New Empire

The Empire of Ovaicaea, also called the Empire of the West or more commonly the New Empire is a multi-ethnic complex of territories in western and central Ovaicaea, which claims to be the successor to the legacy of the Old Empire. It is considerably larger than the Old Empire, incorporating several human kingdoms and eastern frontiers that the previous empire never occupied. It formed in the aftermath of the Second Orc War, as the Dorei coalition succeeded not only in their attempt at resisting orc invasion but effectively crippled the Orc Khaganate. The allied states decided to form a united country with a central leadership and assembly, desiring a more lasting peace and recognizing that they are more prosperous together. The alliance's war leader, Arya Hafwen, was unanimously elected empress by the first assembly of notables, and took the reign name Arya Andraste.
The Empire, despite having a nominal authority in the form of the Emperor and the Imperial Assembly, has remained a somewhat decentralized, limited elective monarchy composed of dozens of sub-units: kingdoms, principalities, duchies, counties, temple states, free cities, and other domains, most of them bound under other territorial units in a complex feudal hierarchy. The power of the emperor is limited, and while the various princes, lords, abbots, and cities of the empire are technically vassals who owe the emperor their allegiance, they also retain numerous privileges that give them de facto independence within their territories.
The emperor's main source of power rests in the form of prestige and respect from the imperial vassals. This is a soft power rather than military power, what the Soltran tongue differentiates as auctoritas versus imperium. The empire maintains a small but professional army commanded directly by the emperor, but relies on the militias and local armies of its constituent states for defense and peacekeeping. The making of war is by consensus of the imperial states, which requires diplomacy between them mediated by the emperor.
== Name ==
The Empire goes by many names, though formally it is called the Empire of Ovaicaea, referring to its claim of imperial hegemony over the known parts of the continent. Each variant name usually has political connotations on the part of those using it. People emphasizing the continuity from the Old Empire often refer to it as the New Empire. By contrast, political realists often refer to it as the Empire of the West or the Occidental Empire, emphasizing its limited dominion over Western Ovaicaea. Many sun elves refer to it as the Consecrated Empire (in the Old Soltran language, Sacrum Imperium, or Sacro Impero in modern Soltran), believing that both old and new empires are sacred and blessed by the elven gods with a hegemonic destiny. Poets refer to it as the Empire of the Evening Sun or the Sunset Empire, usually as a poetic interpretation of the sun setting in the west, but also as a memento mori on the transient nature of temporal power and empire.
== History ==
The New Empire's roots can be traced to the fall of the Old Empire, and the geopolitical situation involving the Orcish hegemony and the rebellion against it centuries later. Between 401 and 412 IA, the Orcish Khaganate appeared on the eastern frontier and rapidly overtook the Old Empire, following the mysterious disappearance of the Dragon Riders and their dragons. The last stand of the former imperial forces, in the form of the Balendrine royal army, failed to halt the Orcish advance and the Empire was dissolved. In its place, several successor kingdoms and city-states emerged. The elven cities and freeholds on the western coast and the Eldun River valley coalesced into the Eldunari League; the dwarven lordships of the Dorei River valley fought each other and consolidated into several kingdoms; human tribal kingdoms, which had already existed on the southern and eastern imperial frontier, expanded in size. The Orcish Khaganate took direct control of much of the land north of the Dorei River and the upper Athua River. In the mid-7th century, the Orcish state split into civil war over succession to the khaganate; after its reunification, the Orcs were ruled by a council of Khans, and the Orcish Khaganate lost considerable territory. However, the Orcs retained hegemony over the region, and could extract tribute from the human, elven, and dwarven states.
During this time, the Confessor Order emerged, initially to provide justice in places where civil authorities were non-functional; their presence spurred a religious and spiritual revolution, inspiring the philosophy of the Confessor Way among monastic and temple communities. The Confessors, apparently all of human ethnic origin, served as a symbol of endurance against Orcish hegemony. By the 810s, the Confessor Order was coordinating an armed resistance movement against the khans, and spearheading diplomatic efforts to release the human and dwarven kingdoms from tributary status. This culminated in late 819, when the Mother Confessor St. Ilhandriel and two fellow Confessors traveled to the Khaganate along with several companions to negotiate with the Council of Khans. This ended in a bloody massacre and the death of the Mother Confessor, triggering a war as the allied kingdoms and states rallied behind a defense of the Confessors as their pretext for a massive revolt.
The Second Orc War raged for twenty-four years, eventually involving every major power north of the Tethar Mountains. As the war ground to a stalemate by 833, the Orcs launched a surprise attack on the Confessor Abbey and sacked it. Needing more plunder for their war against a highly mobile guerrilla force, the Orcs also invaded previously-neutral states like Eldunari and Skyshroud. This failed, as the Orcs were repulsed by both the mighty walls of Eldunarish cities and by the ferocious Skyshroudian warriors; and far from demoralizing their enemy, the sacking of the Abbey galvanized popular resistance. Combined with the victories in the north, this provided the momentum needed for the Dorei Militia to take charge of the war effort. Conferences organized and mediated by militia leader Arya Hafwen developed a plan to regain their territory and defeat the orcs, which took effect over the following seven years. The Khaganate collapsed by late 840, and its successor states, the Khanates of Odkarkuz, Dafruca, and Ucral, fought each other to claim supremacy over the Orcs and put up ferocious by failing resistance against the Allies.
By 842, the alliance had practically won the war and acquired the surrender of the Khanate of Odkarkuz, which was recognized as the legitimate successor state to the Orcish Khaganate. Commander Hafwen went into semi-retirement until she was recalled by a conference of allied leaders. The alliance had begun deliberations on the postwar order, and discussions had oriented in restoring the Empire, and creating a unified position of leaderships. As one delegate stated, "It takes an emperor to rule an empire...or an empress"; it was all but assumed that the new empire would be led by Hafwen, the "organizer of victory". The assembled lords and delegates agreed to an Imperial Charter in late 842, and on 2 Yearborn 843, the provisional assembly elected Arya Hafwen as the first Empress. At the time, she was at her estates in Merion, in the midst of quail hunting in the forest when a magical sending reached her to inform her that she had been elected Empress of all Ovaicaea. She rode at once to the assembly fields, to be received by the delegations. A month later a small ceremony was held for her coronation, and she was anointed and blessed by the Mother Confessor.
== Institutions ==
The Empire is neither a centralized state nor a single nation. Instead, it is divided into dozens of individual entities governed by kings, dukes, counts, high priests, abbots, and other rulers, collectively known as princes. There are also areas ruled directly by the Emperor, some of them by attachment to the imperial office, and some of them as dynastic holdings. At no time can the Emperor simply issue decrees and govern autocratically over the Empire. Their power is severely restricted by the rights of various local leaders, and any centralized decision-making is mediated through the Imperial Assembly.
Nevertheless, certain common institutions exist that bind the empire together.
=== The Emperor ===
The emperor is elected by the college of electors, representatives of certain imperial estates that are enumerated that right in the imperial charter and subsequent laws. The electors were decreed by the charter to be the kings of the eleven dwarven and human kingdoms, the king of Skyshroud, the king of Balendor (a title which has been in abeyance for 600 years), the Monsignor of Eldunari (a position that rotates annually), and the Mother Confessor. The Queen of Tethar and the High Chancellor of Mocryae were added to the council when those nations became Imperial estates in the 930s.
The founders of the empire decided that a central leader was necessary, and that the Old Empire had failed primarily because its lack of central, coordinated leadership and reliance on a powerful but unstable military establishment. However, they wanted a leader that was responsible to the princes, who would have to rule by consensus as a first among equals rather than as a military tyrant. They blended human tribal concepts of elected monarchy with elven and gnomish ideas of rule by committee and dwarven feudal hierarchy. Each newly-elected emperor has had to make token concessions to the electors particularly, but also to all imperial princes, typically in monetary grants and reaffirmation of traditional rights and privileges.
The emperor must be a free citizen of sound mind and body, of good moral character, and of meritorious accomplishment. The electors in theory evaluate a candidate solely on this basis, but personal biases have factored in, particularly racial tensions between the Empire's major powers. The elf and gnome electors have not accepted a full-blooded human or dwarf to hold dominion over them, and dwarven and human representatives have been suspicious of the motives of revanchist elves, so all emperors so far have been half-elves.
While the Emperor is elected, all have come from the same dynasty: the House of Hafwen, a free half-elven family from rural Eldunari raised to princely rank during the Orc wars. Various motives can be suspected on the part of the electors: a desire for stability and consistency, the meritorious conduct of the Hafwen princes, and the difficulty of finding an acceptable candidate from another dynasty.
=== Imperial estates ===
The number of territories represented in the Imperial Assembly is considerable, numbering about 500 at the time of the death of emperor Owyn Arranis in 1020. Many of these are small city-states or temple states covering no more than a few square miles, or independent duchies that include several non-contiguous stretches of territory, so the Empire has often been called a "patchwork empire". A territory is considered an imperial estate if, according to feudal and imperial law, it has no authority above it other than the emperor.
The imperial estates include:
* Territories ruled by a princely noble, such as a king or duke.
* Territories organized into a league, commonwealth, or republic.
* Territories in which secular authority is held by a clerical dignitary, such as an archpriest, archdruid, or abbot/abbess.
* Territories in which secular authority is vested in the Grand Master of a knightly order.
* Free imperial cities and imperial villages, which are subject only to the jurisdiction of the emperor.
* The scattered estates of the free imperial knights and imperial counts, immediate to the emperor.
This status of imperial immediacy is a privilege carrying with it considerable power and autonomy. Rulers or recognized representatives of imperial estates enjoy precedence over other subjects in the empire, and are styled Serene Highness. Imperial estates enjoy several rights and privileges. Rulers have control regarding the inheritance of their estates without imperial interference. They are permitted to make treaties and enter into alliances with other imperial states as well as with foreign nations, as long as it does not interfere with imperial actions. The electoral states and rulers, but not the other rulers, are permitted to exercise certain sovereign powers, including the power to mint coinage, the power to collect tolls, and a monopoly over gold and silver mines in their territories.
=== Assembly ===
The Assembly, called in the Dwarven language Versammlung, in the Soltran language Concillium, and in the Lunaran language Cynulliad, is functionally the lawmaking body of the empire. Fusing the human example of tribal assemblies and the elven model of representative government, the Imperial Assembly is a committee of all rulers and states holding imperial immediacy. The Imperial Assembly is not a legislative body per se, as the imperial constitution envisions it more as a central forum for representatives of the imperial estates to negotiate than to decide. However, in practice it acts as the supreme deliberative body of the Empire, and its representatives decide matters of imperial law, foreign policy, economy, and war. The Assembly is theoretically superior to the emperor, as it is the Assembly that makes these decisions and holds the emperor accountable.
The Assembly is divided into three colleges. The first, the college of electors, consists of the princes and representatives who can vote to choose the emperor. Each elector possesses veto power over bills submitted to the assembly. The second is the college of princes, composed of the other secular and ecclesiastical rulers of the imperial estates. The third college are the college of cities, who each submit an elected or appointed representative to the assembly. In all cases, each representative has one vote.
=== Courts and law ===
The empire's judicial system is complex, composed of multiple layers of appellate and original courts from local lordships and magistrates, to territorial courts, to the Imperial Courts. Some imperial estates have the right to refuse appeal of that estates' subjects to higher imperial courts, a highly-prized privilege that illustrates the autonomy of that estate. In such a territory, the territorial court is effectively the court of last resort. Even this right is not unlimited, however, and a delay or refusal of justice can be grounds for a citizen in such an estate to appeal to the Imperial Courts.
The Imperial Courts are subdivided into district courts to hear appeals from territorial courts on criminal and civil matters. The highest court of appeals is the Imperial Chamber Court, situated in the capital, which acts as a court of last resort for the whole of the empire, and is presided over by the Emperor. The Chamber Court has specific jurisdiction in cases regarding breaches of the public peace, cases of arbitrary imprisonment, pleas which concerned the treasury, violations of Imperial law or decrees, disputes about property between those with imperial immediacy or the subjects of different rulers, and suits against persons with imperial immediacy. Issues of criminal charges between imperial estates and disputes between imperial estates are matters of feudal law, and are settled either by feuds or by direct appeal to the Emperor, bypassing the Chamber Courts.
In practice, the Confessor Order has made it their mission to mediate disputes and enforce local laws, preventing most issues from coming before the courts. They cooperate with local reeves and lords to maintain law and order throughout the Empire. The Confessors have pioneered the "Peace and Truce of the Gods," a social movement that promotes peaceful resolution of conflicts rather than resorting to feudal warfare or blood vengeance, which has pressured imperial states to refrain from violence to settle disputes between themselves. This movement advocates for the rule of law rather than might, and has been tacitly supported by the Emperors to promote the supremacy of imperial law over feudal law.
Imperial law has been influenced by both Elven law and Gastrinian law. Gastrinian legal scholars were invited north to advise on jurisprudence and the formation of the first courts with empire-wide jurisdiction. A myriad of complex legal codes governs the imperial estates, who typically have their own customary or codified law. Feudal law predominates in the dwarven kingdoms, and a combination of feudal and tribal laws are prevalent in human kingdoms. Codified law systems are at play in Balendor, Eldunari, and Mocryae, influenced by elven legal tradition. Imperial law is highly codified, and theoretically superior to all territorial laws. Imperial law codes and acts of the Assembly supersede territorial laws, and decisions of Imperial courts override the decisions of territorial courts. A judgement by the Emperor in either the Chamber Court or in feudal matters is incontrovertible and perpetually legally binding.
The Emperor also has jurisdiction over a special court, established in 928, called the Vehmic Court or Secret Court, which has the power to pronounce judgement on special political matters and dispatch agents of the court to fulfill its orders. These agents, collectively called the Panopticon, have broad discretionary powers to carry out the court's judgement and cannot be interfered with, on pain of death. The Vehmic Court is typically employed for political and extraterritorial violations, such as the kidnap of Imperial officials and dignitaries, plots against the Emperor, treason, and engagement with the slave trade. This court has not been without its criticism, especially as its proceedings are kept secret. The Vehmic Court was formed initially to combat the slave trade that expanded after the Gestrin War, and extended its jurisdiction over treason and related political crimes.
=== Military ===
The empire maintains a standing force of volunteer, professional soldiers, as troops commanded by the emperor and generals appointed by the emperor in times of war. The Assembly reserves the sole right to declare war, but the within a conflict the emperor has discretion on the use of imperial troops.
The imperial army is organized into twelve permanent legions, based on a variety of preceding military traditions and experiments in new tactics. During the Second Orc War, the haphazard organization of the allied armies became a problem, so the organizers of the war effort commissioned diplomats to research military organization and methods from various countries. The early postwar army sought Gastrinian veterans as advisers and teachers, but this was largely unfruitful. The majority of the organizational culture of the imperial army is derived from Elven legions and Skyshroudian warbands.
Each legion is around 5,500 soldiers, making for a standing army of just over 66,000 legionaries. During the Gestrin War, the army was expanded to up to thirty legions, but these were demobilized after the conflict. Ten of the legions serve as quick-reaction forces, mainly in the frontiers. One legion is posted in the capital region and in the retinue of the emperor as the Imperial Guard, and one legion is posted aboard ships of the Imperial Navy as a force of marines.
The imperial army represents the second-largest force bound by fealty to a single person in the Empire, second only to the Royal Army of Skyshroud; the Eldunari Army is also larger, but is not bound by fealty to a single person, and rather serves the Signoria as a whole. However, in peacetime it is still a fairly small force compared to the conscript armies and militia the imperial estates can bring to bear. The empire relies on the imperial estates to keep the peace and defend the borders, and to act as a source of auxiliaries in times of war. The Emperor may, if the resources are available to them, call upon their own private armed forces derived from their own lands' feudal duties or paid out of their own personal funds, but these are not technically Imperial military forces.
The imperial military is commanded and organized by the Lord Marshal of the Empire, on behalf of the Emperor. Each legion is led by a general. Combined groups of several legions and feudal levies are commanded by a Field Marshal, but these are temporary groupings in time of war. Unlike Gastrinian legions, which are pure heavy infantry, Ovaicaean legions are combined-arms units with integrated cavalry, field artillery, and war mages sections. A legion is divided into four regiments of 1,000 soldiers, with a 500-person cavalry detachment, a 500-person field artillery detachment, and a 300-person war mage detachment, as well as scouts, support troops, and the legionary staff. Each regiment is commanded by a brigadier. Regiments are divided into groups of 250 to 500 soldiers, called a battalion, each led by a captain and assisted by between two and five officers called lieutenants. Most officers are knights drawn from the armies of the imperial estates.
== Demographics ==
Overall population figures for the New Empire are rough estimates. Given the political fragmentation of the Empire, there are few central agencies that can compile such figures, with most demographic data held by the Imperial Records Office. However, these records rely on accurate reporting by the constituent states of the Empire, as there is no centrally-administered imperial census. According to an estimation by the records office, there is a current population of around 108 million people. The founding population of the empire may have been as few as 54 million, due to mass death during the Second Orc War. It took over a century to recover from the depopulation, and the Empire subsequently gained significant populations from the annexation of northern Mocryae and Tethar.
The population can be divided into:
* 45 principalities and republics, with 80 percent of the land and 80 percent of the population.
* 65 ecclesiastical states, with 11 per cent of the total land area and 12 percent of the population.
* 60 dynastic lordships, with 3 percent of the land and 3 percent of the population;
* 60 free imperial cities, with 1 percent of the land and 3 percent of the population.
* Territories of knightly orders, with 3 per cent of the land and 1 per cent of the population.
* Territories of free imperial knights, numbering into the several hundreds, with 2 percent of the land and 1 percent of the population.
The largest cities in the empire are Sumrana (300,000 people), Rivoli (280,000), Tarento (250,000), Argento (250,000), Rienzi (220,000), and Leone (200,000), most of which are cities on the western coastland of Eldunari.
Its most populous states are:
* Lithuar (12 million)
* Mocryae (11 million)
* Eldunari (9 million)
* Tolossia (8 million)
* Tudesco (7 million)
* Balendor (6 million)
* Eldorei (6 million)
* Etusa (4 million)
* Lilhadorei (4 million)
* Ripania (4 million)
* Skyshroud (3.5 million)
* Athuasua (3 million)
* Suatha (2.5 million)
* Visclovia (2 million)
* Baia (1 million)
* Tethar (1 million)
== Economy ==
The New Empire's economy is among the largest and most diverse in western Ovaicaea.