Author: Plemency

Greatest Champion Of The Sayran Council Now Rests

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13/08/674 ASU

After a glorious 113-year reign as the Batal Kibir, the champion of the Sayran Council, Dirar Hamza has died from sudden organ failure – a common death for sayran as strong as he because the dense, rigid muscles of his torso put too much strain on his organs.

He came to power in 560 after besting the then-Champion in single combat and taking his position.

Sayran society revolves around structured and orderly duels, where disputes are solved by clans putting forward their best warriors to fight. The Great Clans, those that sit on the Sayran Council, cannot survive without strong duelists. While the Great Clans may bicker on the council, the council’s champion, the Batal Kibir, is only sent to defend the council, or ensure their will is enforced. He is the strongest sayran alive.

Dirar Hamza was victorious in over 900 duels on behalf of the council (which doesn’t include the challenges to his position). He blocked over 50 coup attempts and brought rebelling clans to heel for decades. Dirar created a prolong period of peace and stability despite the surrounding chaos of the AEE.

Dirar’s most famous act, now a very popular poem among clan singers, was Under The Moon’s Bloody Gaze. In the year 618, enemies of the council used procedural tricks to schedule 13 duels with the Council’s Champion in a single night. He accumulated damage and fatigue over that long night, but nevertheless pushed through and defeated the best the anti-council faction could bring.

Most Champions are ‘cursed beings’, and in exchange for great powers have debilitating weakness that’s eventually found and exploited, leading most Batal Kibirs to reign for under a decade.

Batal Kibir Dirar Hamza was not a cursed being. He was simply a monstrously strong sayran who had no weakness to exploit.

Isseian Clans Colonize The Frozen Extremes

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02/11/715 ASU

For eons the Issei suffered on their twin frozen worlds, Isseio Prime and Isseio Alpha.

The former’s axis is tilted 90 degrees, so the north and south pole are bathed in pure darkness or light during the long months of winter or summer respectively.

The latter is far from their sun and only a 1,000 mile strip around the equator is habitable.

Their bodies are adapted to handle the cold better than most, and they tend to overheat easily.

With their recent admission into the Protectorate, and their ability to survive low temperatures well known, economic opportunities are popping up across 14 planets.

For example, the north of Relgan is the Ashari Tundra. Officially ruled by North Santor, Ashari has always been sparsely populated despite the vast amounts of proven mineral reserves. If the issei can develop the land with NS funneling aid and resources, it could be extraordinarily profitable for everyone. It could protentional spark conflicts with neighboring countries who now see a reason to claim the land.

The islands and peninsulas that surround the north pole of Arcadia are currently home to the most developed isseian colony, called Arasuka, which has about 4,000 colonists. The territory is over a million square miles of land, and the issei clans have already introduced hardy winters fruits perfect for the far north. The arcadians aren’t particularly interested in economic benefits, they want a permanently settled ally to the north which will, hopefully, prevent the D’Sev from making use of the region.

Conversely, the Axis Powers are funding colonization efforts of their own, such as on Relgan’s Southern Continent, Hapish, laying just beyond our dependent: The Eluid Commonwealth. This will require us to increase the garrison on an already secure region, at no extra cost to the Axis.

Culture Clash Causes Kitomai Spying Scandal

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24/01/760 ASU

The planet Kitomee is home to two major alliances, and a dozen smaller, unaligned powers. These alliances have been at each other’s throats for decades longer than we’ve been in the system but have avoided full scale war due to the death and destruction that would certainly follow. When the Protectorate arrived 20 years ago, neither side wished to alienate us for fear of their rival getting an advantage.

With access to the Protectorate and the vast field of talent from 50 worlds, both sides decided to utilize this resource and hire spies, particularly the sharads.

The sharads were hired to use their unrivaled stealth skills to spy on rival powers, political dissidents, underlings, and even the Peldak Protectorate. The sharads, of course, completed the task flawlessly and gave their employers treasure troves of information, even more than they wanted.

But during and after their assignments, the sharads had been congregating in the Sharashado Entertainment Kharak, located in a neutral port city, Honiko. The sharads openly blabbed and bragged about their work, telling every bit of gossip and state secret they’re learned to each other, and every information broker who knew where to sit.

Kitomai media are calling it the worst security breach in their history.

The sharads fundamentally do not understand the idea of conflict between humans. For millennia, their world survived in conflict against horrible monsters, and they see every sharad as a brother, which makes other humans like their strange looking cousins. They were fine with spying on fellow humans because it was like a game and didn’t understand that revealing those secrets will cost a lot of people their lives.

Informants revealed, sources named, counterespionage must now put in a lot of effort to close these leaks, and the Kitomai states were humiliated from the affair.

Queen Olympia Reveals 50th Statue Of Her Reign

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07/03/493 ASU

At a signing ceremony for a trade deal between Arcadia and the Eluid Commonwealth, the Queen and her entourage arrived at Relgan’s southern continent, Hapish, to impress the half-elves with the pomp and circumstance she’s so delighted to flaunt. A feast, a parade, a festival merging Arcadian tradition with the beliefs of the eluid, and at the end she gifted them a great statue, 50 feet tall, which will be the centerpiece of the plaza in the city Cornhall.

This statue is, of course, a beautiful rendition of Queen Olympia. This one depicts her with a scythe and bushels of corn around her feet.

The reason why the eluid accepted this statue is because it’s bundled in with her trade deals. Arcadia will pay for the statue, but the host country needs to accept it’s presence for no less than 500 years after her death. In the grand scheme of things it’s a very small concession for access to the most developed industry in known space, and this will be Queen Olympia’s 50th vanity statue, which means it’s also her 50th prominent trade deal after taking the throne just over a decade ago.

The trade deal is food for farming equipment. The vast industries of Arcadia are staffed by millions of citizens who therefore can’t work the fields, and as the kingdom continually industrializes, they are projected to no longer be agriculturally self-sufficient within the next two decades. The half-elves need great quantities of food to maintain their psudeo-immortality, and therefore cannot leave the farms and orchards.

Therefore, the arcadian companies under Olympian Heavy Industries will provide faming equipment and fertilizer, while the eluid will send a portion of their harvest back to Arcadia as canned goods. Arcadia will build the canned good factory and handle shipping.

An Old Grudge Against The Peldaks Revealed

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06/13/864 ASU

My report four years ago about two babies being switched at birth in a cabellan hospital in the old colonies set off a storm of paranoia and double DNA testing.

Most elves will give birth in their family estates, aided by their mothers, sisters, cousins, and daughters. It’s impossible for babies to be switched this way, so any DNA test showing infidelity can’t be disputed. But hundreds of elf girls accused of cheating this past decade ordered DNA tests to compare themselves with their children, swearing that they were innocent.

Journalists of Starlane News decided to accumulate a data set of these incidents. They found 1,755 examples where elf children were born in cabellan hospitals during the Aggressive Expansion Era, their DNA did not match their mother’s husband, and the mother ordered a second test to analyze her own connection with her child.

From that list, Starlane News reported that there were 814 negative results. At least 814 babies were switched at birth.

Their report condemned the hospitals workers for being so stupid to make that many mistakes – granted this was across nine planets and 80 years – and ended their report by giving their sympathies to the victims.

But some decided to investigate deeper.

Of those 814 cases of elven babies being switched at birth, 620 of them were born in the Iziz General Practice hospital in the Basugio colony – same as the Boczar case.

This is such a profound outlier that it had to be intentional, and the issue was brought up to the Protectorate Marshals.

However, this familial sabotage occurred over 200 years ago. The hospital switched hands a dozen times since, and the building is now corporate offices. There are no records of staff or why they would have done this, and everyone involved is long dead.

Both Sides Cheated? DNA Test Reveals Horrific Accident

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19/12/860 ASU

The DNA test arrived in the mail and Bianka Boczar was eager to see the mingling of results. Her father was a Highlander born 2,000 years ago during the War Of Ending, while her mother was a peldak soldier who was his bitter rival, and they had a love affair during the war, even having a child in the midst of the conflict.

Bianka was only born 250 years ago. Her father has solid black hair, her mother’s a redhead who dyed it that classic peldak brown, but Bianka’s natural hair has a bluish tint. It was always weird but nobody thought too much of it since she dyed her hair brown anyway. A large ethnic minority of peldaks naturally had blue hair so there was probably some mingling down the line.

But the DNA ancestry test revealed no Highlander heritage. Her father wasn’t really her father?

This naturally caused quite a storm in the Boczar household, and accusations of cheating were thrown around, though the mother swore she never could have.

Their eldest son ordered a new DNA test and, a week later, it was revealed that Bianka was only a very distant niece to her own mother.

There was no cheating, Bianka simply wasn’t the child of either parent.

Every other child belonged to their parents, and were born the traditional way; in their estate, delivered by cousins and midwives. But Bianka was born in a hospital in a colony on Basugio.

The hospital switched her with another baby.

This should come as no great shock to the readers who lived through that century. Bureaucratic inefficiency and general failure in all matters was a staple of the era.

Regardless of the tragedy of how it happened, Bianka is nevertheless with her ‘real’ family, if not her ‘biological’ family.

Neralin DNA Analysis Reveals Ancestral Trends

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04/09/854 ASU

The rush of Protectorate citizens trying the new scientific advancement the past year revealed a great amount of information from hereditary diseases to poor lifestyle decisions.

The most exciting news is that, overall, the rate of children born from extramarital affairs hovers around 1%. The highest rate is technically D’Sev at nearly 100%, but that’s moreso due to a culture of blanket adoption rather than infidelity. The next highest is firryans living within the United Chaccarn States at 40%; their culture is very polyamorous (not polygamous) and liberal in sex relations. The Kitomai’s infidelity rate is 25-30% because their Overmind pairs individuals for romance and compatibility, but reproduction is based on optimal genetics. The highest ‘normal’ rate is for certain cabellan states being 3-5%.

The elven rate is significantly lower than average, an estimated .01%. Much better than the urban infidelity rate of about 15% thousands of years ago. Additionally for elves, even that .01 predominantly comes from couples who met as adults, not the majority who formed bonds as children.

The lowest average rate of births coming from extramarital affairs is the hemlock, considered to be absolute zero. The neralin found markers of extreme genetic mutation which prioritized obedience, loyalty, and self-sacrifice. It’s possible that the hemlock are genetically incapable of infidelity.

Another interesting study is that every elysian alive is at least the 20th cousin to any other elysian. This is of course due to the extreme population bottlenecks that happen every few centuries, and it explains why they all look so similar.

The sharad’s caste system had them diverge so thoroughly that each caste became their own distinct subspecies, though there is no evidence of genetic mutation.

Yetis tend to have very faint traces of issei DNA, which has unfortunate implications due to their history of raiding.

Neralin Reintroduce DNA Testing After A Millennium

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11/03/853 ASU

Life is made of essential building blocks. Cells, germs, strands of genetic instructions inherited from our parents that weave through our very being.

The neralin’s advanced sciences had cracked the building blocks of life many centuries ago, and with it they discovered something they call DNA. It is made of various chromosomes, and each bit of biological information governs how a body is supposed to function.

I thought this was obvious and I didn’t understand why some of my employees were so excited about the discovery. After investigating through my older news reports I realized that elves understood this eons ago. Aether mystics had identified these ‘strands of genetic code’ before even I was born, and the knowledge was collected in the Brass Tower, the greatest repository for all things related to life and aether.

Though the Brass Tower was, of course, destroyed and all the knowledge within burned during the Vampire War. That’s why I was so familiar with the concept, but the post-void babies had no idea.

My articles from back in the 1,800s BPE were where most elves heard of it, when I used aether testing to annul my marriage to my whore first wife. It exposed the crisis of infidelity that came from early urbanization, and everyone became acutely aware of the problem. But then the crisis passed and we forgot.

Some interesting results from early neralin DNA analysis is that ‘human’ DNA is generally compatible with each other. Elven DNA carries a fundamentally different structure and nearly three times the chromosomes. Eluids have a ‘dual-linked structure’ which is why they’re compatible with humans and elves. Sayran and D’Sev have ‘distinct dominance markers,’ which is why their offspring is always sayran or D’Sev. Slavani have no DNA and can’t even be scientifically classified as living beings.

Protectorate Seizes Southern Vassals During Tomchaka Civil War

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01/03/258 ASU

A flurry of reports are arriving from the United Tomchaka Covens, and Field Marshal Kiskonski is acting decisively from his headquarters in the Lwazi Peninsula.

After the sidelining of the Sararit Coven in the peace treaty, saddling them with heavy reparations and laying the blame solely on them, the coven didn’t passively accept their new circumstances. They skipped the first two scheduled payments, and got to work late last month.

Small venomous spiders began assassinating politicians from rival covens, man-spider hybrids breached the High Coven and seized thousands of representatives and staff, spider centaur veterans from the war emerged from forests and jungles to overrun cities, and the pets and mounts which had been sold to private citizens and druids for decades were activated with druidic magic.

Reports say a Tomchakan woman with ‘radiant, glossy, obsidian black skin’ walked onto the stage of the High Coven, flanked by two elven-spider centaurs. She declared herself the Spider Queen and rightful ruler of Tomchaka to all the captive representatives. Those who dissented were killed, and the survivors unanimously voted for her as monarch.

The coup was not fully successful, however. The Sararit Coven took most of the developed islands, and Erdashu is destroyed, but UTC loyalists retain the continental strip, some of the islands, southern Huilapole, and the northern vassals. Loyalist covens seem to be regrouping in the north and preparing for a long, bloody civil war.

The Field Marshal’s response was to move the legions into the vassal states of southern Erdashu. They’re still reeling from the war, the UTC is too occupied and desperate to help, and they’re terrified of the Spider Queen. We’ll move in, keep the civil war from their borders, and it doesn’t matter who wins the civil war because Tomchaka won’t return south.

Hard-Fought Peace Imposed On Tomchaka

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10/09/257 ASU

Eight years of war on Erdashu, with the conflict having spread to every continent on Relgan, has finally ended in an expected Protectorate victory. The deciding factors were that we finally captured the north coast, and eliminated the three Black Fleets so we could threaten the home islands.

The United Tomchaka Covens realized the fight was lost and started the diplomatic process months ago.

Tomchaka and their southern vassals suffered an estimated 4.6 million deaths from military casualties, famine, and disease. Expanding the death count to include the many distractions around Relgan, and it’s anywhere from 13-20 million relgi deaths. Peldak casualties are no less than 650,000.

The peace terms imposed on the UTC were exceedingly fair. Strips of border territory to increase our Lwazi Peninsula and harsh reparations inflicted on the evil Sararit Coven. The southern tip of Ershadu will be annexed for the creation of a peldak colony. The UTC will retain their territorial integrity and may keep their remaining vassal states – if they choose to because it should take decades to rebuild the damage we inflicted on them.

Blame for the war falls squarely on the shoulders of the Sararit Coven.

After the introduction of the Spider Centaurs, which were viciously difficult to take down, there were several months where Field Marshall Kiskonski’s job was at stake. The people of Relgan, but more importantly the soldiers he commanded, felt he dragged us into an ill-advised war of choice just so he could deal a hard blow to the UTC and have the freedom to act around Relgan. There was a genuine threat of a legionary revolt.

But once elven centaurs appeared the soldiers realized just how horrible Sararit Druidism was. The war had to happen and needed to be fought to nothing less than overwhelming victory.