Where does history begin? For most Traladarans that would be obvious, the reign of King Halav the Great somewhere back in the mists of time. A learned sage might protest that starting with King Halav doesn’t provide enough context and would prefer to start with the Traldar and the Hutakaa. But I’m going to be controversial and suggest that if the Hutakaa and King Halav had never existed, the ripples of history would have left Traladara in the late ninth century much as it was. Traladara was nothing but a couple of dozen forest kingdoms that only had the dimmest conception of themselves as part of a wider land.
So peripheral was Traladara that I shall turn our attention to the Empire of Thyatis. The city was (and still is) the greatest in the world, more people living within its walls than in the whole of the forest kingdoms. Thyatis was a trading, maritime empire, ruling trading ports for thousands of miles about, exploiting the natural resources, but not taking direct ownership of an area unless there was a very good reason to. Indeed there were areas only three days march from the city which technically was not part of the empire. Far to the east was the empire’s opposite in almost every way. Alphatia was continient-spanning where Thyatis was ocean based, arcane-focused rather than relying on martial prowess, chaotic rather than lawful. Imperial foreign policy was based on two simple rules, to prevent Alphatia gaining influence in the empire’s wider sphere and to keep the indirect empire divided. This twin track worked well enough for two centuries until the accession of Emperor Sebastian. Sebastian was the first of his name and very likely will be the last as the Thyatians tend not to use the names of unlucky emperors. It would be too simple to blame Sebastian, but after his crowning in AC879, things went wrong almost immediately.
A charismatic priest in the Ylari lands to the north of Thyatis travelled from town to town proclaiming the Dream of the Desert Garden, that if all the Ylaris got together then they could have a prosperous country. This was not a new idea but the Imperial ambassadors missed the chance to deal with it early and then one town’s ruler offered his port as an Alphatian base. This set the newly united Ylari on a path of conflict with Thyatis. So diplomacy had failed and suprisingly the armed forces did not succeed. It did achieve the bare minimum of goals, Tel Akbir was ceded to the Empire, it was culturally Ylari but far too close to the city of Thyatis for it to be part of a hostile nation. The Alphatian mission was kicked out of the united emirates and the Ylari proclaimed neutrality between the empires.
Even worse for the empire, a group of mercantile interests to the north west of Thyatis got together to suggest a confederation of the towns and cities of the River Streel, Thyatian diplomacy would have bribed enough delegates to keep the negotiations continuing until everyone lost interest. But this time if that was attempted, it failed, the Streel merchants not only agreed a confederation but a centralised Republic of Darokin.
By AC885, Emperor Sebastian was seven years into his reign and already had two large nations in the empire’s sphere of influence. There were other reverses, some halflings took over land that had been used as a prison colony. the sea elven merchant guilds used Darokin to improve their terms with the empire. Then, in AC887, there was a whisper that Darokin was offering some Traladaran towns admission into their republic. Sebastian moved fast, a couple of legions crossed into the forest kingdoms and the “conquest” of Traladara has begun.