Chapter 114: History Lesson (1/2)

After a quick dinner, Mike sat down in the living room, aiming to finish the history book before going to bed. The others had come in for the meal before going back out to the training yard. Sera had looked happy but exhausted. Apparently she had finally acquired the archery skill.

He made sure to heal her bleeding hands before they left again. It was nice to see her getting stronger, but he was a little worried that she was pushing herself a bit too hard.

Leaning back in the comfortable chair, he took Audra out of his pocket and placed her on his lap. The little dragon was still deep asleep, having consumed half of a roasted chicken for dinner. Remembering what happened earlier, he sent a sliver of mana towards the little creature, and was rewarded with a bleary-eyed stare.

He strengthened the flow, and noticed that Audra got increasingly energetic the more mana he pushed towards her. It seems that his original suspicion was correct and that she required regular mana infusions for some reason. In fact she seemed like a bottomless repository for it, much like her egg had been.

[I wonder if I can…]

Picturing the flame dragon that was probably still sitting under the pavilion, Mike tried establishing a passive stream of mana towards his familiar. After a little mental finagling, he felt the mana tether connect. He set it up to send about 10% of his mana regeneration capacity towards the little dragon.

She looked at him curiously for a moment before crawling up onto his shoulder and cuddling up against the side of his neck. It seemed that she appreciated the new supply of mana.

Smiling, Mike opened his book and began reading.

Picking up where he left off, Mike read about the long period of anarchy as the survivors of The Fall eventually settled in the newly vacant ruins of the High Elven Empire. It seemed that technology, both mundane and magical, suffered a major setback during this time, with the fragmented societies being reduced to primitive lifestyles.

It vaguely reminded Mike of the stories he'd read about Europe following the fall of the Roman Empire, where a number of critical advances in science and culture were lost in the resulting conflicts.

The few remaining documents about the early Third Age suggest that most humanoid groups formed into clans, and carved out segments of territory for themselves. Eventually these clans began to unite along racial and cultural lines. This gave rise to the first kingdoms, as powerful clan leaders took control of vast swathes of territory. Of course, wars started occurring when these territories started encroaching on one another.

This continued for a time, until one particularly effective feudal ruler, by the name of Pyrathias the Conqueror, launched a campaign of unification for much of the Inland Sea region, the portion of Ea that Mike currently inhabited.

Judging from the map on the inside cover of the book, this area resembled an altered version of the Mediterranean, with major continents on three sides and two inlets to the southwest, and southeast respectively. The biggest difference was the inclusion of the Central Continent, which was a large landmass in the center of the sea, and several islands that hovered around its periphery.

Pyrathias ruled a small, nautically inclined, country on the Isle of Porthos. Due in large part to the country's large mercantile fleet and vast trade network, Pyrathia, as it was inevitably called, came to dominate the international economy. Leveraging the vast wealth he accumulated from taxes and tariffs, Pyrathias built the largest and best equipped military seen since the dawn of the Third Age.

What followed was a period of time known as the First Unification Wars, as the Pyrathian Empire dominated one minor country after another. As far as Mike could tell, they hit upon the idea of attacking once to display their military might, then offering the other party a chance to willing join the empire in exchange for mild taxes and a few new laws that wouldn't dramatically alter their way of life. Not surprisingly, many countries chose the path of mild humiliation in favor of outright destruction.

So, within a single generation, much of the Inland Sea region had been unified under the Pyrathias. Only the elves of Mirithia held out, since no army could assault the Verdant Tangle without heavy casualties. Eventually the two parties ended hostilities in a mutual truce, with Mirithia joining the Empire as an associate member with no taxes or outside governance. Clearly a face saving measure.

Pyrathias's descendants ruled surprisingly effectively, maintaining the vast empire for almost a thousand years. Eventually, a dynastic dispute led to a splintering amongst three heirs. War ravaged the region for much of the next couple hundred years, during what is now called the Warring Kingdoms Period.

This was brought to a close by the Second Unification Wars. The eventually victor was a female general by the name of Tirelia who claimed to be a direct descendant of Pyrathias. Whether or not she spoke the truth mattered little, since her army proved unstoppable. She'd organized it into specialized corps complete with dedicated mage squadrons, battlefield engineers, and the first precursors to the current Knightly Orders.

In a mere ten years, Tirelia was crowning herself Empress of the New Pyrathian Empire, before enacting a sweeping series of reforms that changed the old imperial system into a vast web of interconnected dependencies which made complete separation difficult to achieve.

Before she was assassinated by an ambitious general in a short-live coup d'état, she made sure to establish a council with representatives from every territory. The exact duties of this council were not defined, but it was heavily implied that it should step forward in times of political strife, to guide the Empire.

Once the usurper had been dealt with, the council elected Tirelia's niece Lidia, to be the next empress, establishing a tradition that would continue throughout the Second Pyrathian Dynastic Period, which lasted about 800 years and was mostly characterized by technical and cultural development.

The book glossed over several important sounding events, but made sure to focus on one. It was the discovery of an entirely new variety of magic. One that was eventually dubbed Arcane.