Dual Kingdom-Empire of Voita-Malagsh

The tale of the Dual Kingdom-Empire of Voita-Malagsh is a sad one. A long time ago, the Kingdom of Voita and the Malagshian Empire were bitter enemies, fighting a war for the control of the region. Their rivalry lasted for millennia, and took the lives of millions of soldiers and peasants alike. One day, one travelling druid, seeing the destruction of the land after so many years of war, went to speak to the leaders of both countries to beg for the stopping of the conflict, started so long ago neither side could remember properly how long it had lasted. Both sides refused to talk to this man, and even put a price for his head for the insolence of suggesting peace without total victory. Wounded and hounded by the bounty hunters of both sides, the druid took refuge in the forests around the kingdom. The druid became one with the land, and for a while, he found inner peace there. However, during a battle between the two kingdoms, the portion of the forest where he lived was razed to the ground by fires. With the last of the druid's breath, he cursed both kingdoms for their wanton destruction of the land and the forest. After his death, the forest began growing at an unnatural rate, swallowing great portions of arable land, starving both nations. When the farmers and peasants tried to chop down the trees, the forest somehow retaliated, impaling the peasants with their branches, gouging out their eyes and strangling them with their roots. Quickly both kingdoms had to stop their millennia old conflict to focus on stopping the forest, but this was not an enemy they could defeat with regular armies. Their onagres and cannons could try and swathe great areas of trees, and they could try and burn the vegetation with magics and oils, but it would grow back even stronger in a couple of days. The forest swallowed mighty fortresses and cities that had withstood the great war, and both kingdoms soon found themselves at the brink of anihilation.
As a measure of last resort, both kingdoms decided to abandon most of their lands, salting the area in an efford to stop the forest. This has caused the destruction of most of the land, becoming inhospitable due to the ruination of the soil. It has also ruined the kingdoms, since the amount of salt they had to use for this desperate ploy has left them in ruins, not to mention all the tens of thousands of peasants and farmers who had to abandon their farms and take refuge within the remaining space. This caused many revolts and internal unrest, leading to bloody civil wars that caused nearly as much destruction as the invasion of the forest. Nowadays both kingdoms have had to join together to fight against the internal unrest, and the ever encroaching forest, whose growth has only been slowed down, but not fully stopped.
== History ==
The tale of Kingdom of Voita and the Malagshian Empire can be traced to the early days of the expansion of the Khenomeric Empire. The growing empire began growing, absorbing many parts of Eastern Giantstep, which included the lands of the Pinewood Peninsula. At the time, lands of Pinewood were occupied by small city-states, fighting for predominance in the region. Out of all of those, the cities of voita and Malagsh proved to be the strongest and most influential, reuniting many of the other towns around them. Their fights meant that the people of Pinewood became great at the art of fighting, clashing with each other with hoplite formations using long spears and square shields. This meant that, while small, the region would be difficult to conquer and maintain by the Khenomeric Empire by the force of arms alone. However, they didn’t have to. Using their growing economic power, they began financing clashes and tensions between the cities, slowly but surely absorbing them into their sphere of influence through ties of honor and financial depth. The only ones that kept pushing back this influence were voita and Malagsh, but the Khenomeric Empire managed to turn them into vassals by pushing them against each other. The Khenomeric Empire presented itself as the arbiter of the discussions between these two cities, and thus they ended up under its influence.
The empire managed to keep these two cities under its power, though they never really were a part of the empire proper, they were just tributaries. And even then, from time to time the voitans and malagshians launched wars against each other, which were harder and harder to stop due to the progressive weakening of the Khenomeric Empire. After the empire couldn’t keep the two cities under control, both states began expanding through the Pinewood Peninsula. Now renamed as the Kingdom of voita and the Malagshian Empire, the two nations jumped in a war to control the now abandoned Pinewood Peninsula, free of the control of the khenomeri. The war would become a near constant in the region, with any periods of peace being only reprieves to allow the troops to rest and resupply. This war was supported by the population, since after centuries of friction and feuds, the hate between them was quite palpable. The few voices crying for peace were quickly quashed, accused of being either cowards or traitors.
The blood ran in rivers. The destruction not only affected the populations, but also the lands around them. The forests around them were frequently chopped up for wood to the furnaces, or became ablaze due to the fights. Since burning down the enemy’s food supplies, many parts of the woods ended up on fire as well, damaging the lands immensely. This did not deter both sides, seeing the scorched lands as a motivation to continue fighting, and as a possible price. Around the year 2.500 ABE, the state of the forest began attracting many druids, worried about the total destruction of the lands and the natural environment. Their efforts to try to stop the war were in vain, being captured by both sides and executed on the spot.
Legends say that the end of the war was brought by one of these druids. A travelling druid went to the courts of both nations and beg for the conflict to be halted. Both the voitas and the malagshians were furious at the insolence, and put a price on his head. He was pursued by bounty hunters, lawmen and even by the peasants of both nations, and was barely alive when he took refuge in the forests. According to the tales, he managed to recover by hiding there and becoming one with nature, slowly but surely healing his wounds while he took care of the forest. In the year 2.501 ABE, a battle near the forest he was in caught fire, killing all life in the area. With his last breath, he cursed both kingdoms and their people for their wanton destruction of the land and the forest, swearing that, just as they had swallowed the land in blood and fire, the forest would in turn swallow them back.
Immediately after that, both kingdoms began noticing strange events around the forests. Roads that used to be well maintained were destroyed by rampant vegetation. Farmlands began being invaded by foreign vegetation, which reappeared the day after the farmers cleaned them out. These seemingly trivial matters began growing in frequency and intensity. Towns bordering the forests became surrounded by the vegetation, and slowly but surely swallowed by plant life. Fortresses and watchtowers crumbled under the weight of green, rotting their foundations or cracking the stone walls. People who entered the forest to see what was happening never came back. During the day, many peasants dedicated great efforts burning down the vegetation, only to grow back even stronger during the night. The forest began swallowing farmlands to an accelerated rate, leaving many farmers without home, and even more people without food. People began thinking that the forest had been cursed when people started appearing impaled, branches and roots growing out of them in a display of brutality that terrified all. Both Kingdom of voita and the Malagshian Empire asked for help to anyone who could possibly know how to stop this, but the rest of the world was too concerned by the expansion of the Gnoll Empire, who had recently destroyed the Khenomeric Empire and was expanding its borders.
Seeing that help was not coming, both the Kingdom of voita and the Malagshian Empire did the unthinkable: they stopped their endless war and came together to try and fight the forest. Their armies were sent to scorch the woods to cinders, chopping and cutting down the trees and killing any animal that came out of it. They used all tools at their disposal, from onagres, cannons, explosives, burning oils, magic spells… and no matter how many acres of forest they destroyed, it would all grow back in a couple of days, causing enormous damages to the troops while they were asleep and unaware. They simply could not burn the forest fast enough, and they saw their fortresses, towns and cities engulfed by a green tide, one by one. The loss of farmland also caused disarray in many cities, lashing out in anger and hunger against anyone else.
After years of fighting the forest, and seemingly unable to push it back, both nations took a different approach. If they couldn’t destroy the forest, they would contain it. In a desperate bid for survival, the Kingdom of voita and the Malagshian Empire emptied their coffers to buy immense amounts of salt from whoever would buy them. They then burnt and salted many swathes of land around the kingdoms, to try and stop the forest from growing any further. Salt was not the only thing used: the nations bought any herbicide, any poison, and any cursed concoction that would turn the lands into a barren wall against the forest. This managed to finally slow the growth of the forest, allowing both kingdoms to gain enough time to reassess their situation: they were broke, with a starving and angry population and a deadly fate that spelled the doom of both nations. In another unprecedented move, both kingdoms united into a single entity, the Dual Kingdom-Empire of Voita-Malagsh, to try to appease the forest by showing them the end of the war. But this did not stop the woods. Not only the fights between the voitas and malagshians did not really stop (at least when the common folk were concerned) but the growth of the forest was not fully stopped. Slowly but surely, the newly born Dual Kingdom-Empire of Voita-Malagsh was boxed into the northeast of the Pinewood Peninsula, sacrificing bit by bit more and more of their lands to fend off the forest.
== Society and culture ==
The Kingdom-Empire of voita-Malagshi Empire is a doomed nation, and everyone living on it knows it. The years after the war against the Forest of Bloody Vengeance saw thousands of people die of disease and starvation, and many thousands more dying due to the many fights that happen as the result of the kingdoms’ unification. The nation has lost most of its farmlands, with many refugees searching for sanctuary in the cities, which has turned them into dens of crime and corruption, with violence between gangs being a common sight. The economy is ruined, having lost many of the most profitable mining areas, having no access to the forests’ natural resources and needing to spend great amounts of wealth to keep the salted lands, least the forest finally cross the final barrier. And the forest is still advancing, and at some point it will finish with the voitas and malagshans for good.
The knowledge of the doom of voita-Malagsh has created a mood of despair and depression all throughout the kingdom. People see there is no hope, and try to survive in any way they can. Many people flee each year to other lands, but many nations keep their numbers under control, seeing as an influx of refugees could greatly damage their economies, not to mention they want to avoid the curse of the voitas-malagshians. Many cults of death have surged in the decades after the salting of the lands, with many of the opinion that the sacrifice of the guilty and the sinner will appease the bloodlust of the forest and will let them alone. During the night, many of these cultists will take prisoners from the cities’ underground, and then take them alive to the salted lands, and then they will bring them to the forests. They will be forced to walk towards the woods and intern in the forest, least the cultists cripple them and throw them into the cursed greenery anyway. The screams of the poor souls who are taken by the forest are received by the cultists as thanks, either one step closer for redemption or one step closer to the end of their suffering.
The once mighty armies of voita and Malagsh are now relegated to law enforcers, keeping the populous from revolting against the dual crown. Most of the armed forces’ elites, alongside all the nobility who could afford it, left the kingdom at some point, leaving the lands of voita-Malagsh with poor defenses. Bad organization, bad leadership, poor pay and crippling corruption is causing banditry and piracy to soar, worsening the kingdom’s problems. Many places have ended up relying upon local militias, since the kingdom’s forces do not bother covering all lands. The fleet of the Kingdom-Empire is a shadow of its former self, since years of disrepair and fighting piracy has left it in a very poor condition. Access to wood is extraordinarily difficult, since it has to come from the few forests within the area covered by the salted lands, still unaffected by the curse. Thus lumber is a priced commodity for everyone, and stealing wood without special permission is punishable by death.
The live in the dual court is marked by the centuries-long hatred between the voitas and the malagshians. Once the unification became official, the administrations of the two nations had to adapt to the new status-quo, and with this, they needed to restructure the inner workings of the country. This was something near impossible, since not only they had very contradictory laws and customs, but the members of the court hated their counterparts with a passion. During the first years, cloak and dagger politics was the norm, with everyone hunting for power and influence, more motivated by revenge than the defense of the land. It was only after a couple of years after the creation of the Salted Lands that the government became more stable, though its grasp on power has weakened immensely, leaving many cities and towns to fend off for themselves.
== The City of Unis ==
After the Forest of Bloody Vengeance began its dark growth to swallow the human nations of the Pinewood Peninsula, Voita and Malagsh began the process of planning against their impending doom. After they unified into a single country, there appeared the problem of where the new seat of power would be. Moving the capital to either Voita or Malagsh was unacceptable, since the population still had quite a lot of resentment towards each other. Also, they needed to move the capital to a place as safe from the forest as possible. The eventual chosen location was the city of Unis, a small fishing town without any previous importance or worth, but it was the furthest place to the forest and it was at the border between Voita and Malagsh, proving that there were no favoritism. While the moving of the capital allowed Unis to grow fast, as capital nations go, it is very poor, without any mighty architecture of worth save for a couple of sea fortresses to prevent pirates from invading the city.
== Foreign Relations ==
The downfall of the Dual Kingdom-Empire of Voita-Malagsh is seemingly just a matter of time, and everyone knows it. Many foreign nations keep their distance with this doomed nation, limiting themselves to trade and humanitarian help in small quantities. The exodus of Voita-Malgshians during the first years after the creation of the Salted Lands caused quite a lot of problems for nearby kingdoms, and the only reason it did not become worse was the increasing lack of vessels in Voita-Malagsh. This also caused a lot of friction with the drunig colonies of Cabakrotiro y Cabakapa, which began seeing a lot of refugees from Voita-Malagsh. Not wanting to risk their colonial efforts, the drunig reinforced their borders and moved all the refugees overseas, far from Drunigzar and its colonies.
The Kingdom-Empire of Voita-Malagsh trades with anyone who can supply them with their enormous needs for salt and herbicides to keep the forest in check. Their main trading partner is the Kingdom of Drunigzar, which has a lot of influence in the politics of Kingdom-Empire of Voita-Malagsh. Seeing as Voita-Malagsh can barely afford keeping their economy afloat, the drunig have managed to get a great deal of concessions out of them, which included the creation of colonies in what was technically still territory claimed by Voita-Malagsh. This has made the drunig very disliked within Voita-Malagsh, seeing them as opportunists profiting from their misery. Others see the drunig as the only way out of the kingdom, offering their services in exchange of moving them to anywhere far from the doomed kingdom.
The acidic lands of the Ashland Desert produce most of the resources used by the voita-malagshans to keep the forest in check, from salt to highly acidic volcanic ash. Most of the salt imported comes from the drunig colony of Megarotera, trading great amounts of salt for foodstuffs with the Runaan. The drunig them trade the salt with Voita-Malagsh, securing a great deal of profits in the trade.
Many foreign nations see with worry the unchecked growth of the Forest of Bloody Vengeance, though after the founding of drunig colonies in territories near the forest without repercussion, many have eased up on that concern. The drunig use the wood from the forest without issue, which has turned into a very profitable business, since Drunigzar is always in need for wood due to the demands of their great navy. However, many drunigs refuse to use wood from the Forest of Bloody Vengeance, on the basis that its curse might still be there. These are not unfounded rumors: many ships made with timber from the forest have ended up sinking in mysterious circumstances, and near all of them were warships or ships used for piracy or war. This has led the Drunig Navy to reject the construction of warships with wood from the region, but that does not stop drunig shipbuilders to make ships for civilian use, or just sell them to less scrupulous clients in the black market. The forest has also grown through the Setlovia Freestate, though the werewolves seem immune to the effects of the forest as well, and have created many roads to connect their territories. This has led many to believe the curse is only tied to Voita-Malagshians, which was confirmed during the War of the Lord Descended, when the drunigs and the cultists of the Lord Descended fought south of the forest. Though many are still weary of this conclusion, seeing as the presence of unnatural elements in the war, as well as the effects of the strange material known as “reality” might not present a complete picture.
Category:Nations
Category:Giantstep