldom of London over to the head of the Dwarves, guaranteeing the industrial/technological backbone of the nation a voice.
He also considered a form of parliament, but discarded the idea, famously describing the idea as "government by the loudest voice and weakest spine".
Hence, the retention of what is for all intents and purposes feudalism to the present day.
Magnus died at a great age, beloved by his populace and leaving a stable, socially progressive and rich Steam Age power to his successor, Matthew the Tenth.

Recent History Part Three.

Matthew the Tenth would accede to the throne at a time of unrivalled prosperity for the Land and die decades later a broken and unhappy man.
At first his reign went well, forming a solid match with Anna of Lavenrunz and producing a healthy heir, a girl named Marlena who was supposed to become the first Queen of Britmattia.
This lead to a minor crisis as the somewhat reactionary Duke of Birmingham of the day moved that she be passed over for a suitable male heir, this motion being swiftly quashed by the King and his strong-willed Queen.
Other children followed, two sons, the younger taking his father's name, the older his grandfather's. Magnus and Matthew were virtually insperable as children, their older sister having been born nearly a decade before them and very much her own woman by the time the boys, born within a year of each other, were old enough to be noted.
By the time Marlena reached 21, having attended university in the then-pro Socialist nation now known as the Hack, returned home espousing the rights of the worker, the historically inevitable triumph of socialism and other such Communist buzzwords.
The High Aristocracy nearly had a collective coronary, but worse was yet to come, with Marlena refusing to be confirmed as the official Heir, spouting diatribes on the inherently flawed nature of the monarchy and the injustice of the Kingdom's system of government, ignoring the realities of the situation, the Kingdom being a vastly freer and more comfortable place to live than the majority of the socialist nations of the day.
The King was deeply saddened by his daughter's politics, but his wife was enraged, the Lavenrunzian nobility far less egalitarian than the Kingdom's, the idea of a World Revolution greatly offensive to her and she and her daughter fought bitterly, leading to Marlena returning to the Hack for the best part of a decade.
During her absence the High Nobility, swinging politically to conservatism against the backdrop of a world they saw falling to the gutters of Communism and Fascism pressured the King to put aside his daughter and name Magnus the new heir.
Finally, once Magnus had reached the age of eighteen his father bowed to the urgings of his nobles and made moves to strip Marlena of her heir's status and name Magnus in her place.
Marlena however, had not been idle in the Hack. On hearing of her father's plan, she returned to the Kingdom, along with several hundred students she had swayed to her party during her time overseas. Marlena was charismatic and genuinely believed in Communism, and was soon preaching the glories of World Revolution to factory workers all over the nation.
She was largely ignored in the non-industrialised Warwick and Bathame provinces, chased out of London and derided as a flighty know-nothing by the students of Edinburgh's universities and technical colleges.
However, in the seat of the Birmingham Dukes she found a willing audience, and a financial backer in the Duke's eldest son, Lotho.
Lotho and Marlena formed an impressive and attractive partnership, very visible in the Kingdom and in stark contrast to Magnus who'd quietly joined the army and, two years after Marlena's return, at the age of 20, gotten married to the Duke of Bathame's daughter, Helena.
Lotho and Marlena continued to canvass for support in Birmingham, whilst Edinburgh and London watched the goings on in their neighbour with dismay. The King however, was paralyzed by the open-politicking of his daughter, and the death of his wife from cancer.
Things came to a head shortly after Helena gave birth to her first and only child, Owen.
The People's Socialist Initiative, as Lotho and Marlena's group had named itself, had been demonstrating in the border city of Oxford, clashing with a counter-demonstration by monarchist students, before both demonstrations were broken up by mounted police charges.
The PSI recoiled, then struck, the core of the group issuing weapons and calling for a revolution to "Remove the morally-bankrupt monarchy."
They struck swiftly and destroyed the city's main police barracks, fighting pitched battles with police forces on the streets of Oxford, gradually forcing the embattled officers out of the city.
Their victory emboldened cadres in other cities, and a general rising began in the south-west, the cadre rising in the north being swiftly annihilated and those in the south east failing to even react to the news of the "Revolution."
The loss of Oxford was a slap to the face of CentGov, and the Duke of Edinburgh demanded action, to which an embittered King advised him to seek satisfaction from the Duke of Birmingham.
Magnus was serving in Anjou at the time, and was confronted by his wife's father, demanding action. Magnus, his regrets communicated to Helena by letter, travelled to Royesse with a heavy heart, arriving as news came that Poitiers had also fallen to the PSI.
This firmed the young man's resolve, and he asked his father to abdicate, which the older man did, glad to release his burden.
Magnus then began a swift and incisive campaign against his sister and the newly anointed Duke Lotho's forces.
He was ably aided by Loth's cousin Arlois, who had spent years at the heart of the PSI, gaining a deep insight into the organisation he'd felt threatened his province more than anything.
Militarily Magnus was cognizant that he was more soldier than general, and unable to completely trust the conventional military structure, riddled as it was with Birmingham born officers, he handed operational command to his younger cousin Andrew of Edinburgh, who promptly began to thrash the communist forces wherever they stood to meet him.
Within weeks Oxford had been reclaimed, then Kipling, then Withybrook.
The war however would turn bloody during the battle for Birmingham, a young officer named Nicholas Drake rising to prominence during the eighteen month long siege, only being broken in the end with the daring assault from the sea commanded by Vlad Von Bathame, marking the start of his life-long association with the navy.
It has to be stated that at this time most of the Britmattian forces were being lead by boys, the formal army of the day being vastly smaller than the present, necessitating a reformation of the old provincial armies.
However, in spite of their youth, they were capable leaders, inheritors of a millenia old military tradition and rose to the occassion superbly.
After two and a half years of heavy fighting the PSI forces had been pushed back to the edge of the continent and the islands scattered in a long chain to the edge of Britmattian territorial waters.
Gauging the difficulty of the battles ahead excellently, Andrew of Edinburgh took over the 'island-hopping' campaign, leaving the less demanding siege of Poitiers in the hands of his juniors, directly commanded by Magnus.
The siege dragged on, the Navy unable to prevent Poitiers being resupplied by communist powers from the sea, and the heavy fortifications and narrow isthmus hindering land assaults, even with the newly modernised and expanded Royal Army.
Magnus recognised that something had to be done, and, in the spring of the fourth year of fighting, organised talks with his sister in the center of the isthmus.
Magnus was escorted by his wife, Marlena attending by herself.
It's unknown what was discussed, neither side having recorded anything and events removing what the parties themselves would have reported.
As the meeting broke up, Magnus and Helena began returning to where the Royal Army waited, also in clear view of the PSI forces.
The Royal couple walked back towards their troops, smiling and animated, Marlena turning towards her forces, looking tearful but resolute.
Marlena had nearly reached the line of fortifications when she heard two shots coming from behind her. She turned just in time to see her younger brother cover his wife with his body as a third shot hit him.
Marlena sprinted towards her brother and sister in law, diving down next to them, just in time for Magnus to die in her arms.
The armies sat in place, stunned, and Lotho Birmingham slipped out of his hide, and walked to where Marlena knelt, still holding her brother. Reports say he spoke to her, and Marlena then looked around wildly, as though finally realising the damage she had wrought to her nation and her family. Lotho spoke again and began to walk back to the PSI, face exultant.
It's doubtful he ever realised Marlena had taken Magnus's sidearm from his holster and stood up behind him, levelling the pistol and firing one perfectly aimed round into the back of his head.
Marlena is reported to have stood there for a few moments, pistol smoking.
Then she smiled, lifted the pistol to her temple and shot herself.
The war ended in that moment. The PSI promptly surrendered and were swiftly, if not smoothly, brought back into the fold.
The surviving child of Matthew X, was crowned Matthew XI and the Kingdom embarked on a quiet period of rebuilding.
As a postscript, the area where Magnus, Helena and Marlena died was turned into a quiet park. The area was made extremely beautiful, but is almost eerily quiet and sombre compared to the nearyby bustle of present-day Poitiers. Reports have also emerged of a pale woman's figure sometimes being seen in the area, and a faint voice asking "Forgive me.."